The Gracie saying "Fights always end up on the ground."

jjmuaythaiguy

jjmuaythaiguy

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Last night I found myself thinking about this Gracie saying: "Fights always end up on the ground."

I am old and getting older. I grew up only learning stand up fighting. First I had to learn street fighting as I grew up on the poor, trouble making side of Hawaii. Then I trained boxing, then kickboxing, and for the last six years muay thai.

Almost 3 years ago I started training directly under Relson Gracie and compete for the Relson Gracie Competition Team for events in Hawaii. Since I have been training bjj I have been reading everything I can get my hands on as far as grappling and especially brazilian/gracie jiu jitsu. I got the GIA I and II in dvd and vhs. I got CHOKE. I got hella a lot of instructionals in book and dvd.

One thing that always stood out in my mind is that saying and I'm not 100% sure who said it or what the exact wording he says but I am going to say that Rorion says in one of the GIA "Fights always end up on the ground."

I thought about all of my street fights that where planned and unplanned and sure enough, every one ended up on the ground. Then this past Saturday, November 4, 2006, I scored free tickets to the S.U.M.A (Stand Up Martial Arts) tournament in Hawaii and sure enough, every single fight ended with one or both of the fighters falling or being knocked to the ground. Now IF, big IF, the rules had allowed the fight to be continued to be continued on the ground then it would have really been important to know the ground game.

The event was pretty much empty but at the event, Phil Baroni, the New York Bad Ass, was there doing interviews in the ring. Jason Mayhem Miller was there. Falaniko Vitali, Ronald Juhn and the BJ Penn MMA crew. Some white guy from the mainland or military booed Phil Baroni like an idiot.

I went to the fight with a Relson Gracie brown belt and mentioned that " I guess fights always end up on the ground." He said something to the effect, "I guess the Gracies got that right." I knew exactly what he meant. Although its not new, it has been a LONG while since I been to a strictly stand up event, and since I have dedicated myself to training the ground game it was kind odd to see how the professionally trained stand up fighters kept on falling to the ground or being knocked down.

Even though this is a grappling forum I am wondering if anyone else notice this.
 
Interesting, though I think the quote is generally viewed out of context.

Not all fights go to the ground. However, and especially true at the time of the quote, a fight would end up on the ground if one of the two combatants wanted it to. It had less to do with the fate of a fight, than the mere preparation and advantage of the ground as a martial art base.
 
I know that you train with one, but try to take what a Gracie says with a grain of salt.
 
i was just talking about this a few minutes ago. the way the conversation ended, we concluded:

it is much easier for one guy to take it to the ground, than for the other to keep it from going there.
 
I think its more an actual street fight self defense situation and in that case wiht poor balance by one of the two people it usually does end up on teh ground...usually its one drunk dude bullrushes the other one...and then when it hits the gorund they usually roll and roll and roll throwing punches...i think the point of what the gracies were saying is that if you know ground skills let yourself be taken down and u can end the fight...as a bouncer i will say that 9 times out of 10 the fight will end up on the ground and the 10th time someone gets knocked out on the feet and its over right then...saying anything is 100 percent is a mistake but normally in the course of a fight people throw such sloppy huge haymakers that they lose balance and fall over...
 
I think that is true, though it does not help you if it ends up on the ground with one guy KOed from a standing strike.
 
thats why they had to add rules to NHB fights. To much fighting on the ground.

It made the fights boring, and less fan enthusiastic. Look @ Renzo for Shoji.. man any time fights like that happen.. you better get comfortable.. there is going to be a whole lot of stalling.. and waiting for the setup.. Gracies are famous previously for fighting long bouts.. they bore you into submission.

Dont get me wrong, i love jiujitsu.. but its the truth

Fights without any rules.. will almost always end up on the ground...
only reason you would think differently is now in alot of arenas they "MAKE" the fighters stand up.
 
