Can anyone tell me who might be the best grappler in the world ?

Put Roger in a room with Buvaisar Saitiev, no time limits, only grappling allowed. I'd go with Roger for an easy win.Do the same with Rafeal and Marcelo , I'd also go with em against Saitiev. Especially with Rafeal's style , guy's knees would go pop within 5-10 minutes.

Honestly , everyone's answer depends on what their definition of grappling is.

Btw , what is stopping any guy from Butt Scooting to negate all this , "OMG, he can take you down bullshit."?
 
Put Roger in a room with Buvaisar Saitiev, no time limits, only grappling allowed. I'd go with Roger for an easy win.Do the same with Rafeal and Marcelo , I'd also go with em against Saitiev. Especially with Rafeal's style , guy's knees would go pop within 5-10 minutes.

Honestly , everyone's answer depends on what their definition of grappling is.

Thats pretty much the end all be all right there.

Another option:
Saitiev would die of old age because if he chose not to he would not be taken down. Thats is also grappling but he would still lose because he is older.

Now a younger World class wrestler likely would win via death by old age. Just dont get taken down and let time do the rest.
 
If we are changing it to an all out fight, you still have to go with the guy that has some striking experience. Roger has fought several times in MMA, including some wrestlers. He can strike a little. Satiev would have one chance, to throw him on his head, if Roger did not die from the throw, he would be subbed pretty quickly. People over estimate the damage a takedown does on the street IMO, especially against a guy who knows takedowns and is not going to fight it. A lot of being thrown hard is the other guy resisting the throw. Roger goes down willingly with anyone who wants to go down.

It is a dumb argument, it is pure conjecture... but my money would be on Roger, who I think would sub any white belt (including Satiev) in under a minute. It is like arguing about an untrained boxer beating a wrestler... sure they can catch them coming in, it sounds like it would be easy, just punch when they shoot... but the reality is that it is hard as hell to catch a guy coming in and knock him out. Same thing with a big gnarly takedown. If everything went perfectly and Roger played along, sure he could throw him on his head a kill him... but most likely, it will be ugly, Roger will just flop down and grab or maybe go tumbling down but not get KO'd and what follows is a chain of events that leads to wrestler sleeping on the ground.

No one has to agree... but until someone subs him (no one ever has btw, even the guys that beat him have not subbed him), Roger is the king of old school fantasy to the death matches for me.

Dont be slick with the "If Roger play along Satiev can drop him on his head" stuff. Satiev drops people other olympic wrestlers on they're heads in matches with ease.
 
Dont be slick with the "If Roger play along Satiev can drop him on his head" stuff. Satiev drops people other olympic wrestlers on they're heads in matches with ease.

Not being slick... other olympic wrestlers don't want to be put down... that is part of the energy for a throw. Go try to throw a guy who would like nothing more than to be put down on the ground. Your only hope is to lift them, GR style... but that only works when they are trying to belly out to avoid the points throws. Just saying, it is not as easy to throw someone as you guys are making it out to be, if they want to go down, throwing someone is difficult. If they want to go down and dont care what position they are in, it is next to impossible.

If your argument is that Roger would never get him down and it would just be a stalemate, like what knoxpk is saying, I can buy that somewhat (though I still don't agree because I think Roger would eventually get a hold of something and turn it into a submission or sweep, whether Satiev went down or not).
 
Romulo Barral, Roger Gracie, Braulio Estima, Rafael Mendes
 
I love the logic used by so many here. Well if they follow the rules that "Roger" uses than Roger would clean the matt with these guys. No shit!!!!!

The level of disrespect to Karelin and Greco wrestling is general by some of you is appalling, it shows a general lack of knowledge and respect. Greco's rule systems and limitations makes it one of the most difficult grappling systems to excel in, yet some of you say that is the reason Karelin would lose, because of course the guy never cross trained in any other grappling art, and of course he NEVER did any conditioning so a no time limit match would of course go against him.

If you wanted an even keel "grappling" match between all styles it would need similar to an original Olympic style grappling match where everything except punches and kicks were allowed. If that were the case, in his prime you'd be hard pressed to find a person that could match Karelin.

