Ed Ruth competing as a blue belt at the IBJJF Pan-Ams.

[Phisher]

 

[Big Nasty Edison]

Just throwing this out there for the sake of conversation. I guess it's pretty common that if you're an experienced wrestler or black belt in Judo you compete in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments as a blue belt and no lower. And that seems fair in the Gi. What does anyone I think it would be more fair to have a separate rule for nogi that required experience college wrestlers to compete at something higher than blue belt likes a purple or brown belt? With the theory being that their existing skill set is more powerful and beneficial without the gi than in the Gi.

 

[cjd]

Just throwing this out there for the sake of conversation. I guess it's pretty common that if you're an experienced wrestler or black belt in Judo you compete in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments as a blue belt and no lower. And that seems fair in the Gi. What does anyone I think it would be more fair to have a separate rule for nogi that required experience college wrestlers to compete at something higher than blue belt likes a purple or brown belt? With the theory being that their existing skill set is more powerful and beneficial without the gi than in the Gi.

Most (non-IBJJF) no-gi tournaments split up their nogi divisions into beginner, intermediate and expert, and require people with collegiate wrestlering - let alone someone as high-profile as Ed Ruth - to compete in the expert division. The IBJJF is very invested in the belt system (with minimum time, no competing up, etc), so it's unlikely you'll ever see them introduce some sort of incongruity between their gi and nogi rules there.

A few other things to consider:

(1) Collegiate wrestlers and Judo black belts cannot compete in the white belt division (and can't compete up), so (in theory) they need a blue belt to compete in IBJJF events.

(2) Expert divisions at no-gi events usually end up being advanced blue belt and up.

(3) Ben Askren did nogi worlds ages ago (2011?) as a purple belt. I believe he lost to Sinistro (Francisco Iturralde).

 

[Big Nasty Edison]

Most (non-IBJJF) no-gi tournaments split up their nogi divisions into beginner, intermediate and expert, and require people with collegiate wrestlering - let alone someone as high-profile as Ed Ruth - to compete in the expert division.

WOOPS total brain fart, I should have remembered that. That's what I get for posting my random unfiltered thoughts while on the toilet

 

[Quebec Nick]

I don't know how it went for is other matches, but the guy was very very good with the takedowns but you can see that he's missing a lot basics when he's on top, maybe he didn't want to take any risks on the ground because he was clearly winning but it wasn't like a brown belt dominating a white belt.

Anyway at those big international events, the belts doesn't mean a lot. Everybody is somehow sandbagging, the best blue belts would be purple belts if they weren't competing, the purple belts should be brown belts...

 

[Ryoto Machida]

He took third. Lost to Mateus De Souza who took Gold at Medium Heavy, and Silver in the Opens.

Not bad!

 

[Balto]

I'm fine with the current IBJJF rule of those with outside experience coming in at blue belt. It seems just about right to me. It reflects the fact that they aren't true beginners, but they aren't very far along in BJJ yet.

Wrestlers and Judo guys don't have great top games for BJJ out of the box. It is because guard passing (especially against modern BJJ guards) has no real equivalent in any other art. It takes years of dedication to BJJ to be able to pass guard well no matter where you come from.

I work with a decent amount of former wrestlers, and counter intuitively I train them to pull guard. This isn't because I'm trying to get them to work on a weakness; it's to play to their strengths. Wrestlers can be quickly taught to play sit up guard, and from there it's pretty natural for them to start hitting single leg sweeps and various other wrestling flavored moves. A former wrestler can easily be turned into a sweep machine from the bottom.

When it comes to passing, wrestlers are relatively weak unless they put a lot of time into it specifically. It's not plug and play. I see even good college wrestlers making the switch struggle against blue belt guards. They won't get crushed, but they will be unable to pass, submit, or do anything else. They would lose by advantages in a competition.

Coming in at blue belt is totally fair for most of these situations.

 

[Balto]

I don't know how it went for is other matches, but the guy was very very good with the takedowns but you can see that he's missing a lot basics when he's on top

BJJ top game is unique among grappling arts (at least in modern day).

Takedowns, pins, escapes, even what counts as guard sweeps are all pretty important parts of the other related grappling arts. Guard passing is not a focus though.

So just about everyone switching over to BJJ has a weakness on top against a decent guard. They've never really faced that scenario before.

The closest you get is Judo where they will at least attempt basic passes. But they are one and done type of deals within the first few seconds, and they don't know what to do beyond that. They would just be stood up for stalling at that point.

Only in BJJ do you really get to grind out a guard player with top pressure, feel out his reactions, and eventually pass after a few minutes of it.