I think most fights do end up on the ground, but not 100% of them. You have to take what Rorion says with a little grain of salt. Rorion is a great marketing genius and business man. He's my least favorite of the Gracies, he is the one who gives Gracies a bad name. It was him who stated that Matt Hughes beating Royce was more proof of the Gracie dominance. Rorion's prognada machine is why some people dislike BJJ. My Bjj instructor met him several times and found him arrogant. He also met Renzo several times and found him very nice and humble
 
Back in the day yes. Why? because takedown guys would force the takedown even against a great sub grappler and sub grapplers could easily take most non trained strikers down.

In this day and age with fighters like cro cop learning to sprawl and I just saw the tim sylivia vs asuerio silva fight, silva couldnt get the taller and prepared Syliva to the ground to finish.

Still almost ALL MMA fights do go to the ground even for the shortest amounts of time but with guys playing to their strengths and the opponents weaknesses more the fights do have much more balance nowadays. (so do the fighter btw)
 
Spearsoldier said:
I know that you train with one, but try to take what a Gracie says with a grain of salt.
Click to expand...

Gracie hater in the house
 
The original claim was that 90% of street fights go to the ground. He used a LAPD study to justify it. This however was a false claim. It has been done to death on the internet but the two main problems with Rorion's claim was that a) it dealth with arrests not street fights and b) the number was like 62% or something not 90%.

Obviously the message was clear, that ignoring the ground was stupid but the claim was marketing pure and simple. It is just as easily claimed that all fights start standing so you should go to a muay thai school.

Think about it if you take the gracies marketing and just changed the "all fights go to the ground" with "all fights start standing" you could could easily use it to market MT. Rorion took advantage of the fact that in the last 20 years ground fighting had been seriously neglected in the the west. Judo had evolved to a stand up orientated MA (there is a great video on youtube of Rickson getting thrown about on his feet even though he does own on the ground) and wrestling couldn't deal with subs.

I hope now people are realizing that any one dimensional strategy is stupid for SD or even MMA.
 
So what your telling me is my death touch wont work? for supplementing my stand up?

Tell that to the last guy i used it on... oh wait... he's dead!
 
I will tell you this, short and sweet.


Fights happen everywhere, and from every position... you have to understand that anything can happen. Statistics can't prove that all fights end on the ground. I've seen fights that lasted 30 seconds, standing up.. I've seen fights that were mostly on the ground.

The thing is, the more you train to specialize in one area, the better you will become in that area and you will learn to apply the techniques you've learned, where as somebody who doesn't know that area well might not be able to apply the techniques.
 
I think that, yes in a street fight, most of the time people end up on the ground. However, in the ring/cage it is all about who you are fighting and your own fighting style. Look at that aweful fight b/w Arlovski and Silvia. It never went down because the both wanted it up the whole time. Cro cop hates to go to the ground. However, from a gracie perspective, yea, probably over 90% of their fights end up there because they constantly are trying to get it on the ground. Times have changed since that was stated. Takedown defense is a huge part of a good strikers training (liddell, CroCop, and recently Anderson Silva). It is a more balanced game with guys who are good enough not to take it down.
 
Well, I guess now it would be safe to say that a majority of the time, fights end up on the ground and you should have ground game to be well rounded. Everyone trains for their own reason and whether you are a police officer, a bouncer, a student in high school or a old guy like me, to be well rounded, some ground game is better than none.
 
Statiscally the more prepared wins the fight. Prepared to fight on your feet and on the ground
 
hey if one dude wants to take it to the ground usually means they cant handle the stand up and the guy who knows this guy gonna take me to the ground he can stop it, it just depends on the situation, right?

i remember this guy talkin shiz and he said hes a boxer, i specifically told him, i wont punch you but i will take you down and win, i cant win standing up, only on the ground(i think i was too confident when i told him this), sure enough i tried to take him down and i couldnt. i felt all my teeth for weeks, couldnt sleep on my side cuz my head got swollen to the right, and eating was a bitch
 
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