Sure guys like Maia has success with it, but he has been training his whole life on it, and its at the expense of time he could spend on being a better striker.
When you are in medical school, there are terms called "high-yield" and "low-yield". There is so much stuff to learn in medicine that you can not possibly learn it all for a test, so you study "high-yield" material. That is, material that will get you the most points on the exam using the least amount of time and effort.
What you have in BJJ is very low yield material. In today's time, you don't have to learn offensive BJJ at all, because you can spend less time learning how to defend submissions. If you have ever practiced judo or BJJ, it is NOT hard to "stall". In a BJJ tournament, of course you will lose points for it because of inaction. But in MMA, this is perfectly legal and it is alot easier to stop someone from trying to get a hold of you and submit you, it takes less effort to neutralize their attempt than it is for them to actively try and get a submission on you.
Then you can go to town on them with your superior striking skills. You can learn how to punch someone in the face effectively using much less training time as compared to learning how to submit someone.
BJJ was useful when noone knew how to defend against it. But now, everyone knows how, and the fact that you can sandbag against someone so easily, it is just not a priority to learn anymore. That is why you see a lot more boxer-wrestlers nowadays. MMA has evolved and the numbers of dominant offensive BJJ fighter will continue to decrease until there is no need for it.
Look at the top guys today: DJ, Cody, Aldo, Conor, Woodley, Bisping, Stipe. They are all boxer-wrestlers. Are they good at BJJ? No, they are not primarily offensive BJJ fighters. They simply know enough where they won't get submitted right when it hits the ground. This is the new elite archetype of MMA.
When you are in medical school, there are terms called "high-yield" and "low-yield". There is so much stuff to learn in medicine that you can not possibly learn it all for a test, so you study "high-yield" material. That is, material that will get you the most points on the exam using the least amount of time and effort.
What you have in BJJ is very low yield material. In today's time, you don't have to learn offensive BJJ at all, because you can spend less time learning how to defend submissions. If you have ever practiced judo or BJJ, it is NOT hard to "stall". In a BJJ tournament, of course you will lose points for it because of inaction. But in MMA, this is perfectly legal and it is alot easier to stop someone from trying to get a hold of you and submit you, it takes less effort to neutralize their attempt than it is for them to actively try and get a submission on you.
Then you can go to town on them with your superior striking skills. You can learn how to punch someone in the face effectively using much less training time as compared to learning how to submit someone.
BJJ was useful when noone knew how to defend against it. But now, everyone knows how, and the fact that you can sandbag against someone so easily, it is just not a priority to learn anymore. That is why you see a lot more boxer-wrestlers nowadays. MMA has evolved and the numbers of dominant offensive BJJ fighter will continue to decrease until there is no need for it.
Look at the top guys today: DJ, Cody, Aldo, Conor, Woodley, Bisping, Stipe. They are all boxer-wrestlers. Are they good at BJJ? No, they are not primarily offensive BJJ fighters. They simply know enough where they won't get submitted right when it hits the ground. This is the new elite archetype of MMA.