# PJ Barch got his purple belt from a man he's never met > During a stretch back home from Sweden, a complete stranger gave him his purple belt; he doesn’t know anything about him, his name, his affiliation, or anything else about him. PJ has described the moment with a laugh, saying it was genuinely strange even to him. Source: https://www.porradanutra.com/articles/stories/pj-barch-got-his-purple-belt-from-a-man-hes-never-met · Updated: 2026-09-07 Paul Jacob Barch goes by PJ, or "Butter Panther." He is an American Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. He competes in submission grappling. He coaches at 10th Planet South Bay in Chula Vista, California. He competes at 77kg, the welterweight division. He won the Polaris 27 Welterweight Grand Prix. He also took bronze at the 2024 ADCC World Championship. Before all that, he was just a kid in a quiet Delaware beach town. ## Sports Background Paul Jacob Barch was born October 9, 1989, in Pittsburgh. He grew up in Delaware, in a family with deep wrestling roots. He tried soccer first, then gymnastics. He joined a wrestling program in fifth grade. He became a multiple-time All-American at Sussex Central High School. He won the Beast of the East. He took a state title in his senior year. He walked on to the Division I wrestling team at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. At the time, he wanted a career in academics. He even planned to become a professor. But he left college entirely and moved to Hawaii. There, he took his first jiu-jitsu class at BJ Penn's academy in Hilo. He also started competing in amateur MMA. By his own account, that first class wasn't real training. His partners lay on their backs. They caught him in triangles again and again while he tried to wrestle through it. He didn't like getting choked. But he liked the room. At the time, he mostly did MMA. He describes MMA simply: getting punched in the face a lot. ## Intro To Jiu-Jitsu He trained in Portland with Nate Orchard. Orchard was the first coach to teach him real jiu-jitsu. Before that, Barch had only felt his way through moves. Orchard gave those moves names. Then he spent about five months in Stockholm, Sweden. He trained for free under a 10th Planet coach named Magnus.. Barch was a white belt, but he kept beating the gym's brown belts. Magnus promoted him to blue for a practical reason. It had become embarrassing to send a white belt this good to other gyms. ## The Man With No Name Then it got strange. He went home for about four months, and in his own words, "some guy I never met before gave me a purple belt." He still does not know the man's name, his affiliation, or anything else about him. He laughs about it now. But he's admitted something else too. Even at the time, he knew something was wrong with how fast it all happened. Later, he landed in San Diego under Richie Martinez. He felt so weird walking in with an unexplained purple belt. So he asked Martinez if he could just earn it properly instead. ## San Diego Settling there ended a run that had taken him through Hawaii, Portland, and Stockholm. He never stayed anywhere long. At that point, he didn't even know what ADCC or IBJJF was. He earned his black belt in 2016. That put him in the 10th Planet lineage through Martinez and Eddie Bravo. Today, he's head coach at 10th Planet South Bay. He runs the same room he came up in. The coaching job came almost by accident. He took it after teaching exactly one class in his life. ## Becoming a Champion The submission-only circuit became his proving ground. The nickname "Butter Panther" came from a friend. A friend said it offhandedly at a 2017 KASAI event, when Barch needed a name to put down. The announcer used it during the competition, and it stuck. PJ says the only nicknames that last are the ones friends give you, not the ones you pick yourself. He's a two-time Onnit Invitational champion. He also holds titles at Sapateiro, Quintet, Subversiv, Polaris, Sin City Series, and Emerald City. He built this career on formats with nowhere to hide, using the same wrestling-heavy top game he's carried since high school. ## Advice From Ryan Hall The turning point in his career traces back to a conversation with Ryan Hall. (Barch once stayed at Hall's house for a week.) Hall told him he didn't need an elaborate guard. He just needed a simple system built off his wrestling: attach to hips or legs, and put people down. Hall called these positions "black holes." Instead of trying to do everything, Barch could just funnel opponents into them. Barch spent six to eight months rebuilding his entire game around that one idea. ## Modern Day Butter Panther At Polaris 27, he won the eight-man welterweight grand prix. He went through a stacked bracket that opened with ADCC Brazil Trials winner Luiz Paulo. This came right after a rough year: his record had gone 4-3-2. He rebounded to take the whole tournament. He took bronze at the ADCC World Championship in 2024. Along the way, Kade Ruotolo caught him in an armbar. It was his first armbar loss in about four years. He is 36. He holds an invitation to compete in Krakow at 77kg this September. And he still coaches the room he trains in. He's a wrestler who quit college. He collected a belt from someone he barely knew. And he became one of the most consistently dangerous grapplers in the sport.