Guard passing isn't even that important in MMA. Getting on top is, but once you're there, a lot of guys don't even attempt to pass with any conventional type of BJJ strategy. Just posturing in guard and striking is highly effective. There is no need to pass the legs to win. You can be great at MMA without much guard passing.

Pulling guard is such an effective weapon for a BJJ guy in pure grappling because only other BJJ guys will have any real way of dealing with it. Everyone else just gets stalled out at a minimum.

 

[dsdoubled]

Most (non-IBJJF) no-gi tournaments split up their nogi divisions into beginner, intermediate and expert, and require people with collegiate wrestlering - let alone someone as high-profile as Ed Ruth - to compete in the expert division. The IBJJF is very invested in the belt system (with minimum time, no competing up, etc), so it's unlikely you'll ever see them introduce some sort of incongruity between their gi and nogi rules there.

A few other things to consider:

(1) Collegiate wrestlers and Judo black belts cannot compete in the white belt division (and can't compete up), so (in theory) they need a blue belt to compete in IBJJF events.

(2) Expert divisions at no-gi events usually end up being advanced blue belt and up.

(3) Ben Askren did nogi worlds ages ago (2011?) as a purple belt. I believe he lost to Sinistro (Francisco Iturralde).

Didn't Askren do well at the ADCC trials around the same time? I think he lost in the finals to Pablo Popovitch. I found that match interesting bc out of the top submission grapplers out there at the time, Popovitch was probably the best wrestler.

 

[dsdoubled]

I remember years ago Cael Sanderson did an interview or Q&A of sorts and someone asked him about submission grappling. He said he had no plans to compete in it but mentioned that ever since he teamed up with Ricky Lundell the team would often mess around with submission grappling in practice. I wonder how much guys like Ruth learned from Ricky Lundell.

 

[cjd]

Didn't Askren do well at the ADCC trials around the same time? I think he lost in the finals to Pablo Popovitch. I found that match interesting bc out of the top submission grapplers out there at the time, Popovitch was probably the best wrestler.

Askren was in ADCC 2009 - I believe he was invited, rather than winning trials, but I could be wrong. He won his first round match against Toni Linden, who I think won the European trials, and then get toeheld rather quickly by Popovitch. Popovitch initiated the toe hold from the bottom.

I remember years ago Cael Sanderson did an interview or Q&A of sorts and someone asked him about submission grappling. He said he had no plans to compete in it but mentioned that ever since he teamed up with Ricky Lundell the team would often mess around with submission grappling in practice. I wonder how much guys like Ruth learned from Ricky Lundell.

Lundell was at Iowa State with Cael... so I doubt he interacted much with Ruth (who was with him at Penn State). While Lundell has frequently tried to pump it up as Cael was bringing him in to try and study BJJ techniques/movements to incorporate into wrestling; my understanding is that the reality of it is that Lundell had some sort of connection (through Utah people) to Sanderson that he leveraged to get to work out with them, and Cael was fine with it but didn't see BJJ as particularly worthy of study to gain an advantage in wrestling.

 

[dsdoubled]

Askren was in ADCC 2009 - I believe he was invited, rather than winning trials, but I could be wrong. He won his first round match against Toni Linden, who I think won the European trials, and then get toeheld rather quickly by Popovitch. Popovitch initiated the toe hold from the bottom.



Lundell was at Iowa State with Cael... so I doubt he interacted much with Ruth (who was with him at Penn State). While Lundell has frequently tried to pump it up as Cael was bringing him in to try and study BJJ techniques/movements to incorporate into wrestling; my understanding is that the reality of it is that Lundell had some sort of connection (through Utah people) to Sanderson that he leveraged to get to work out with them, and Cael was fine with it but didn't see BJJ as particularly worthy of study to gain an advantage in wrestling.

While Popovitch is a damn good wrestler I certainly wasn't suggesting he is better than Ben, and Im sure his bottom game is superb as well so I guess its no surprise how that match went.

Lundell spent a lot of time at Penn State as well. At least the 1st year or 2 that Cael has been there. Hell, he may still spend some time there. Hes been in the room with Ruth, Taylor, and everyone else. Also, the interview with Cael that I referenced was during his time wth PSU and he mentioned Lundell specifically.

The connection between Lundell and Cael was made by Cyler who is a good friend of Lundell's and at first it was a favor to Lundell to have him in the ISU room. I don't know if he competed at any open tournaments or anything with the team but I find the whole thing interesting. Eventually cael brought him on as a coach/assistant type.

 

[ArtemV]

Ed Ruth has a nice base for BJJ/nogi. You can see how effortlessly he takes his opponents down, I am willing to bet that he would probably get tapped at black belt, but would still beat the supposed 'good' bjj wrestlers easily with takedowns and back control.

