The seminar on August 9 brought together the Las Vegas Jiu-Jitsu community. Photo: Frank Curreri

Read how the event unfolded through the words of Frank Curreri as he was in attendance of the historic event:

Anyone who owns a red-and-black belt, as Sergio Penha does, cannot help but be from “The Old School.” Part of that code, being a so-called “Man’s Man,” means masking weakness. It means that a guy like Penha, veteran of Grandmaster Osvaldo Alves’ ferocious dog-eat-dog style training sessions, would rather spend an afternoon getting teeth pulled in a dentist’s office, without anesthesia, than be caught crying.

Of course, even the most powerful and emotionally disciplined leader has an achilles heel. Especially when one of his longtime students, a black belt no less, meets a sudden death way before anyone imagined. Such a tragedy recently befell David Vanbuskirk, a police officer who died July 22 rescuing a stranded hiker in the mountains 35 miles from the Las Vegas strip.

Vanbuskirk successfully saved the hiker’s life – as he had saved hundreds of others throughout his career – but lost his own when his harness (connected to a helicopter) somehow came loose. A fun-loving guy who could light up any room with his near-perfect smile, Vanbuskirk was just 36 years old.

Sergio Penha address those present. Photo: Frank Curreri

A magical power of our art is how it transforms strangers into friends, and friends into blood. One day you’re training with a guy, a year later he feels like “family.” It’s a popular refrain and cliché in BJJ circles. Think about it: How many times have you heard a BJJ player say, “My students are like family to me” or“My teammates are like family to me”? 

Now let’s change gears and entertain another mental exercise: How often do you hear someone say “they are like family to me” about the instructors or students at the BJJ academy five miles down the road? The academy that is competing with your academy for the same students, the same dollars, for the same gold medals and bragging rights and prestige at local tournaments?

Maybe never, right?

Which is what made a recent Friday night seminar in Las Vegas so historic. Eighty BJJ players gathered at Xtreme Couture’s gym for a seminar that raised $10,000 for Vanbuskirk’s widow. Considering the price tag for admittance – a mere $50 – the 3-hour experience should go down as one of the greatest BJJ seminar bargains ever. I would have eagerly parted with $50 bucks to attend a seminar run only by Sergio Penha, famed for his epic match with Rickson Gracie and for leaping over brown belt entirely and going straight from purple to black belt. What certified the seminar as awesomely ridiculous is  that it, in addition to Penha, it featured technical instruction from five other top-shelf black belts from across the BJJ-rich Las Vegas Valley.

The rest of the formidable list of volunteer instructors: six-time world champion Robert Drysdale; world-class black belt Simpson Go; Amilcar “Mica” Cipili, a Royler Gracie affiliate whose teams have fared very well in local tournaments; Neal Melanson, the Jiu-Jitsu coach at Xtreme Couture who is a black belt in Judo and Hayastan under Karo Parisyan (and awarded Randy Couture a black belt in the same art); and Robert Follis, a BJJ black belt and one of the brightest (if unsung and often overlooked) coaching minds in MMA who has worked extensively with Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Chael Sonnen and Matt Linland, among others.

Even the most seasoned BJJ player could learn a few things in a room packed with that much knowledge and experience, which may explain why at least 17 total BJJ black belts attended the seminar. The tragedy of Officer Vanbuskirk’s death and the watershed event that ensued provided a proper perspective for what it really means to be “family” in BJJ. A reminder that should echo across continents to any BJJ schools and instructors who may have gotten too wrapped up in the “us/them” mentality.

“We’ve come together; we are brothers,” Sergio Penha said while addressing everyone in attendance. “Drysdale, Mica …you know, we fight each other all the time when my students compete against your students. That’s the way it has to be, but we also have to respect each other. I respect Drysdale, Mica, Chad (Lyman) and everyone who shares the love of BJJ. I love this sport.”

Many different rivaling teams came together. Photo: Frank Curreri

“When I started doing this sport we didn’t have many rules,” Penha said. “I came from a time where, if a guy closed his guard, you lifted him and smashed him to the ground … You could go for the neck crank, you could go for the heel hook, you could do whatever you want, but there had to be respect. And that’s the way I respect every single one of you. If you step on the mat and you’re training every single day, I have respect for you because you are showing balls (holds both hands out wide and gestures).”

Randy Couture volunteered to participate in the seminar but was in Bulgaria filming the Expendables 3 movie and could not get the green light for a getaway, according to Chad Lyman, one of three Las Vegas police officers who dreamed up the seminar as a way to honor their fallen peer.

“We’re trying as a Jiu-Jitsu community to remember one of our own who fell serving other people. We came together in unity, doing something that we loved and that (Officer Vanbuskirk) loved,” said Lyman, who following the seminar received his BJJ black belt from Michael Chapman.

