Lake Cowichan's Brandi Pearce is a jiu-jitsu world champion. Pearce earned gold at the 2024 IBJJF World Masters Championship in Las Vegas at the end of August and she had to go undefeated to do it.
Pearce — who owns Foundry Combat Sports in Duncan with her husband and coach, Ron — competed in the Masters 1 light-feather brown belt division.
It was intimidating to see people from huge jiu-jitsu clubs from around the world that have unlimited training partners, when back home she has "a couple of giant men," as training partners, she said with a chuckle.
Pearce explained that anyone over the age of 30 can compete at the IBJJF World Masters Championship, but only a select few can win.
With more than 10,000 participants, she was grateful to only have to be better than 14 ladies in her class, but she said on any given day, any athlete in her division can win.
"It's just who shows up and who competes better that day," said Pearce. "I could have made one mistake and I would have been out but it's just whoever shows up and wants it that day, or who's been training harder. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. It's who shows up that day with a better mindset."
In the single-knock out tournament, Pearce knew that if she lost her first match, she wouldn't move on.
"I had to win four matches to get gold," she explained. "I had three submissions and a win by nine points."
For those not in the know, that means she dominated her competition en route to the title.
"I was very happy," she said. "It was really cool to see that even though we're from a small town and we have a small gym, that you don't need a ton of training partners or anything; you just need a couple good people and a good coach and that's it," Pearce added, noting that she is grateful for those giant men she trains with.
What makes winning even more impressive is that Pearce has only had her brown belt for about four months. She has been training in the sport for roughly eight years and only picked it up because her boyfriend at the time, now her husband, was involved.
"I wanted to understand why he liked it so much," she said, and she soon found out she liked it, too. So much so that the duo has made a career of it. The couple owns Foundry Combat Sports on Polkey Road and runs classes for men, women, and children.
While she teaches classes for women and children, she's still training herself with an eye on some more competitions — possibly later this fall in Vancouver.
She added that she'll have to wait until she's promoted to the next and final belt — black belt — to compete at a higher level, but she'll keep training toward that end.
Jiu-jitsu is a self-defence martial art based on ground grappling and submission holds. It has gained popularity in recent years for both its physical and mental training aspects.
"It's almost problem solving, but it's so difficult that you want to try and figure it out," Pearce said. "It's not exactly a team sport. It's a personal by yourself kind of sport but I think it's so difficult to do that it's almost frustrating and you want to keep doing it to get better."
Pearce noted that it's a great sport for youth to pick up.
"It's really interactive. It's a very hands-on sport," she said. "It gets kids more comfortable interacting with each other but it's also that you're part of a team, a club. It's great socializing but it's also great physical activity."