 

[dsdoubled]

Ed Ruth has a nice base for BJJ/nogi. You can see how effortlessly he takes his opponents down, I am willing to bet that he would probably get tapped at black belt, but would still beat the supposed 'good' bjj wrestlers easily with takedowns and back control.

It seems that almost all top level wrestlers go through a phase where they have to kinda face the reality that their strength, athleticism, and wrestling isn't enough to win submission grappling matches. Whether it be MMA or sub grappling I can think of so many guys that looked like they were completely surprised that they could be tapped by relative unknown submission guys. It makes sense and usually makes them better in the long run.

 

[cjd]

The connection between Lundell and Cael was made by Cyler who is a good friend of Lundell's and at first it was a favor to Lundell to have him in the ISU room. I don't know if he competed at any open tournaments or anything with the team but I find the whole thing interesting. Eventually cael brought him on as a coach/assistant type.

Fair enough. It's pretty unclear what influence he had, if any. I would think if he got actively involved in coaching guys rather than just sort of being around a much bigger deal would have been made of it. I'm not sure how connected you are to the BJJ world - I mostly see you posting on wrestling stuff - but I'm neck deep in the IBJJF scene (and am well connected in that world as well). Ricky Lundell is kind of a... tertiary figure in that world at best. Anyway, I hate to derail this thread talking about Lundell.

 

[cjd]

It seems that almost all top level wrestlers go through a phase where they have to kinda face the reality that their strength, athleticism, and wrestling isn't enough to win submission grappling matches. Whether it be MMA or sub grappling I can think of so many guys that looked like they were completely surprised that they could be tapped by relative unknown submission guys. It makes sense and usually makes them better in the long run.

I mean, he is losing only to tip-top blue belts in the gi. Those guys usually end up at the top of the podium whenever they get promoted.

 

[dsdoubled]

Fair enough. It's pretty unclear what influence he had, if any. I would think if he got actively involved in coaching guys rather than just sort of being around a much bigger deal would have been made of it. I'm not sure how connected you are to the BJJ world - I mostly see you posting on wrestling stuff - but I'm neck deep in the IBJJF scene (and am well connected in that world as well). Ricky Lundell is kind of a... tertiary figure in that world at best. Anyway, I hate to derail this thread talking about Lundell.

Im pretty deep into the wrestling stuff. Ive absorbed a good deal of Bjj info over the years as a byproduct of being so big into MMA and wrestling but its definitely not my specialty. I just find the whole story compelling. I don't think anybody in this thread claimed Lundell was some sort of submission legend but hes certainly managed to carve out a nice niche for himself in the MMA/BJJ/Wrestling world. The funny thing is, and I think youd agree here based on what you've said, he seems like a guy who through friendships, marketing, luck, etc has become a pretty big name overall despite having accomplishments that aren't particularly special when compared to the other guys at his level of prominence. He seems to have used that "world champion" label to great effect despite the fact that the only world title Im aware of that he has is a FILA grappling world title which is not among the more prestigious grappling titles. The last thing I'll say about the man is that he definitely had a significant role in the PSU/Wrestling world for a while. Aside from the tidbits I already mentioned, Phil Baroni has mentioned him in pretty high regard as far as wrestling/grappling coaching goes and indicated that he's in pretty tight with the Sandersons and the Cunninghams.

 

[dsdoubled]

I mean, he is losing only to tip-top blue belts in the gi. Those guys usually end up at the top of the podium whenever they get promoted.

Sure, I get that. Its a necessary setback if they want to get to the top of the MMA world eventually.

 

[cjd]

The funny thing is, and I think youd agree here based on what you've said, he seems like a guy who through friendships, marketing, luck, etc has become a pretty big name overall despite having accomplishments that aren't particularly special when compared to the other guys at his level of prominence. He seems to have used that "world champion" label to great effect despite the fact that the only world title Im aware of that he has is a FILA grappling world title which is not among the more prestigious grappling titles.

Right - I don't want to impugn Lundell's skill actually (like some of the dumpster fires going on in other threads here). I wouldn't even say he's a big name - except in a weird niche subset of the grappling world. Most IBJJF heads couldn't even tell you who he is. He has a win over Jeff Glover (back in the day), so he's definitely a very legit grapplers. I guess my main contention is that he always seemed to try to pass off his training with the Sandersons as some great "meeting of the minds" that Cael had arranged, while it was more like he was allowed to work out with the team because it was no skin off Cael's back.

 

[yetanother]

Cael was fine with it but didn't see BJJ as particularly worthy of study to gain an advantage in wrestling.

It's funny that when asked that the too things John Smith likes about BJJ is using butterfly hooks and the constant gi grabbing.