Given the amazing success of the August seminar – which was organized, planned and executed in just eight days – Lyman said officers are already discussing the possibility of making this an annual event to honor law enforcement who perish in the line of duty.

At heart I’m still just a kid from a lower-class neighborhood in Baltimore: a nobody fighting to be somebody, fighting for security in my life. That is my edge and thank God I still have it.” Frank Curreri

While some folks do Jiu-Jitsu for their health, to make friends or defend themselves, Frank Curreri does it to try and rid himself of the monkey that’s been on his back for the last 18 years, with both hooks in deep.

After defying all odds, escaping an underprivileged childhood in inner-city Baltimore to get an education and cover important stories as a correspondent for major newspapers, one would think Frank should be pretty pleased with himself. Add to that how he has spent the last three years traveling the globe writing about a sport he loves as one of the UFC/WEC’s main scribes and you have to wonder what’s wrong with the guy. If you must know, the crux of his restlessness is that fate robbed him of a dream when he was just 19, and Jiu-Jitsu is his way of trying to steal it back.

Momentarily content with No-Gi Worlds gold medal. Photo: Personal archives

“My life is monotonous and far from glamorous, but I realize my window for greatness is closing,” are the modest description of Curreri’s life that fight fans who read the articles he is paid to write would disagree with and his allusion to what is ultimately bugging him. That he won the brown belt masters division at the last No-Gi World Championship and took bronze in the adult division the previous year, only losing to Guilherme Mendes (about as good as it gets), doesn’t make him feel any more glamorous or greater – perhaps just on the right track.

At least family time is always satisfying. Photo: Personal archives

He had the greatness he yearns for in his grasp when a successful high school wrestling career led to a berth on Division I team University of Maryland. He was on course for a shot at his dream of being the best when a blood clot blocking an artery nearly cost him his right leg, shattering his hopes his very first year of college, at an age when most folks are just beginning to wonder what they want to do with their lives.

If Frank could be satisfied with accomplishments on other fronts, the fact that in the five years it took him to regain proper use of his leg he won an award for journalism from his alma mater – known for producing top journalists – and began the career reporting headlining stories for major newspapers that later led to an exciting gig working for the Ultimate Fighting Championship would seem like a silver lining to his tragedy. But the only part of what followed that fateful blood clot to come close to mollifying Curreri’s disquiet is that the journalism filling the void left by his abbreviated wrestling stint brought him to Pedro Sauer’s academy in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he reported for The Salt Lake City Tribune.

When he began practicing Jiu-Jitsu with Pedro in 2001 as the “1-millionth guy to thank Royce Gracie” for opening his eyes to the art, Frank’s dream of grappling greatness was resurrected. The gentle art offered the means to pursue his arrested aspirations, reencounter his identity as a martial artist, and live in practice the philosophy he studied those years crippled at the University of Maryland.

“Jiu-Jitsu and martial arts are not just hobbies for me; they are a way of life. They are part of who I am, my identity,” the brown belt world champion of the masters division asserts, making clear he is far from done – but on his way. “A black belt, whenever it comes, is just one part of that journey, not a destination. Jiu-Jitsu has helped elevate my self-consciousness, how I interact with the world, how I perceive the world. It is almost like a form of therapy for me,” referring to scars left by the violent surroundings of his boyhood growing up in a place he quotes H.L. Mencken as having dubbed “The City of Anger”, where half his friends either ended up “in jail, or dead, or on parole.”

Frank, Claudia and Gianni. Photo: Personal archives

Now married with a year-old son in Las Vegas, where work has him in close quarters with all those who are where he strives to be, Frank found in Robert Drysdale the right mentor to guide him in his quest to “quench his thirst for grappling success” in earnest. “A champion’s energy has a way of rubbing off on you,” he explains, perhaps suggesting the 2007 ADCC absolute champion embodies the final objective; and the “atmosphere where teammates are super-passionate about BJJ or fighting, not just hobbyists,” at the archetype’s academy further stokes his exhilaration that he might just be able to make it before his window closes.

Whether or not Frank Curreri – now over 37 years of age – will make it to his own personal finishing line remains to be seen. He does, however, have a special weapon his origins bestowed upon him: the fire kindled by the indelible wounds of someone life has beaten up but never beaten, as he puts plainly, “I always compete as if I’m still dirt poor, or as if it could have been me in jail or on drugs. I compete as if the other guy is trying to take something from me. I find a dark place inside me, and it comes from those days in Baltimore. At heart I’m still just a kid from a lower-class neighborhood in Baltimore: a nobody fighting to be somebody, fighting for security in my life. That is my edge and thank God I still have it.”

Given Frank’s grit and dogged desire to win, it would seem unwise to bet against him completing his mission. But for someone who seems to have acquired a taste for taking hard knocks and keeping his feet, betting on him to ever be satisfied would be a long shot, too – even if he wrenches that monkey off his back, passes guard, and pounds it into oblivion dropping elbows.