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As many MMA fans have seen and pointed out in the recent years, fighters with a BJJ base have a difficult time reaching championship level and often fall short.
One of the main alleged reasons for this is BJJ's lack of effective techniques to get the fight to the ground where BJJ is king. Because BJJ was built from Japanese Jujutsu and Judo, it relied on takedown techniques from these disciplines. However, takedown techniques from Judo and Jujutsu are not adequate as compared to the techniques in wrestling.
Therefore, some efforts have been made by BJJ trainers to incorporate wrestling into their arsenal to evolve BJJ into a more complete grappling martial art.
However, I believe this is not enough to evolve a martial art.
As a long time MMA fan and someone who has taken TMAs, I recognize the importance of full contact competition and how the rules of these competition shape the evolution of the martial art itself.
It dawned on me how important and overlooked this is after I read the follow post:
This observation is spot on!!! The type of high-level full contact competitions that are available and how the competitions are scored have shaped and will shape how the martial artists fight and the evolution of martial arts themselves, as time passes.
For example, in Karate and Tae Kwondo, the competitions are point based, so over the years, these styles have been fine-tuned for point fighting and not really for real full-contact knockouts that is suitable for real combats like in MMA.
On the flip side, Muay Thai competitions are about who can avoid / absorb damages while dissing out the most firepower to KO the opponents, and thus, Muay Thai's training system has evolved into one that focused heavily on conditioning and simple but powerful techniques.
Getting back to BJJ and wrestling... if BJJ is to evolve into a complete grappling martial art by combining with wrestling, then the competition's rule and scoring system must ALSO combine wrestling's rule and scoring. Such a grappling match would have to allow and reward for takedowns, slams, control, pins, etc. (as in wrestling) and allows for submission holds (as in BJJ).
One of the main alleged reasons for this is BJJ's lack of effective techniques to get the fight to the ground where BJJ is king. Because BJJ was built from Japanese Jujutsu and Judo, it relied on takedown techniques from these disciplines. However, takedown techniques from Judo and Jujutsu are not adequate as compared to the techniques in wrestling.
Therefore, some efforts have been made by BJJ trainers to incorporate wrestling into their arsenal to evolve BJJ into a more complete grappling martial art.
However, I believe this is not enough to evolve a martial art.
As a long time MMA fan and someone who has taken TMAs, I recognize the importance of full contact competition and how the rules of these competition shape the evolution of the martial art itself.
It dawned on me how important and overlooked this is after I read the follow post:
@WARinsertname:
BJJ and grappling comps usually do not award a guy keeping it standing. So either one guy is taking the other down or one is pulling guard.
There is no real sense of urgency or need to go full boar into takedowns like in wrestling or MMA.
Look at bjj and no gi matches. The guys aren't super aggressive at taking the other down...USUALLY. Both guys tend to softly play chess instead of driving a single or double.
Not all guys are like that...There are players who will go after it.
BJJ and grappling comps usually do not award a guy keeping it standing. So either one guy is taking the other down or one is pulling guard.
There is no real sense of urgency or need to go full boar into takedowns like in wrestling or MMA.
Look at bjj and no gi matches. The guys aren't super aggressive at taking the other down...USUALLY. Both guys tend to softly play chess instead of driving a single or double.
Not all guys are like that...There are players who will go after it.
This observation is spot on!!! The type of high-level full contact competitions that are available and how the competitions are scored have shaped and will shape how the martial artists fight and the evolution of martial arts themselves, as time passes.
For example, in Karate and Tae Kwondo, the competitions are point based, so over the years, these styles have been fine-tuned for point fighting and not really for real full-contact knockouts that is suitable for real combats like in MMA.
On the flip side, Muay Thai competitions are about who can avoid / absorb damages while dissing out the most firepower to KO the opponents, and thus, Muay Thai's training system has evolved into one that focused heavily on conditioning and simple but powerful techniques.
Getting back to BJJ and wrestling... if BJJ is to evolve into a complete grappling martial art by combining with wrestling, then the competition's rule and scoring system must ALSO combine wrestling's rule and scoring. Such a grappling match would have to allow and reward for takedowns, slams, control, pins, etc. (as in wrestling) and allows for submission holds (as in BJJ).
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