I'd agree that Roger is the best right now, but the disrespect to Karelin by some of you is deplorable.
 
I am not arguing the complexity makes BJJ better, I'm arguing having more ways to attack and being used to defending more paths of attack is an advantage. GR doesn't even allow single/double leg style attacks, it is very narrow, and yes I am asserting that its narrowness is a disadvantage. I'm not saying it sucks, I'm saying that its singlemindedness would be a hindrance when the opposition has been training without such constraints from day one. Kung Fu vs all striking is a bad argument, lets try Muay Thai versus Boxing. Do you see where the MT fighter's kicks might be advantageous since the Boxer would be unused to dealing with them?

Not necesarily, because modern MT includes boxing style punching, while BJJ does not involve, greco style fighting, in fact it has basically no standup game whatsoever,
you can count with your fingers the time you actually live spar standing up in BJJ, and when it does it quickly goes to the ground and follow from there.

Conversely a BJJer who can sit guard and work off his butt won't have to jump into a stand up battle with the Judoka and Wrestler. We end up with 2 of the baddest men on the planet in a staring contest.

Agreed. That happened in 1888 when Fusenryu defeated Kodokan, newaza experts completely dumbfounded the best jujutsu experts in Japan, by simply laying and waiting. Newaza was not as developed in jujutsu because quite frankly it was useless for the purpose of jujutsu which was unarmed combat for the samurai, if you went to the ground you get stabbed. Most submissions were standing.

Newaza is the "end of all" of no rules sport grappling, but it was completely useless in the context of grappling martial arts.

Yes, certainly, but did you not call for wins to be by submission only?

Do you realize that there were actual deaths in the first Tokyo Police tournament? it involved people getting thrown over and over against on hardwood, there was no modern medicine back then, lot of concussions and subdural hematomas.

The hell, the way they train in Japan, they still kill people in SOFT mats, imagine how was it back then.

108 school judo class deaths but no charges, only silence | The Japan Times Online

...the boy's teacher was furious and stood waiting for him at the gates of his junior high school in Yokohama. The teacher forced the boy into the gym and made him grapple one on one. The former All Japan judo champion choked the boy until he lost consciousness.

When the boy came to, the teacher choked him again until he went limp, and threw him to the floor with such force that he suffered severe internal bleeding in his brain, an injury known as an acute subdural hematoma.


In Japan judo coaches are more fanatical than American wrestling coaches, because there they dont get sued. So much for Kano's vision.

Yea but again the competition has to end somehow, you proposed infinite time win by sub, so barring a KO via slam/throw there will be some ground fighting.

If the floor is hard, eventually fatigue and damage will pile up, how do you think the 1 hour long matches of old ended when there was no newaza? concussion, fatigue, death. Remember this was a country that was still in the feudal age 30 years ago.


NAGA style rules, and before you say anything yes if I grappled a wrestler in wrestling I'd lose by pinfall rather quickly, but then I'm neither doing BJJ nor allowed to leglock him when I find his foot. Also IF we were on hardwoods I'd sit down and force him to either wade into my guard or stare at me.

So? what was your point that you can beat a wrestler under your rules? cool, im pretty sure i can beat a prime Mike Tyson in a judo or BJJ match.

I may have mispoken here. It is a form of grappling, but it's not really proving who is better at grappling it shows who's got take down skills.

ITT takedowns are not grappling.
 
Anyone who says anything other than Roger is just a straight up bjj hater.

TS clearly talked about who would win a no time limit, to the tap, grappling match...

he doesn't explictly state that is his question he talks about saulo contraxsting sports JJ with to the tap.

and as for the other comments above, buvaisar was a 74kg player, so ~30kg less than Roger, put Roge rno gi against makhov or taymazov then we'll see what he is made of.
 
I feel like this shit is going in the direction of, " Ok , well if they're fighting on a platform with mortal kombat spikes below them then bla bla bla ." . Listen we all realize the BJJ player has the advantage in the pure grappling department, it's just the way it is. Pure grappling is just two guys going at it no points, no time limits. We all kno that when it comes down to it, the winner will be the one most familiar with subs.
 
