Has he been sleeping through class?

[Jack Hanley]

But we are bound to history and the reality principle in our discourse. What I mean by this is that the 1993 revolution proved jiu-jitsu training does work. Precedence rejects the rehashing of that old argument for jiu-jitsu.

The 1993 revolution proved that 1993 BJJ worked. But things have changed a lot in 21 years.

In 1993 BJJ they had UFC 1.

In 2014 in BJJ, they had....this:


The best part is that the ref actually forces the other guy to engage him.

Today, it's jumping inverted guard, berimbolos, and worm guard. But, what is it going to look like in another decade?

It seems like the ethos of "BJJ is all we need/we don't care about any other combat sport" is leading traditional BJJ down a slippery slope that may end in a place very far removed from actual fighting. Some people don't care and that's fine. But, I do. I don't want grappling in 10 or 20 more years to be the ground equivalent of kung fu with a lot of flashy beautiful moves that have little relation to actual fighting.

Honestly, Eddie's Combat Jiu-Jitsu format or something conceptually close to it may be the only way to reverse this trend.

[Joshua Jarboe]

Great discussion.

I do feel that BJJ should attempt to use MMA to prove the point that the Gracie's went out to prove when they started the UFC. Now that we've started it, now that the fame of BJJ has spread this way, it's pretty tough to say "it doesn't matter." Anything after UFC 7 doesn't matter? The dude who pointed out that this sounds like typical kung fu whining nailed it.

The only thing I have to add is a concern that hopefully someone can falsify:

Is it me? Or did BJJ go out, win 3 early UFCs, hang a Mission Accomplished banner and fade out of the scene? By the end of UFC 7, BJJ folks (mostly Royce) had won just over 50% of the tournaments, with wrestlers being the primary threat. By UFC 14, BJJ seems to have faded and wrestlers seem to be dominating. To put this in context, by UFC 7, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu had one only four times as many UFCs as ninjutsu. I'm not aware of a time that BJJ has dominated the UFC since UFC 7.

Is that an unfair reading of history? Am I missing something? Or are wrestlers eating our lunch?

[David Rosado]

For the most part, I agree with him. BJJ as a whole has not adapted to MMA very well.

This is both good and bad. It's good for the sport of BJJ because it has opened things up and it's fun to play with crazy inverted rolling this and that. It's bad that guys have developed such sport oriented bottom games dependent on the gi, that in a fight, they're pretty much useless.

BJJ proved itself to be a viable combat martial art. I don't see anything wrong with the sport. But I do see some issues with the martial art. Generally takedowns are poor. The gi is an MMA hindrance. Another problem; the rules. The rules really don't simulate a realistic fight scenario. I get the need for rounds and judges for entertainment value. But it doesn't give BJJ enough time to work.

Regardless, BJJ can and should still adapt to the rules. Like Firas said, in order, it really should be sweep, submit, stand up. In rapid succession. Because time is of the essence. You want to either be on top, tapping the guy, or just plain old not on bottom so that you're not losing on the cards too bad.

[David Rosado]

Great discussion.

I do feel that BJJ should attempt to use MMA to prove the point that the Gracie's went out to prove when they started the UFC. Now that we've started it, now that the fame of BJJ has spread this way, it's pretty tough to say "it doesn't matter." Anything after UFC 7 doesn't matter? The dude who pointed out that this sounds like typical kung fu whining nailed it.

The only thing I have to add is a concern that hopefully someone can falsify:

Is it me? Or did BJJ go out, win 3 early UFCs, hang a Mission Accomplished banner and fade out of the scene? By the end of UFC 7, BJJ folks (mostly Royce) had won just over 50% of the tournaments, with wrestlers being the primary threat. By UFC 14, BJJ seems to have faded and wrestlers seem to be dominating. To put this in context, by UFC 7, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu had one only four times as many UFCs as ninjutsu. I'm not aware of a time that BJJ has dominated the UFC since UFC 7.

Is that an unfair reading of history? Am I missing something? Or are wrestlers eating our lunch?

I agree. BJJ served a purpose to show a glaring hole in traditional martial arts. The blending of grappling and submissions in a "no rules" scenario. But once those other martial arts filled that hole, BJJ has evolved into more of a supplement than its own effective martial art.

