Will BJJ eventually devolve into a TMA?

A martial art that is unrealistic for fighting. Like a lot of modern sport TKD schools. It's not useless, you will be flexible, develop kicking ability, etc. But you won't be prepared for a real fight because you have never done live sparring with real strikes, etc.

This is getting confusing

TMA was, to me, martial arts with no sparring, no competition and no ruleset. Just magical stuff and drilling self defense moves that you should be able to pull off in a real fight

TKD can be really competition oriented, they have 2 internationnal assocations that have a big competition circuit and the sport is in the olympics

The problem is not the sport but some school that choose to emphasis on something other than competition and competition training. They do very few live training

That can surely happen in BJJ also, I hear a lot about schools who barely roll, where classes are all about technique and you need to find people to stay for rolling. Those school create an atmosphere where rolling is something special when it's supposed to be normal to roll all the time.
 
I personally feel that ground strikes need to be added to BJJ and catchwrestling.

BJJ and wrestlers would be alot more effective offensively and defensively if they had more practice dealing with strikes and utilizing them to set up submissions.

It's another sport, and a strange one IMO

It's not the submission that is the matter in today's highlevel BJJ, once those guys find a way to pass the guard, the finish ratio is very high. Those bow and arrows come very fast at that level.

It's a guard passing game, it's for the points but also to finish. Subs from the guard are very tough to get, the best way is to get on top, pass the guard or to get the back.

Strikes would be good against half guard players, but I wouldn't try to punch a guy in DLR or over his butterfly hooks. Throwing a punch can mess up your balance a lot and make you easy to sweep.
 
More advanced? No. At what, berimbolo and double guard pulls? They fight for points now more than submissions. The only ones it might be true for are from the academies that don't promote so they can sandbag and win tournaments.

I was around ten years ago. I was even around when the highest ranking person you were ever likely to find in the States was a blue belt. @Beastos is right IMO. Hell, I've even seen competition blues with only two years of training who, were they to go back in time to 10 years ago, would give even brown belts fits. The art hasn't just evolved, teaching it has too. There's just no comparison IMO. When I think about what I was being taught as a white belt, vs what current white belts are working with - it's insane. That only gets even more intense as you go up in belt level.
 
You have guys at high levels in BJJ doing stuff like becoming experts at armbars and guard submissions. Like how some TKD guys become experts at flying tornado kicks. Completely unrealistic and it's because of the ruleset.
Armbars (wtf!?) and other submissions from guard are not unrealistic. We still see them a lot. Poor examples.
 
Seems doubtful. The community will ebb and flow in terms of fighting ability, but it'll be naturally self-correcting. There will never be a day when an online blue belt is respected, for instance. It's just too ingrained in BJJ culture.

Other people complain about worm guard or whatever, but that's complaining about the Gi and the options it provides rather than BJJ. BJJ is no longer a feeder into NHB/MMA, because NHB/MMA is a bigger subject now. It's dumb to try and learn striking/striking defense in your BJJ class, because you should do that somewhere else better equipped to teach it to you. If you want total all around fighting, you should be training MMA. The components that make up MMA are all valid fighting arts, but the sum is greater than the parts, universally.
 
TMA? No. Neutered like Judo has been? That's already well under way.

Guessing the IBJJF will get more and more restrictive until eventually some sort of split happens. Personally, I don't believe that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training/competition in the gi can reverse course at this point. The mentality and culture surrounding it these days is too far gone. I'd like to see no-gi be distanced more and more from it as time goes on until it becomes its own thing, where 'tradition' is put aside and people only care about using what works the best.
 
More advanced? No. At what, berimbolo and double guard pulls? They fight for points now more than submissions. The only ones it might be true for are from the academies that don't promote so they can sandbag and win tournaments.