I feel like this shit is going in the direction of, " Ok , well if they're fighting on a platform with mortal kombat spikes below them then bla bla bla ." . Listen we all realize the BJJ player has the advantage in the pure grappling department, it's just the way it is. Pure grappling is just two guys going at it no points, no time limits. We all kno that when it comes down to it, the winner will be the one most familiar with subs.

Without slams, Roger by anything he wants.

With slams, Karelin would spike Roger into Bolivia. Kind of hard to sub someone when your neck is broken.
 
Not being slick... other olympic wrestlers don't want to be put down... that is part of the energy for a throw. Go try to throw a guy who would like nothing more than to be put down on the ground. Your only hope is to lift them, GR style... but that only works when they are trying to belly out to avoid the points throws. Just saying, it is not as easy to throw someone as you guys are making it out to be, if they want to go down, throwing someone is difficult. If they want to go down and dont care what position they are in, it is next to impossible.

If your argument is that Roger would never get him down and it would just be a stalemate, like what knoxpk is saying, I can buy that somewhat (though I still don't agree because I think Roger would eventually get a hold of something and turn it into a submission or sweep, whether Satiev went down or not).
I dont buy that at all. Olympic caliber wrestlers are trained to not be taken down by guys superb at taking someone down, having a limb in hand or not. Dont get me wrong, it happens and I guess anything is possible. But I would not bet on it.
 
You have some quality posts man, I can tell you've most likely taken logic classes before. Which on Sherdog, that is about as rare as they come.

Thank you. I swear Rod isn't even reading my posts he just grabs a few key words and then goes off on tangents. I give up. I have stated quite clearly that I think Karelin walks in with a slight edge. I never tried to argue that the BJJers would win hands down, I argued that outright dismissing BJJ was foolish inherently foolish. I have the utmost respect for all kinds of grappling, and I hope that was portrayed in my posts. I was merely sticking up for BJJ not hurling mud at Wrestling/Judo.

Grappling is a match up of technical proficiency, style clash, mental acuity and athleticism. Since we're discussing world champions in their respective arts we can presume to standardize (essentially) for all of the variables except style clash, and debating there is purely speculative and subjective. I was entertained for a while but the debate has run its course for me.

Edit: for my own education, can the people who rank Saitiev over Karelin explain their positions please? It seems like Karelin's body of work and win rate is/was better. Saitiev, while having an abundance of gold medals also has a few instances of scrubbing out. As a ley person, I'd rank Karelin over Saitiev, so I'm curious why other people differ.
 
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If you're going pound for pound, it's Marcelo. He's the smallest guy around, yet he dominates guys twice his size that he shouldn't be able to.

However, taking size out of the equation, If you want to know who would beat anybody, anytime, it's Roger.

Beat me to it.
 
Thank you. I swear Rod isn't even reading my posts he just grabs a few key words and then goes off on tangents. I give up. I have stated quite clearly that I think Karelin walks in with a slight edge. I never tried to argue that the BJJers would win hands down, I argued that outright dismissing BJJ was foolish inherently foolish. I have the utmost respect for all kinds of grappling, and I hope that was portrayed in my posts. I was merely sticking up for BJJ not hurling mud at Wrestling/Judo.

Grappling is a match up of technical proficiency, style clash, mental acuity and athleticism. Since we're discussing world champions in their respective arts we can presume to standardize (essentially) for all of the variables except style clash, and debating there is purely speculative and subjective. I was entertained for a while but the debate has run its course for me.

Edit: for my own education, can the people who rank Saitiev over Karelin explain their positions please? It seems like Karelin's body of work and win rate is/was better. Saitiev, while having an abundance of gold medals also has a few instances of scrubbing out. As a ley person, I'd rank Karelin over Saitiev, so I'm curious why other people differ.

karelin is greco and saitiev is FS so they can both be the goat, question should be why saitiev over medved.
 
I not undervaluing submissions at all. Do you think that elite Judoka dont know any submissions? Sambo guys not very aware with leglocks?



Agreed.

course they do... still they'll get their asses choked if they go to the mundials...

just because they know submissions doesnt mean they are good at it... only a few top elite judokas actually are good on the ground, and its not the arts faults, its the stupidity of the IJF that has pretty much killed all newaza...
 
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