My view is that they show us the better souls in ng as a juxtaposition , to draw attention to the fact that they weren ' t present in NG and make us question why . I know i didnt notice that all the souls in NG were ' soul of a lame lamer ' until i played ng and got my first ' soul of a cool dude ' and then went ' huh ? ??' to myself . <| sep |> I ' m not old yet , but I ' ve been doing judo for a while currently 27 , started Judo when I was 12 . I know you say in your post that it ' s silly to want to defend the belt , but man , that ' s really silly . I get thrown all the time in randori by lower belts . I have better judo than them , but I ' m not defending with my full ability when I train with them they know this , I know this . When I train with lower belts I practice techniques I ' m trying to improve , so I ' m sometimes sloppy and get countered . You need to build up a level of selfconfidence so that you can do this without feeling bad about yourself . Now , to be fair , I started judo at a pretty competetive club where people were spinning out of throws in randori and posting , and doing all these dumb things to try to avoid their backs touching the mat in the dojo . I ' ve since learned , in large part due to the influence of my new sensei , that this kind of behaviour and mindset has no place in the dojo , but it was hard to unlearn bad habits . If your opponent catches you in a throw and you do a breakfall , you waste less energy , protect your body , and have more time to focus on offensive judo . This did take me a while to learn I had to untrain my instincts from my home club . It ' s not easy , but with dedication I was able to change my perspective . The key is to get thrown and then mentally move straight past it , get up , and start attacking . Eventually I started to score more throws myself because I wasn ' t so worried about defending , and you ' ll find that it ' s way may satifying to go 54 with your opponent in a round than it is to go 10 . And of course your technique will improve much faster this way too . Finally , you deserve your belt . You are a yudansha . You ' ve put the work in and it has been recognized . You don ' t have to continue to defend your right to wear it .