When charles retires, who will use high level guard work in high level MMA?

[Tito Tapped]

There was a time you saw full guard in an MMA fight and thought "Uh oh full guard, that's dangerous."

And now we see it and say "wtf are you doing get back up."

 

[Necrocrawler]

Well... Shara had an active guard against Bruno Silva. I don't think that would work on higher competition though

 

[xentreos]

Every position has it's vulnerabilities though. I think it's mostly just because there's so many damn skills in MMA that a fighter needs to learn, so it's just more time efficient to learn how to wrestle up better. I don't think that means high level guards are pointless though or even necessarily inferior approach.. I know you didn't say they're pointless by the way, I'm just rambling.

At some point, having the common platitude of "guard being worst case scenario" becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, because people end up believing this and neglecting training guard work, and then when they find themselves on their back and can't wrestle up, they are indeed fucked after having treated guard work like some kind of extra credit in the gym.

DDP is a prime example of what you're talking about. Chris weidman another, Justin gaethje, like just total disregard for that aspect of their game

 

[tigersmoosh]

jiu jitsu is dead.

 

[TriangleMonkey]

Somewhere, Frank Mir is shedding a tear

I literally thought of Mir the moment I typed “intricacies” LMAO

 

[JKS]

Zalal showed some impressive guard work last fight.

 

[Typrune Goatley]

I'll die on the hill that BJJ offense in MMA has gotten worse rather than defenses getting infinitely better.

For sure. A big reason is we are no longer getting the best BJJ guys in the world into MMA. They can now make enough money staying in BJJ. Back in the day, a lot of the top guys like Maia, Werdum, Jacare would come into MMA to make money so we would get world class athletes/competitors.