Originally Posted by
hespectnogi
I agree with you on a lot here. Wrestling gives you great balance, helps with top control, generally makes your posture better. But I don't think that wrestling is really what's taking over. It's the combination of wrestling and jiu jitsu. If you don't have both now adays it would be difficult to be competitive at the top of any division (I mean just adding wrestling to your training, you don't have to come from a wrestling background). Just to be clear I do think that wrestling should be factored into experience, but it's not quite as valuable as jiu jitsu for submission grappling is, year for year. And nobody mentions how wrestling is generally 3-4 months out of the year. As for the pure jiu jitsu guys view of wrestlers, I think that's pretty accurate. People fear whatever they're not familiar with, but the same goes for wrestler's view of jiu jitsu guys, "these guys who will tangle you up and choke your lights out once you get to the ground". When I first started training, it was the guard players that really scared me, even though they may have been intimidated by my wrestling.
I watch far too much MMA. (This is both a good and a bad thing.) I agree with a lot of your points as well. The problem I am seeing is that there was a time when BJJ Black Belts were an "I-win" button to people who didn't have them. Then you get guys like Chael Sonnen, and Randy Couture, neither of which have ANY rank in BJJ and just learned passable submission defense and destroy people under them all the time. Don't misunderstand in that I am not saying that BJJ will ever be irrelevant. But the "Just do BJJ and Muay Thai...." style a lot of people trained for doesn't work anymore. You see it on TUF all the time when these guys come in with BJJ Black Belts and even have good expirience in world class grappling matches losing to guys with good wrestling and only passable BJJ.
Catch Wrestling poses even more of a problem as it literally just plugs submissions back into Folkstyle Wrestling. I talked to a Catch coach who took a guy who just wrestled varsity for high school and he was able to teach him enough Catch to start taking first in BJJ tournaments within a few months, because the foundation for everything in Catch is sitting there in Folkstyle.
Then there is also the psychology. And work ethic. It's off the charts. Rousey's mother has a pretty good blog post about it you should check out. Judo is also dealing with the "Wrestling problem" and their solution was to simply remove leg attacks from the rules in Judo. But she pointed out that wrestling practice is generally so much more intense and athletic then anything most martial arts schools do. My kids just did a practice with a highly regarded club here in Michigan and they do this thing called "The Grind" where you free wrestle hard as you can for a period then jog laps, then free wrestle again hard as you can, then run laps, do this and repeat over and over and over. It was insane but it made the kids so tough.
Watch this documentary sometime. Anyone of any background can appreciate it, but it will give you a glimpse into what makes a world class wrestler. They are cut from a different cloth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QdcHrPotm4
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