Agree to disagree.
you do realize the berimbolo is a backtake, right? when a miyao gets your back, they will choke you the fuck out. and who fights for points now? the champions at the worlds don't submit people? have you actually watched any world championships lately?

there is this shitty narrative perpetuated by "old school" people who like to pretend that their training in the late 90s was somehow superior to today's athletes both in how tough it was and how effective they became through it. it's horseshit. the people winning worlds today are professional athletes. even blue belt champs are devoting their life to the art, and training 2 to 3 times a day. their training is grueling and they are several times better than many regular black belts 15 years ago.

the point fighting, berimboloing millenials will pull guard on the oldschool master, sweep him, pass his guard, and choke him the fuck out, while he complains about them not fighting for the takedown.
 
Guessing the IBJJF will get more and more restrictive until eventually some sort of split happens.

The IBJJF is not getting more restrictive. They even made the reaping rule *LESS* strict in recent years.
 
The IBJJF is not getting more restrictive. They even made the reaping rule *LESS* strict in recent years.

People were getting DQd over nothing so they had to walk it back some, but that doesn't change the overall trajectory that Jiu-Jitsu in the gi has been on for quite some time.
 
even blue belt champs are devoting their life to the art, and training 2 to 3 times a day. their training is grueling and they are several times better than many regular black belts 15 years ago.

You were making some sense until that comment, then you lost all credibility. Today's black belts are certainly at higher levels than the previous generation, but insinuating that today's purples and (it's hard to even type this) blues are several times better than guys from just 10 years ago is childish, uninformed, and insulting to them.

The Miyao argument is valid, since they are the highest level competitors, but it wasn't about today's black belts, the discussion was about purple belts.
 
i sure hope not

im assured that bjj continues to evolve that would potentially stop the dilution of it
 
You were making some sense until that comment, then you lost all credibility. Today's black belts are certainly at higher levels than the previous generation, but insinuating that today's purples and (it's hard to even type this) blues are several times better than guys from just 10 years ago is childish, uninformed, and insulting to them.

EDIT:
The following post is due to a reading comprehension failure on my part. lol I missed the 10 years thing. Much of my statement below refers to more than ten years ago. I still stand by a lot of it though in regards to people having gotten better. It would not speak well of the sport if people weren't getting better as the generations go on.END EDIT


I was around "back then". It's just the truth. How could it not be? When I first started looking for BJJ training (in the U.S), you were LUCKY if you had a single school within 100 miles. If you DID have that school, it was, most likely, run by a blue belt. Not only were happy to train there - you were PSYCHED that you found it. These days, if someone says "I found a school run by a blue belt" people will be screaming fraud faster than you can blink, and most schools don't just have ONE blackbelt, but MULTIPLE black belts. To that end, if you admit that the BBs of today are better, and the BBs of today are the ones teaching those blues and purples, then how can the blues and purples not also be better? They have access to more and better teaching, ready access to blackbelts, can compete more often and at a higher level on a regular basis, have the internet ... etc etc

The biggest change is that people are learnign how to teach the art. Taking a more systematic approach and not holding back techniques (as was often done in those days whether anyone wants to admit it or not). When I think about all the things I learned back then - most of what I learned has been improved upon. More efficient guard passing, better escapes, ways to tweak that choke to make it more effectrive, etc etc. With all this in mind, it would be almost impossibly for the blues and purples of today to NOT be better ....
 
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UFC was originally owned and run by the Gracie family in the beginning up until it was sold to the Ferritas Brothers.

The original UFC tournaments were basically advertisements for Gracie BJJ. But i do recall Rickson Gracie’s discontent some years ago with BJJ moving from a self-defense focus to a sport focus.

We all know how IBJJF and Mundials are.
If the BJJ becomes more of a sport with rules that lead to jiu jitsu that is less effective for self defense, will BJJ eventually turn into a TMA?

Could we potentially come full circle? The Gracies proved that many TMA styles don’t work for real self-defense. But then what if BJJ eventually becomes a TMA itself due to growing BJJ sport.

Or will BJJ splinter into 2 different styles: one for sport and one for self-defense (similar to the difference between Sambo and Combat Sambo)?

