I lost my believe in bjj

[RJ Green]

wh...are you guys saying Systema or Aikido won't cut it in the cage? those techniques are too deadly for sports! people would die and nobody would ever watch or train MMA again. that's why it's so effective on the streets.

 

[Thycidides]

I don't really understand why one would spend hours a week training for " self defense" unless you are a cop or bouncer etc. Maybe I would if I was a woman. While I do Mauy thai and escrima I have less interest in them because there is no sparring or competition in escrima and I could be seriously injured in a Mauy Thai fight. People go kind of hard in sparring as it is. Ironically its being a sparring partner for the amateur fighters that motivates me to show up to training.

 

[jack36767]

Well that's the problem, right? The 'purists' who want martial arts uncontaminated by sport always get their asses kicked by sportsmen. The reason is pretty simple: it doesn't matter how deadly your technique is in theory, if you can't pull it off live it's useless and the only way to get good enough at stuff to pull it off live is to train it live. To do that you need to be able to train safely, and so you start getting sporting rules. And once you have a safe way of training live, it's only natural that people will want to find out who's best, test their skills. So you get competitions.

What people should complain about if anything is the field of BJJ competition shifting from MMA to sport BJJ. If you train grappling your whole martial arts career with an eye towards competing in MMA, your BJJ will be fighting BJJ. That's pretty much where I'm at right now, there's no reason you can't focus on that aspect of the art if you want to. The problem is, you have to be willing to work at least some standup striking, a lot of takedowns, and get punched day in and day out. My guess is that a lot of people who complain about the pussification of BJJ aren't willing to get punched and work standing to reverse the trend towards sportiness in their own games.

I also firmly believe that a lot of the purists hate the 'sportsman' desperately want to pretend that the "jock" or better athletes they either got bullied by or couldn't beat/outperform in other athletic competition couldn't handle or beat them in a "real fight", that size and strength and athleticism don't matter suddenly. Its as much insecurity as it is snobbishness and arrogance. What's funny about it is, these same people who usually think wrestlers are un-technical meathead "athletes" have no real comprehension of what real athletes and bigger athletes from other sports (that get all the best athletes because their is more social and financial incentive for them to do those sports) are capable of doing and how fast they pick things up

 

[Uchi Mata]

I also firmly believe that a lot of the purists hate the 'sportsman' desperately want to pretend that the "jock" or better athletes they either got bullied by or couldn't beat/outperform in other athletic competition couldn't handle or beat them in a "real fight", that size and strength and athleticism don't matter suddenly. Its as much insecurity as it is snobbishness and arrogance. What's funny about it is, these same people who usually think wrestlers are un-technical meathead "athletes" have no real comprehension of what real athletes and bigger athletes from other sports (that get all the best athletes because their is more social and financial incentive for them to do those sports) are capable of doing and how fast they pick things up

I don't go that psychoanalytical on it (I started in TMAs, and I didn't see a lot of that thought process), but I do think that the results of years of marketing on the part of TMAs that strength and athleticism don't matter and that gi + belt martial arts are deadly in a way that wrestling, boxing, etc. just can't match had the desired result of making naive people think that strength, speed, and experience don't matter in a real fight.

 

[TehGwarch]

Lol at the butthurt "martial artists" who actually think the athletes who are focused on competition wouldn't dominate quote unquote "real fighting" if that's what they focused on...

They'd get their asses kicked and they do. Marcelo Garcia and many others. He tried "real fighting" and didn't like it.

No striking and no takedowns means you lose to guys way down on the BJJ food chain.

Just because youpaid 100 dollars and flew across the country to play footsies does not make you a fighter.

 

[TehGwarch]

I think it'd be cool to do MMA like BJJ comps gi and no gi and just dump the other sports.

Send these lame wannabe surfer pricks packing.

He got blood on his pretty shoyoroll gi trying to pull krab guard!

