Russell G. Redenbaugh

Russell G. Redenbaugh (born 1945) is an American Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, widely noted as one of the very few blind practitioners in the world to earn that rank. At age 16, on May 19, 1962, an accidental explosion while building a model rocket resulted in the loss of his eyesight and six of his fingers. He went on to a career as a financial executive and served as a U.S. Commissioner on Civil Rights before taking up Brazilian jiu-jitsu at age 50. Redenbaugh trained within the Migliarese lineage at Balance Studios in Philadelphia, and secondary accounts credit instruction under Phil Migliarese, Saulo Ribeiro, and Jean Jacques Machado over roughly two decades of practice. Primary reporting from a 2007 Gracie Magazine profile names strength trainer Steve Maxwell of Maxercise, where he began, and coach Regis Lebre around the time of his first major title; sources do not fully reconcile the full list of teachers across his career. His best-documented competition result is a gold medal in the Sênior 3 category at the International Masters and Seniors Jiu-Jitsu Championship, held at Tijuca Tênis Clube in Rio de Janeiro on August 30, 2003, where he defeated Saulo Dias. Multiple secondary sources describe him as a three-time gold medalist (2003–2005) in his weight and belt division, competing against sighted opponents, with silver medals in an unlimited (open-weight) division in 2004 and 2005; the specific sanctioning federation and event branding are not consistently named across sources, so those later results are presented as reported rather than as confirmed World Championship titles. Redenbaugh is a public advocate who speaks and writes openly about resilience and his experience of blindness, and his story has been profiled in outlets including Forbes and Gracie Magazine. Within the sport he is remembered primarily as a landmark figure for blind and adaptive jiu-jitsu, demonstrating that a practitioner without sight could reach black belt and win on the mat against sighted competitors.