Royce: "Jiu-jitsu is enough ... I believe in pure jiu-jitsu."

Okay, I have a lot of respect for Royce. Many of us would not be training BJJ if not for his place in MMA history. Myself included. But I could not disagree with him more in this article.

It is like he is stuck in 1993. It is like he is disregarding 20 years of evolution and progress.

In my opinion, to succeed in modern MMA, jiu-jitsu is NOT enough. Anyone who is truly training MIXED martial arts should be cross training.

What do you think, f12
 
Royce is saying that the new guys want to complement their game with other skills instead of supplement it. "I've trained boxing in the past to learn the distance, trained wrestling to understand how he would take me down". He's saying that's fine, but trying to become a legit striker separate from your jiu-jitsu base is not. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just trying to clarify his statement.
 
shadowskip said:
I think he's right, I've seen a lot of newer fights and if there is a common pattern, it seems that many fighter nowadays try to be an expert in everything. I would love to see a Rickson type of fighter combined with Wanderlei Silva's aggression come out without anything to lose. Rickson Gracie have a lot to lose due to his reputation so he might be choosy about his fights. Someone who is not afraid to lose, I would like to see how an aggressive "pure jiu jitsu" do. When I say jiu jitsu by the way, I include JJJ and Judo (Kodokan and otherwise). So pure grappling if you really want to push the envelope. In history, the old days, Jiu Jitsu was supposed to be a complete fighting system which taught striking and grappling.
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Was JJJ really supposed to be complete though? Sure it taught striking and grappling, but it was really a means of survival, a backup plan if you will.
 
Bluesbreaker said:
Was JJJ really supposed to be complete though? Sure it taught striking and grappling, but it was really a means of survival, a backup plan if you will.
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My understanding is that traditional jiujitsu taught both striking and grappling, but it was designed in the way that TMA that many here dislike were.

That's why Kano Jigoro designed judo, because he felt that the jiujitsu he learned was lacking something, and from that came the grappling version, most popularized with BJJ.

I'd guess traditional jiujitsu taught striking in the way karate did? I really have no idea on this part.
 
In MMA, BJJ is very incomplete when viewing the sport in its totality. That's not even knocking it. Just a fact.
 
magick said:
My understanding is that traditional jiujitsu taught both striking and grappling, but it was designed in the way that TMA that many here dislike were.

That's why Kano Jigoro designed judo, because he felt that the jiujitsu he learned was lacking something, and from that came the grappling version, most popularized with BJJ.

I'd guess traditional jiujitsu taught striking in the way karate did? I really have no idea on this part.
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I might be way off, there are people here that can explain better than me. But my understanding is that, yes JJJ used both striking, grappling and weapons, but it wasn't intended to be a complete art in the way I think of it. Rather it was for the battlefield when you had no other options/lost equipment.

It did contain techniques from various ranges though, so if that's the definition of complete, I guess it was complete.
 
Well, a lot of the most basic throws are designed in that manner if you think about it.

The entire point of judo throws, heck all throws and grappling techniques in general, is to gain dominance over your opponent. I never quite understood why some people are so fixated with "killer" throws for that reason.

That's also why the Europeans developed a similar grappling art that everyone ignores.

Yes, a hard seoinage onto concrete, or a grass-field for that matter, will probably break something, but the point is to be in a position where you can immediately stab the guy or do something wherein his armor and weapon are no longer in any way effective.

But seeing as how the JJJ Kano Jigoro must have learned wasn't used in any serious combat for centuries, one can only imagine that it would have been watered down too, as with most other combat arts that go throughout the ages without being seriously tested.
 
shadowskip said:
As for Jigoro Kano, he didn't like newaza and he merely renamed Jiu Jitsu to Judo because the public had a bad perception of Jiu Jitsu, especially since Imperial Japan was defeated after World War 2 for being so aggressive (remember, Jiu Jitsu was very, very blood and violent).
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This doesn't make sense, seeing as how the man died before Imperial Japan went to war against the U.S. and eventually lost.

Heck, at the time of his death, Imperial Japan more or less dominated the entire Pacific and was rivaled only by the U.S.
 
Obviously, if you're going to learn one martial art that's enough for MMA by itself, it has to be Sinanju, not jiu-jitsu.

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Matt Hughes vs. Renzo showed the problem of BJJ only. Renzo couldn't take Matt down to save his life. Even a horrible stand-up fighter like Hughes destroyed Renzo standing. Conversely, Hughes took Royce down directly into side control and made Royce look like a wilted old man, who attempted to remedy that by roiding.

Roger's BJJ is far superior to Royce's but Royce had his career and he has a right to say whatever he wants.
 
I think Royce and Rickson are making the same point and people are misunderstanding them. If you are a fighter based in grappling, then you should be constantly working to get the fight there. You can learn stand up but don
 
I think Royce is obviously wrong here. Pure Jiu-Jitsu doesn't cut it any more.

It's one thing to be a ground fighter and it's another to say that you only need to focus on BJJ to succeed at a high level in Mixed Martial Arts. Roger Gracie is seeing his limitations as a fighter even with cross-training. He's awesome when it comes to pure BJJ and he aims to take the fight to the ground when he fights but when he gets in there with high level Mixed Martial Artists he is finding out that he is an average fighter.

You can be a good ground fighter in MMA like Chris Weidman who is super athletic with high level wrestling and BJJ along with decent standup. But that kind of fighter is a complete Mixed Martial Artist not a pure BJJ expert who is only adept at submission grappling. Royce Gracie in his prime would not be in the top 10 in his weight class today.
 
MickCollins said:
I think Royce and Rickson are making the same point and people are misunderstanding them. If you are a fighter based in grappling, then you should be constantly working to get the fight there. You can learn stand up but don
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Oh, leave him alone and let him live in his world. Lots of people from past generations cling to what was once true.
 
People are quick to make fun of Royce, but reading his quotes he's just saying that if one is strong in something, he must bring the fight there.. nothing more.

And looking at K-1 Maia or other similar examples, I think he is perfectly right.
 
People always point out Royce vs Hughes, but pretty much any takedown a wrestler would use in MMA is taught in BJJ (or a variant thereof) depending on who you're training under. The difference is in the way those guys train from day-to-day. BJJ players often have shoddy double legs compared to wrestlers for example, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with BJJ or the double leg takedown; it's just that wrestlers train those techniques from day-to-day in so much more of an intense way than the guys at a BJJ do. That's it in a nutshell. If Royce had the strength and conditioning programme that Hughes had and he trained his takedowns with the intensity that Hughes did, that could very well have been a very different outcome.

I think BJJ can be the only thing you need. But if you train in the casual "BJJ lifestyle" kind of way you're not going to get there. On the other hand if you were in a shark tank of BJJ guys training the same way freestyle wrestlers train when gearing up for the Olympics, then I have no doubt that anyone could come in and destroy the UFC using pure BJJ.
 
Is this the same Royce Gracie who basically tried to become a Muay Thai fighter? Hmmm . . . intredasting.
 
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