 

[TehGwarch]

Well that's the problem, right? The 'purists' who want martial arts uncontaminated by sport always get their asses kicked by sportsmen. The reason is pretty simple: it doesn't matter how deadly your technique is in theory, if you can't pull it off live it's useless and the only way to get good enough at stuff to pull it off live is to train it live. To do that you need to be able to train safely, and so you start getting sporting rules. And once you have a safe way of training live, it's only natural that people will want to find out who's best, test their skills. So you get competitions.

What people should complain about if anything is the field of BJJ competition shifting from MMA to sport BJJ. If you train grappling your whole martial arts career with an eye towards competing in MMA, your BJJ will be fighting BJJ. That's pretty much where I'm at right now, there's no reason you can't focus on that aspect of the art if you want to. The problem is, you have to be willing to work at least some standup striking, a lot of takedowns, and get punched day in and day out. My guess is that a lot of people who complain about the pussification of BJJ aren't willing to get punched and work standing to reverse the trend towards sportiness in their own games.

Bit of a false dichotomy, everybody who's legit trains live or whatever. But the intent of Kano or Helio (I know, I know) was never to make competition the centerpiece and they had a point.

That doesn't mean don't have competitions, that's not what I'm saying. But getting so fixated on winning competitions at all cost to practicality, having full time professional athletes, etc.

It's like in class sometimes you have a guy who's constantly turtling up, he's getting dominated but technically he's not losing. Like Ryron vs Galvao. Well I could beat him to death very quickly if we were in the parking lot, he's engaging in a dishonest strategy that will get him destroyed in a real fight. Maybe he uses this strategy to somehow outlast me and catch me in a sub after 15 minutes of running...so he's better? lol

Now in a class, your coach can say "hey, don't do that, it's stupid", but in a comp if it's legal people game the rules and develop these obtuse strategies...then other guys who want to win comps learn those strategies and the whole thing is totally stupid after a while.

If you make that illegal, people find other ways to indulge their lack of integrity. After a while, there's too many rules and again, the whole thing is stupid. Are these people REALLY the best fighters or the best at gaming that rule set?

Yeah, you gotta do Judo or wrestling to be a real grappler.

 

[lechien]

If I could change the rules.

I would stop the points passes and just reward position achieved not actions.

So take downs or sweep are nothing unless you achieve a dominant position.

A reversal is nothing unless you achieve a dominant position.

Example 1: you are on bottom side control, reverse or get back on your knees and end up on top side control. 2 points

Example 2: you are at bottom of a mount. You reverse and end up into the guar. Nothing.

Side control and north south to be scored like knee on the belly but cannot adding points just like hitting 2 knee on the belly in the row.

For the stand up, same as ground. Do nothing for 20 seconds like stuff arm and you penalise

It means you can pull guard but in order to score you needs to go at least to side control which sweeping someone into their guard is neutral.
Same as taking someone into their guard is neutral.

 

[Uchi Mata]

Bit of a false dichotomy, everybody who's legit trains live or whatever. But the intent of Kano or Helio (I know, I know) was never to make competition the centerpiece and they had a point.

That doesn't mean don't have competitions, that's not what I'm saying. But getting so fixated on winning competitions at all cost to practicality, having full time professional athletes, etc.

It's like in class sometimes you have a guy who's constantly turtling up, he's getting dominated but technically he's not losing. Like Ryron vs Galvao. Well I could beat him to death very quickly if we were in the parking lot, he's engaging in a dishonest strategy that will get him destroyed in a real fight. Maybe he uses this strategy to somehow outlast me and catch me in a sub after 15 minutes of running...so he's better? lol

Now in a class, your coach can say "hey, don't do that, it's stupid", but in a comp if it's legal people game the rules and develop these obtuse strategies...then other guys who want to win comps learn those strategies and the whole thing is totally stupid after a while.

If you make that illegal, people find other ways to indulge their lack of integrity. After a while, there's too many rules and again, the whole thing is stupid. Are these people REALLY the best fighters or the best at gaming that rule set?

Yeah, you gotta do Judo or wrestling to be a real grappler.

