Back in the early days, when Renzo just opened the academy, there were a lot of guys with really strong backgrounds in other martial arts who came in to see what BJJ was all about. The akido guys had it the worst. One guy with whom I eventually became friends was a 3rd degree blackbelt in akido, but was getting owned on the mat by guys like me who, at the time, had only been training BJJ for a few months.