Are you saying that sport BJJ will become a TMA? That's exactly backwards. Sport martial arts are generally the most robust, because they're constantly tested under harsh conditions and their serious practitioners are genuine athletes. The portion of BJJ that is at real risk for becoming a TMA is the self defense side, because that stuff is typically practiced with no resistance: it's parroting of the founder, a pretty marked characteristic of TMAs.

There are some BJJ lineages that already show some characteristics of TMAs, but as long as a strong sport scene and MMA gyms exist, the martial side will be fine.
 
You were making some sense until that comment, then you lost all credibility. Today's black belts are certainly at higher levels than the previous generation, but insinuating that today's purples and (it's hard to even type this) blues are several times better than guys from just 10 years ago is childish, uninformed, and insulting to them.

The Miyao argument is valid, since they are the highest level competitors, but it wasn't about today's black belts, the discussion was about purple belts.
why?

there is a significant difference between a regular person training bjj and a professional competitor. go and pay attention to who is winning worlds at the lower belts, and in several years, those guys will be standing on the podium at black belt adult. the miyao bros were killing everyone from purple belt and up. keenan as a purple belt was giving established black belt competitors fits, as a brown belt he beat some elite black belts.

today, a purple belt mundials champion trains an ungodly amount of time. even the adult blue belt division isn't won by some enthusiast, it's almost universally won by a professional. a regular guy with a black belt and a 9-5 job, training 4 times a week simply cannot compete. they might on a technical level, but not even remotely on a physical level.

i'm a brown belt. i've been grappling for over 10 years. i stand absolutely no chance against the current purple belt world champion in my weight class, and would definitely expect to be beaten by the blue belt champ. they both train at least twice a day, 5-6 days a week.

you seem to be confusing who i'm comparing here. i'm not comparing black belt world champions from 10 years ago to today's blue belt champions and saying the kids win. they don't. xande ribeiro is killing today's world champions, he seems almost untouchable, and has been at the top for what, 20 years? but regular black belts, not elite black belt competitors? they get destroyed by today's competitors at the lower belts. without question.
 
Not the art as a whole but factions of it it will, particularly the self defense crowd as uchimata mentioned earlier.

Honestly I don't even think this is a bad thing. The art becoming "watered down" but also becoming more accessible are two sides of the same coin. We saw this most infamously with the Gracie Bros. mail in blue belt program. People hated it. Honestly though, it made bjj a lot more accessible to people all over the world who may not have access to a legit bjj academy for whatever reason.

I had no money to do bjj when I first started so I went to a Gracie Garage where I learned from other dudes and a set of the Gracie Combatives DVD's. What we did was basically kata but we rolled some too. After I got a taste I went to a real place and today I'm almost a black belt. Who knows if I would have continued if I didn't get to do GC first.

Then again a competitor probably thinks I'm watering down the art since I don't compete. You can make the art whatever you want it to be.

I used to look down on this brown belt in my old school who never rolled. He sucked. But it brought him a lot of joy to share something he loved with his wife and 2 kids. I got what I wanted out of bjj and I think he did too. I don't think being a TMA is such a bad thing for people who want TMA benefits. I like to think he was honest with himself and arguably got more out of bjj than I did.

If your a competitor and you want the real deal xp then you know where to train. For everyone else, there's a place that fits your goals.
 
Today's black belts are certainly at higher levels than the previous generation, but insinuating that today's purples and (it's hard to even type this) blues are several times better than guys from just 10 years ago is childish, uninformed, and insulting to them.
The Miyao argument is valid, since they are the highest level competitors, but it wasn't about today's black belts, the discussion was about purple belts.

Depends on the purple belts, top ones today are a better than the a lot of of you average black belts. Obviously there are really shit purple belts. In my previous class mma fighters who didn't train in the gi got belts.
 
Will knee-on-belly ever feel good?

A modern knee on belly is more comfortable for the guy on bottom then the crude "grab pants and collar and put knee literally on belly and just hold it till he escapes" old school version.
 
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