Fixation on winning is okay, but which competitions are you fixated on winning? The BJJ rules were originally developed by guys who were mostly training for and competing in MMA, as long as the BJJ competitions were seen as a safer, secondary way to compete but MMA was still the focus there wasn't really a problem. It was only when the focus shifted away from MMA and to sport BJJ for its own sake that you started seeing styles change. Which you see happen in every style as it moves away from unrestricted combat, i.e. MMA, as its main focus. I don't think it's abnormal in BJJ, but it wasn't that long ago that there was a much great connection between jiu jitsu and MMA and it was simply assumed that if you got really good at BJJ you were going to be a vale tudo fighter. If you look at the Mundials winners the first few years it started being held, basically all those guys fought MMA as well. It was just assumed. How many of today's current Mundials champs have MMA records? Xande and Galvao, that seems to be about it (and they're elder statesmen by competitive grappling standards). And most don't ever plan to do it.

So I suppose I agree with you. If the competitive sport side becomes the focus rather than actually fighting, you will inevitably get people gaming the rules and training with ever more sport specific focus. I'm not sure there's a way around that if the sport becomes really popular rather than just a safer adjunct to actually fighting. It's not all bad, but it does change the nature of the martial art.

 

[mooner100]

Why don't you just move to mma? I also am tired of lame restrictiveness in Judo with all these rules.

 

[AnotherOldGuy]

The problem is that good standup grappling simply does not happen without complex and highly artificial rulesets that force the action.

I recall watching Saulo in the Mundials work standup. He has excellent judo, but looked like shit, super boring and defensive grappling, wanted to claw my eyes out from boredom. And you see this from many guys.

If we want better standup matches in BJJ comp, it will have to be by creating and using HIGHLY artificial rules. Many BJJ guys don't get this because it is antithetical to the BJJ ideal. But things like forcing takedown attempts, penalizing inactivity and false attempts, penalizing defensive moves/grips. And penalizing guard pulls, perhaps later in the match, perhaps earlier, so you are incentivized to attack early.

Of course that would look a lot more like judo, but if that's basically what you want to see--judo/wrestling portions of a match--it's inevitable.

That's basically it. Good standup grappling requires either striking to keep it honest or stalling rules such as in judo or wrestling. MMA has some excellent standup grappling without a lot of rules, but it only achieves it by letting poor grappling be punished by avoiding all grappling in favor of striking (and allowing strikes to punish poor attempts at clinching), or returning to the feet from the ground (and both backing away to avoid gripping or going back to your feet to avoid ground work would be considered stalling in grappling).

MMA is, oddly enough, the best vehicle out there to force good standup grappling. Unfortunately it also involves all the negatives that come with striking (ie head injuries) which means its going to appeal to far fewer participants than practice grappling.

 

[Uchi Mata]

They'd get their asses kicked and they do. Marcelo Garcia and many others. He tried "real fighting" and didn't like it.

No striking and no takedowns means you lose to guys way down on the BJJ food chain.

Just because youpaid 100 dollars and flew across the country to play footsies does not make you a fighter.

Marcelo took his opponent down and took his back. Gloves just stopped him from sinking the choke. That cut he got was BS, it shouldn't have stopped the fight. I wished he'd have fought more, but he was pretty clear that he only did it to see what it was like.

But MG also has better TDs than most BJJ guys. It's definitely the biggest issue in their MMA success, way more than striking. Striking isn't that hard to adapt to if your whole goal is to clinch and take someone down IF you have good wrestling (at the lower to mid levels that is, at the top level strikers have such good anti-wrestling that you can't get to a clinch on them so easily).

 

[Thycidides]

Fixation on winning is okay, but which competitions are you fixated on winning? The BJJ rules were originally developed by guys who were mostly training for and competing in MMA, as long as the BJJ competitions were seen as a safer, secondary way to compete but MMA was still the focus there wasn't really a problem.

So I suppose I agree with you. If the competitive sport side becomes the focus rather than actually fighting, you will inevitably get people gaming the rules and training with ever more sport specific focus. I'm not sure there's a way around that if the sport becomes really popular rather than just a safer adjunct to actually fighting. It's not all bad, but it does change the nature of the martial art.