Why would a guy like TJ Dillishaw obliterate Royce? TJ is not a BJJ blackbelt. Well, TJ knows enough to avoid Royce's game. Basically, during the early UFC days, people weren't aware of all of the rules and options. Imagine playing a new sport but you didn't know all the rules. Imagine playing basketball without knowing you could dribble? Well, once people learned how defend crappy takedowns and developed sub defense, and they learned how to disengage, and force stand ups....well we see what's happened.

When wrestlers got tapped by BJJ guys, they learned BJJ. When strikers were getting taken down, they learned how to adapt with sprawls, technical stand ups, etc. The only ones that haven't seemed to adapt as a whole is BJJ.

[Aiseop]

The 1993 revolution proved that 1993 BJJ worked. But things have changed a lot in 21 years.

In 1993 BJJ they had UFC 1.

In 2014 in BJJ, they had....this:


The best part is that the ref actually forces the other guy to engage him.

Today, it's jumping inverted guard, berimbolos, and worm guard. But, what is it going to look like in another decade?

It seems like the ethos of "BJJ is all we need/we don't care about any other combat sport" is leading traditional BJJ down a slippery slope that may end in a place very far removed from actual fighting. Some people don't care and that's fine. But, I do. I don't want grappling in 10 or 20 more years to be the ground equivalent of kung fu with a lot of flashy beautiful moves that have little relation to actual fighting.

Honestly, Eddie's Combat Jiu-Jitsu format or something conceptually close to it may be the only way to reverse this trend.

There's also what we saw at Metamoris with JT Torres, Yuri, Keenan, and hopefully at the next one Geo. In fact, I'd say today the average BJJ is sooo much more well rounded in their takedown and wrestling -- but, we also have people that specialize in guard play. That's jiu-jitsu, nothing wrong with that.

[Aiseop]

I agree. BJJ served a purpose to show a glaring hole in traditional martial arts. The blending of grappling and submissions in a "no rules" scenario. But once those other martial arts filled that hole, BJJ has evolved into more of a supplement than its own effective martial art.

Why would a guy like TJ Dillishaw obliterate Royce? TJ is not a BJJ blackbelt. Well, TJ knows enough to avoid Royce's game. Basically, during the early UFC days, people weren't aware of all of the rules and options. Imagine playing a new sport but you didn't know all the rules. Imagine playing basketball without knowing you could dribble? Well, once people learned how defend crappy takedowns and developed sub defense, and they learned how to disengage, and force stand ups....well we see what's happened.

When wrestlers got tapped by BJJ guys, they learned BJJ. When strikers were getting taken down, they learned how to adapt with sprawls, technical stand ups, etc. The only ones that haven't seemed to adapt as a whole is BJJ.

The fallacy is that you are assuming those guys are wrestlers. They are MMA fighters. People like Rory McDonald who grew up doing "MMA" is the trend for MMA. Wrestlers are still wrestling at wrestling competitions, etc. BJJers are doing BJJ at BJJ comps. Muay Thai fighters are doing Muay Thai. You do not change your martial art for another sport. That is the death of judo route...

[Bryan Gore]

I don't want grappling in 10 or 20 more years to be the ground equivalent of kung fu with a lot of flashy beautiful moves that have little relation to actual fighting.

You know, if there were a sport that had rules that got guys to have fights that looked like the fights in kung fu movies, I would watch the hell out of that, even knowing that without those rules it could never happen.

[Jack Hanley]

You know, if there were a sport that had rules that got guys to have fights that looked like the fights in kung fu movies, I would watch the hell out of that, even knowing that without those rules it could never happen.

Fair enough. There are people who enjoy all kinds of activities and that is fine. To me, that is all martial LARPing which I'm not into.

[Joshua Jarboe]

My white belt / tapout shirt wearing two cents here follows.

The fallacy is that you are assuming those guys are wrestlers. They are MMA fighters. People like Rory McDonald who grew up doing "MMA" is the trend for MMA. Wrestlers are still wrestling at wrestling competitions, etc. BJJers are doing BJJ at BJJ comps. Muay Thai fighters are doing Muay Thai. You do not change your martial art for another sport. That is the death of judo route...

