Is a BJJ match a fight or a game?

This is a combat sport, but despite the combat part, you are not fighting someone? This is the most semantical bullshit and the type of people that get hung up on calling a match a fight are the type of dorks who will freak out when you talk about football and say "our team" or "us" casually. What a miserable thing to make an issue out of.

Exactly. I used to be one of those people that would always insist that calling a match a fight was stupid and wrong. Now I don't really care. It gets in the weeds quickly and it doesn't matter. I call grappling contests matches and not fights, but because there can be very violent grappling situations or very benign striking contests, I don't think it matters.
 
How would you define "fight"? For something to be a "fight" is it a necessary condition that there are strikes involved? If yes, why?

If these have been answers in this thread my apologies.
 
It's almost like metaphor is one of the primary way that humans understand language and "game" is one of the most amorphous categories possible. (Like, the core thesis of a major book about linguistics uses the fact that producing a definition of game that captures it's usage is essentially imposible as it's primary illustration)
 
As someone else said, there are multiple definitions to the word 'fight.'

When someone says they had a fight with their gf or wife, do you assume they were leg kicking each other? Or that one of them got knocked out?

I usually say match but I don't think its wrong to call it a fight. Why do people take some words or phrases so literally but not others? Do people correct others when they say that they are 'rolling?' When someone asks them to roll, do they turn into a ball like sonic the hedgehog and roll around the mat?
Exactly. The context determines the meaning intended. So in the context of BJJ it could be called a fight if "fight" does not have striking as a necessary condition.

One of the goals of fighting is to kill, subdue, neutralise, hurt an opponent. In BJJ you train to do this. So in BJJ you train to fight.
 
It's a match, or a competition, but it's not a fight. If you can't get KOed, I'm not calling it a fight.

I don't disagree with you, but in your opinion then, is a sumo wrestling match a fight? It involves striking and KO is an acceptable way to win. I never really considered a sumo match to be a fight, personally, but maybe I should change my way of thinking.



Is it more that in what we think is a "fight," the main path to victory is to attempt to KO your opponent, while in other competitions (i.e. judo, sumo) it is something that can happen but isn't your main goal? For example, in a boxing match (a fight), I may not KO my opponent, but that's my goal (who am I kidding, I'd get beaten up. It's more that my opponent may not KO me, but he's trying). In a judo match, if my opponent lands poorly, they may get KO'ed, but I'm not trying to do that. I feel like a fight is defined more by the intent than the actual result.
 
I don't disagree with you, but in your opinion then, is a sumo wrestling match a fight? It involves striking and KO is an acceptable way to win. I never really considered a sumo match to be a fight, personally, but maybe I should change my way of thinking.



Is it more that in what we think is a "fight," the main path to victory is to attempt to KO your opponent, while in other competitions (i.e. judo, sumo) it is something that can happen but isn't your main goal? For example, in a boxing match (a fight), I may not KO my opponent, but that's my goal (who am I kidding, I'd get beaten up. It's more that my opponent may not KO me, but he's trying). In a judo match, if my opponent lands poorly, they may get KO'ed, but I'm not trying to do that. I feel like a fight is defined more by the intent than the actual result.


Sumo's a weird one, because it's so ritualized (and corrupted by gambling) that I have a hard time thinking of it as a fight though it certainly comes closer in many ways than a BJJ match. In general I think your point about what your main goal is is a good rubric. You can get KOed doing almost any athletic activity, fight sport or not, but in only a small subset of those is that the stated goal. Generally speaking for me if you aren't allowed to and incentivized to strike with the intent to harm it's not a fight. Even in sumo I believe the strikes are supposed to be pushes mostly, the KOs are incidental, no?
 
Sumo's a weird one, because it's so ritualized (and corrupted by gambling) that I have a hard time thinking of it as a fight though it certainly comes closer in many ways than a BJJ match. In general I think your point about what your main goal is is a good rubric. You can get KOed doing almost any athletic activity, fight sport or not, but in only a small subset of those is that the stated goal. Generally speaking for me if you aren't allowed to and incentivized to strike with the intent to harm it's not a fight. Even in sumo I believe the strikes are supposed to be pushes mostly, the KOs are incidental, no?
I think the KOs are more incidental, but the slaps are more to stun people to help push them down or out.
 
I think the obsession with KO head strikes = real fight is because we are grapplers talking among ourselves. That's the thing we don't do so it seems scarier. And there's an inferiority complex about it.