I've seen plenty of MMA, Boxing and Mauy Thai matches where someone gamed the system, played a safe strategy etc. To be honest a lot of Mauy Thai isn't that interesting to the uneducated observer. There is a lot of clinching and the Thai fighters tend to coast rather than really commit to offense because they don't want to get injured/ be unable to fight again in a month or so.

Competent fighters tend to be defensive and cautious when fighting other skilled people. Most of the time one only see's exciting offense when there is a skill discrepancy or someone capitalizes on a weakness.

The same is true for modern warfare which tends to be a protracted grinding conflict than a lighting campaign.

I think people expect combat sports and or martial arts to be exciting like an action movie. That is kind of a silly expectation.

 

[Thycidides]

I didn't think BJJ was a fight until I competed and felt what it was like to be choked and arm barred by someone that didn't care about my safety. I've seem guys get injured at local tournaments, one of my training partners broke his rib. One of the gym's few MMA fighters got injured not during her MMA fight but practicing heel hooks at BJJ class.

 

[dmwalking]

Came here to troll, but it's actually a pretty good discussion. I agree with the sentiment that you don't have to worry about the sport aspect of things. My old coach was a Judo competitor. Never stopped teaching Judo. Just stopped competing and sending his students to Judo comps because the rules got to be too stupid for his tastes.

 

[Uchi Mata]

I've seen plenty of MMA, Boxing and Mauy Thai matches where someone gamed the system, played a safe strategy etc. To be honest a lot of Mauy Thai isn't that interesting to the uneducated observer. There is a lot of clinching and the Thai fighters tend to coast rather than really commit to offense because they don't want to get injured/ be unable to fight again in a month or so.

Competent fighters tend to be defensive and cautious when fighting other skilled people. Most of the time one only see's exciting offense when there is a skill discrepancy or someone capitalizes on a weakness.

The same is true for modern warfare which tends to be a protracted grinding conflict than a lighting campaign.

I think people expect combat sports and or martial arts to be exciting like an action movie. That is kind of a silly expectation.

MMA can be boring, but when it is it's boring because people are trying not to get hurt, not (generally) because they're gaming the rules. I'm not after excitement so much as I am connection to a real fight. I'm okay with a BJJ match that's a takedown, 6 minutes of pressure guard passing, and then the top guy wins by 2. Not because it's exciting (it's not), but because that's a pretty decent strategy for an actual confrontation with punches being thrown, and if that's the kind of thing you're training to do then you're working on A. taking people down and B. staying on them so they can't get back to an offensive position, both pretty good skills to have in a real fight.

And to be honest, I'm not even that bothered by the sportification of BJJ, and the fact that people train for IBJJF rules. MMA is still there, there are a ton of fighters whose BJJ games are based solely for actual fighting, they're just not competing in the IBJJF, they're taking fights. My only reason for bringing up the MMA connection is that you'll often hear people lament the fact that BJJ competition used to have lots more TDs, and people tried to play on top, basically that they liked the style more back in the day. My point is that the reason it looked like that was because BJJ in general and those guys in particular were usually training with an eye towards MMA, because that's what BJJ was before the 00s. People blame the rules, and you could certainly change the rules to emphasize more standup grappling, but it was a change in the culture and what guys were primarily training for that changed the way jiu jitsu matches looked, not the rules. Sport BJJ has gotten popular and that's cool, but if you want to train with more takedowns and whatnot you should probably train with jiu jitsu people who are focused on MMA or ADCC rules competitions rather than try to change the way sport guys approach the sport where the rules, frankly, are not going to be changed anytime soon to emphasize a more combat oriented style of grappling.

 

[rmongler]

Funny story about the Marcelo Garcia fight; the Asian guy was actually an acquaintance of Eddie Bravo, and Eddie once said that before that fight happened the guy had asked him for advice, and he said 'just train the hell out of RNC defense'.

He felt really bad about that afterwards.