That's some good defensive logic, but with some care, we can get somewhere useful here.

In short, we have to look at MMA as a simulation, figure out what we can learn, adjust for the ways we know MMA is not a good simulation, and adapt.

MMA fighters, vanilla MMA fighters have usually some strong wrestling abilities and some strong striking. Think Rich Franklin. You don't have to be a BJJ black belt to succeed in MMA.

Let's put it another way: if you were designing the perfect fighter today, you would think twice before choosing BJJ over wrestling. You'd choose wrestling and striking. You'd be *really* good at striking and you would use your wrestling in reverse on wrestlers and your wrestling / ground and pound against dudes with better striking than yours. We see this work all the time. What we don't see working all the time is dudes pulling guard.

I think this dude was saying that BJJ guys need to use their BJJ in reverse. You know who might exemplify that best? Anderson Silva. That dude's striking was so nasty that you never thought about him as a BJJ practitioner. But it saved his neck a few times! Damien Maia wasn't much of a threat despite his considerable BJJ skill!

You do not change your martial art for another sport. That is the death of judo route...

We have to be careful here and cut finely.

MMA is a useful tool for trying to figure out what works in a fight. There are massive caveats. Both of these statements are true. You can't get to the truth by ignoring either one.

So if your martial art is getting smoked in MMA, you have to really do some soul searching and figure out why.

I think we all have to do that.

I think 10th Planet folks are doing that and our MMA representatives have something to prove. We think we've got something figured out: some aspect of the way BJJ is being conducted isn't translating well to MMA. I like Eddie's theory about emphasizing a clinch-based system. I hope we can prove the validity of that at the highest levels of MMA at some point soon.

I worry that we don't stress takedowns enough. Wrestling. I reckon we'll sort that out as we evolve and integrate really solid wrestlers.

Massive caveats to the limits of MMA (my two cents):
* People are actually allowed to wear clothes in real life. Points to gi BJJ for remembering that.
* Takedowns, I am given to understand, on concrete, are liable to hurt your knees if you shoot them like you would on a mat. There may be a reason that Judo doesn't go about its throws by slamming a knee to the ground and shooting. I wonder whether wrestling has adapted its style to accommodate mats... anyway, points to BJJ for emphasizing "safe" takedown techniques.
* Your odds of facing a high level wrestler / striker "on the streets" are pretty low. Your odds of meeting one who is wearing GSP shorts and no shirt are *very* low. If you do, your best move might be to pull out your side arm.
* Multiple attackers are a factor in self defense but never in MMA. I'm not satisfied that BJJ handles the multiple attacker scenario well.

My conclusion: the best martial combination for real life scenarios is BJJ (any kind) and gunjutsu.

Other things I think MMA teaches us:

Striking WORKS against people who can't take you down.
Wrestling WORKS against strikers who aren't well versed in wrestling.
BJJ WORKS against people who are wearing gis and have not trained against it. BJJ gives you options in case you get taken down.

I suspect your nightmare MMA fighter has top flight striking and as much wrestling and BJJ as you can fit in. He's not Jake Shields (unfortunately). Silva, Pettis, Weidman (?), Aldo...you know. ...that's why I had such high hopes for Dan Hardy back in the day.

Ok, I'm rambling. Bye bye.

[Nick Paul]

I think it's a little like looking at boxing and saying "yeah, practicing with those big ass 16 oz. gloves isn't helping your cause". And you'd be right. But that doesn't take away from the sport of boxing at all. MMA is an art of it's own. And for MMA, he's absolutely right about how guys view it. If you're facing a savvy grappler who is on top of you and is allowed to strike you, it's a pretty tall order to try to submit him in less than 5 minutes. A majority of the time he's going to ride you out and win the round on points. Getting up and trying to get on top is probably the best bet. Just because you can play guard in jiu jitsu and crush guys doesn't mean you want to be on your back in a fight...

P.S. Pretty funny how blamed the gi number 1, then praised Aldo when Aldo is a big believer in the gi for MMA. lol +1 team no gi