BOISE, ID — Riggs Halverson, 29, a two-stripe blue belt with no enrolled membership at any academy in the continental United States, confirmed Tuesday that the 47 drop-in punch cards stored in the glove compartment of his 2014 Subaru Outback represent the entirety of his jiu-jitsu lineage, his coaching history, and, as of last quarter, his largest non-rent expense.
Halverson trains at six gyms across three Idaho counties on a rotating weekly schedule, paying $25 per drop-in each visit. His annual training cost — $6,500 before gas — makes him, according to regional gym-owner spreadsheets reviewed by ThePorra, the most financially valuable member that no one in the state has actually heard of.
“I’m a student of the game,” Halverson said Tuesday, between bites of an açaí bowl he bought at a smoothie kiosk not affiliated with any of the gyms where he trains. “I think locking yourself into one lineage is kind of limiting, creatively.”
Sources at Clearhaven BJJ in Boise, where Halverson was training when he made the comment, confirmed that no one at the gym knew he had ever been there before.
The Question That Broke Him
The incident that brought Halverson’s training pattern to the attention of the grappling community occurred last Thursday at Clearhaven BJJ, where three-stripe white belt Dustin Merle, 32, an electrician with eleven months of training, asked Halverson a question practitioners at every level regard as non-controversial: “So who’s your coach?”
Witnesses described Halverson’s response as unsettling.
“He just paused,” Merle told ThePorra. “I thought he didn’t hear me. I was going to ask again, and then I saw his eyes kind of move around the room, like he was looking for one. He stared at the belt rack for a while. Then the trophy case. Then he made a face like he had just been caught shoplifting.”
According to a timestamp recorded by the gym’s security camera, Halverson paused for eight seconds. He then named Professor Elías Bracamonte of Iron Creek Jiu-Jitsu in Nampa — a gym Halverson has not visited since last July — followed by Coach Trey Vandermoor of Foothills Grappling in Meridian, with whom Halverson has drilled exactly twice, and finally Spencer McAlister, the host of a submission-grappling podcast Halverson listens to during his commute.
“I’ve never met him,” McAlister confirmed via email. “I run a podcast. I have never been anyone’s coach. If I am Riggs Halverson’s coach, I would like that entered into the record at some sort of tribunal.”
The Ledger
A visual inventory of the Subaru’s glove compartment, conducted with Halverson’s permission in the parking lot of Foothills Grappling, revealed the following: 47 punch cards in various stages of completion, a digital pocket scale from a division below his current weight class, three single-use lozenge wrappers, one expired rashguard receipt, the business card of a sports chiropractor Halverson has never called, a folded copy of the IBJJF rulebook from 2019, a plastic mouthpiece case with no mouthpiece inside, and a strip of athletic tape with dried blood on it that Halverson identified as “not his.”
The punch cards themselves told a story of distributed loyalty. Clearhaven BJJ: 11 stamps. Foothills Grappling: 9. Iron Creek Jiu-Jitsu: 8. Syringa BJJ in Eagle: 7. Bannock Submission Academy in Caldwell: 7. High Desert Grappling in Emmett: 5. No card was more than one stamp from completion. Five were exactly two visits from a free class Halverson has no realistic plan to redeem.
“He’s very consistent,” said High Desert’s front desk manager Jamie Foulk, who recognized Halverson’s name with five seconds of squinting. “I’d say we see him about once a month. Or every two months. Or last August. You know what, I’m going to stop talking.”
Six Gyms. Six Vague Recognitions.
Reached for comment, instructors at all six gyms independently described Halverson in terms that suggested none of them had ever stored him as a complete person.
Professor Ben Kirwin of Clearhaven BJJ: “Tall guy? Blue belt? Solid triangle from closed guard, I think. Wait. Does he have a shoulder brace? No. Maybe.”
Coach Trey Vandermoor of Foothills: “Subaru guy. Parks crooked. We call him Subaru Guy.”
Kelsey Ullman-Briggs of Iron Creek: “I assumed he was someone’s cousin visiting from out of town. Every time. For two years.”
Asked whether any of them would be willing to promote Halverson to purple belt, all six responded with variations of the same sentence: they had not seen him enough times to accumulate an observational baseline. Three of them, when told the total number of hours Halverson has spent on the mats collectively across their six gyms — 412 hours in the last calendar year — stared at the reporter for a period ranging from four to eleven seconds before asking if they could go teach their next class.
The Girlfriend Is Also Confused
Corinne Thurlow, Halverson’s girlfriend of three years, reported a parallel state of quiet epistemic collapse at home.
“I used to ask him which gi was clean,” Thurlow said, standing in front of a dryer containing what she estimated was either four gis or the same gi photographed four times. “Now I just grab one and smell it. If it smells like one gym, that’s a Tuesday. If it smells like another gym, that’s a Wednesday. If it smells like both, he went to open mat.”
She added that Halverson’s Instagram bio, which reads “Student of the game” and lists no lineage, is accurate, though she wishes it included the Subaru’s license plate.
Masters Worlds
Halverson has registered to compete at Masters Worlds this summer and confirmed he has not yet selected which gym’s patch he will wear on the day.
His current options, according to notes he has written on the back of one of the punch cards, include: none of them; a patch from a gym in São Paulo he has never visited; a blank square of white felt ironed onto the lapel; and, most recently, “just write ‘SELF’ in Sharpie.” He described the last option as “probably the most honest” before adding, “though I might ask my podcast guy.”
When asked, at the conclusion of the interview, to say the name of one person who has ever coached him through a full technical sequence, Halverson paused for fourteen seconds, said the phrase “the mat is my professor,” and left.
The Clearhaven front desk waved goodbye and welcomed him to his first visit.