Rhadi Ferguson

CTL-E-6920 · Person · other · contemporary

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07792 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6920.

Rhadi Ferguson is an American judoka, Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, coach and educator who represented the United States in judo at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. Born April 3, 1975, in Miami, Florida, Ferguson began judo as a young child under instructor Jack Williams but stepped away from the sport for a decade when his family moved to Maryland. At Howard University he competed in football, wrestling and track and field, graduating in 1997 with a degree in mechanical engineering, and only then returned to judo. The comeback was rapid: he was an alternate for the Sydney 2000 Olympic team, won four U.S. senior national judo championships, and at age 29 competed at Athens 2004 in the men's half-heavyweight division. Ferguson also earned a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu from Ricardo Liborio in 2006, competed professionally in mixed martial arts, earned a doctorate in education from Capella University, coached the Bahamas national judo team, and in 2012 opened Tampa Florida Judo, where he continues to teach both arts.

The record

• Also known as: Rhadi Bullard Ferguson, Dr. Rhadi Ferguson

Notes

Sports Encyclopedia roster CTL-SPE-0209. Firsts disposition: NO FIRST CLAIMED — no source in this record asserts a “first” for Ferguson, and none is carried. (A promotional claim that he was the only athlete to contest the Olympics, the BJJ World Championships and the ADCC worlds appears in event publicity only and is not asserted.) Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): Ferguson's record is a study in the scholar-athlete — an engineering graduate who returned to a sport after ten years away and reached an Olympic Games within seven. His second career as a coach and educator in Tampa extends the record well beyond Athens. Photo: HELD — Commons holds only the namesake Rhadi Ben Abdesselam; depiction of Ferguson unconfirmed, 2026-11-03.

Referenced by

• Howard University — has alumnus → this record

Sources

• USA Judo, “Black Olympians Continue to Help Grow the Sport,” February 28, 2022; accessed 2026-11-03 (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, “Rhadi Ferguson”; accessed 2026-11-03 (build store)
• BJJ Eastern Europe, “Exclusive Interview With Dr. Rhadi Ferguson, Judo Olympian & BJJ Black Belt, Part 1” (interview in Ferguson's own words); accessed 2026-11-03 (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6920 · Combined Graph record U-07792 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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