Regular people look at things exactly the opposite. Say you get in a bar fight and put a guy unconscious. Cops show up. If the witnesses say you threw a punch and knocked him out, that's probably simple assault. If the witnesses say you threw him down, got on top of him, and choked him unconscious, that's probably aggravated if not attempted murder. Regular people view chokes as damn near lethal force. So it's exactly the opposite of our view in the real world.

Of course that is untrained ignorance. But our joint locks are definitely serious force. And that's what we are doing in competition.

I'm not sure why hurting people is not considered part of BJJ competition. That is the goal of a submission. Sure they might tap in time. They also might not, and I see guys getting injured this way every single tournament I go to. It's pretty common to watch a guy limp off the mat, rubbing whatever got caught. Tough to go tell those guys that their injuries aren't real because a BJJ match is not a real fight.

I don't think viewing brutal KO as the goal of boxing is accurate either. That is just one possible strategy, and really it's not even the most common one. Explosive power puncher makes exciting fights on PPV, but overall it's a pretty rare trait in a guy. It gets even rarer at the lighter weights. Most new guys come in wanting to be power punchers and most coaches laugh and try to steer them away from that style.

Plenty of guys try to win with a classic boxing strategy of stick and move, combinations, and just wearing the guy down round after round. The KO comes not as some brutal lights out hit but a TKO from three knockdown, the ref stopping it, body shot, the guy just refusing to get up, etc. Or you go the distance and win the decision. This is especially common in amateur boxing where the scoring is literally point fighting same as TKD. There is no bonus for damage.

There are levels to all these things, and it's just weird to assume that striking is so much more hardcore every time. I agree that two 40 year old white belts rolling at a local tournament is nowhere near the same level as getting KOed by prime Tyson. That being said, two 40 year old investment bankers boxing an amateur match for charity is nowhere near the same level as getting your knee ripped up by Palhares at ADCC.
 
I think the obsession with KO head strikes = real fight is because we are grapplers talking among ourselves. That's the thing we don't do so it seems scarier. And there's an inferiority complex about it.

Regular people look at things exactly the opposite. Say you get in a bar fight and put a guy unconscious. Cops show up. If the witnesses say you threw a punch and knocked him out, that's probably simple assault. If the witnesses say you threw him down, got on top of him, and choked him unconscious, that's probably aggravated if not attempted murder. Regular people view chokes as damn near lethal force. So it's exactly the opposite of our view in the real world.

Of course that is untrained ignorance. But our joint locks are definitely serious force. And that's what we are doing in competition.

I'm not sure why hurting people is not considered part of BJJ competition. That is the goal of a submission. Sure they might tap in time. They also might not, and I see guys getting injured this way every single tournament I go to. It's pretty common to watch a guy limp off the mat, rubbing whatever got caught. Tough to go tell those guys that their injuries aren't real because a BJJ match is not a real fight.

I don't think viewing brutal KO as the goal of boxing is accurate either. That is just one possible strategy, and really it's not even the most common one. Explosive power puncher makes exciting fights on PPV, but overall it's a pretty rare trait in a guy. It gets even rarer at the lighter weights. Most new guys come in wanting to be power punchers and most coaches laugh and try to steer them away from that style.

Plenty of guys try to win with a classic boxing strategy of stick and move, combinations, and just wearing the guy down round after round. The KO comes not as some brutal lights out hit but a TKO from three knockdown, the ref stopping it, body shot, the guy just refusing to get up, etc. Or you go the distance and win the decision. This is especially common in amateur boxing where the scoring is literally point fighting same as TKD. There is no bonus for damage.

There are levels to all these things, and it's just weird to assume that striking is so much more hardcore every time. I agree that two 40 year old white belts rolling at a local tournament is nowhere near the same level as getting KOed by prime Tyson. That being said, two 40 year old investment bankers boxing an amateur match for charity is nowhere near the same level as getting your knee ripped up by Palhares at ADCC.

I agree, I see people bleed all the time in BJJ matches. Happens to me as a white belt as my opponents are spazzy and/ or are out to hurt me.
 
I use all of them interchangeably. It all depends on context.

Just don't be a douchebag and tell everyone in the bar you've got a fight this weekend when you're just trying to make people outside of the sport think your Roy Jones jr when your really just gonna pajama wrestle for advantage points.

Intentionally using fight when talking to nonbjj people is kind of whack.

Does anyone do this in real life?
 
The idea that a fight can only involve strikes is a completely made-up definition.

Stop listening to Joe Rogan. He's not a serious person. He's a guy going through an awakening experience that most people go through long before 50.

Not only do I think it's okay to refer to BJJ as a fight, I think its should always be referred to that way just to turn the knobs of people who think think this discussion is in any way meaningful.

It really is a stupid thing to get hung up on, and it clarifies nothing.
 
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