by
Roberto Pedreira
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
|
The
Rise and Fall of Jiu-Jitsu in MMA Robert Drysdale Posted August 22, 2022 In 1993, a less than athletic Brazilian man
sent shock waves through the
martial-arts world by reviving a style of combat that had largely
disappeared from the minds of movie enthusiasts and martial-artists in
general. It was a revival, because there was nothing new about it. In
fact, we can trace back its origins to the late 19th century
and to judo, a practice that was arguably the first martial-art in
history, at least in terms of how we define a martial-art practice today. But submission-grappling had never been really dead. It had
survived in the West in Pro-Wrestling and in other arts such as judo and
Sambo. So why was Royce Gracie’s performances in 1993 such a mental
jolt? If
submission-grappling and its efficiency had never really left the world
stage, why the shock? The issue was that between
Hollywood
movies and comic books, the popular understanding of what a real
fight looked like was limited by the need to sell movies, comics or
tickets in general. It wouldn’t be the first or last time where this
happened, but reality would have to take a backseat to entertainment and
ticket sales. At least for the time being. After
Royce brought reality back to the center-stage, fighting, real-fighting,
would never be the same and for a minute there, what the world was calling
Gracie jiu-jitsu or Brazilian jiu-jitsu seemed unbeatable. Of course, the
minute was only that, a short-lived minute of invincibility because it
didn’t take long for wrestlers to learn how to defend an armbar or
triangle and for strikers to learn how to sprawl and stand back-up with or
without the fence. The playing field had been leveled and jiu-jitsu’s
dominance in the cages of the world had become merely a distant and
nostalgic memory. Nostalgic
for some at least, mostly the old-timers who liked the idea of practicing
combat as realistically as possible and knowing how to win in it. That
generation, would have welcomed absorbing new tricks to keep up in the
arms-race that cage-fighting had become. But most jiu-jitsu practitioners
simply don’t care about reality anymore. Entertainment is once again at
the helm. They were perfectly happy practicing jiu-jitsu for what it was
becoming: fun, entertaining and trendy. An attitude that was essentially a
farewell decree to the days where jiu-jitsu seemed invincible. A reality
we would all have to come to terms with, including those who cared and
those who cared so little, that they didn’t even notice the decline. So,
what of jiu-jitsu in MMA today? Is it dead like some claim? Is there no
more room for an almost absolute domination like in the old days? I’ll
begin by stating the obvious: no one, other than the most dogmatic and
fanatical, ever suggested that jiu-jitsu ought to stand alone in a fight.
Something that might have worked in the past, but times were changing
quickly and it didn’t take much to get left behind. Carlson
Gracie, the eldest son of Carlos, understood and tackled this problem well
before jiu-jitsu lost its supremacy in the cage and well before his cousin
Royce was shining in one. To him, the assimilation of anything that works
was a given, accordingly, he made sure his students learned it. Someone
like Vitor Belfort, became known for their boxing rather than jiu-jitsu.
And had Carlson’s open-minded vision been the dominant force in
jiu-jitsu, things might have been quite different. But that wasn’t the
case, the dominant force was a different one that quickly overwhelmed
Carlson’s vision and became the standard definition of what jiu-jitsu
is. The sport-oriented practice quickly became the dominant definition of
jiu-jitsu. From then onwards, who cared if jiu-jitsu won in a cage or not?
Another
obvious factor is that it wasn’t grappling in MMA that was dead, but
rather the shift of focus in a jiu-jitsu that was combat-oriented towards
one that was geared towards the practice by the masses, something MMA was
unlikely to accomplish due to its gruesome nature. Which was not a new
problem… if you want big numbers, you will have to water down the
product to reach the greatest number of practitioners. And so, it went
with jiu-jitsu as it slowly lost exactly what had set it apart from judo
to begin with and into the commercial prominence it enjoys today. A
prestige that was essentially built upon the back of this more Spartan
like approach to combat that was being neglected by the commercial demands
of its growth and popularization. Dominance
in a cage through grappling had never been dead however, it was just no
longer exclusive to jiu-jitsu. Wrestlers, came to become the best
representatives of grappling in MMA, in fact, one could easily argue that
they have become the dominant force in MMA today. The Dagestani Khabib
Nurmagomedov being the best example of this dominance, with an astounding
record of 29-0. But this dominance of grappling was in the hands of
wrestlers, not jiu-jitsu folk. So where does jiu-jitsu stand in all this? The
reality is that jiu-jitsu survives in MMA less through the hands of those
who represent jiu-jitsu than it does through the hands of those who borrow
from it. A good example of this is Khabib’s last victory over Justin
Gaethje via mounted triangle. A move that is illegal in both Sambo and
wrestling, the styles where Khabib traces back his foundation as a fighter
(that and wrestling bear cubs as a child of course). Other
wrestlers absorbed from jiu-jitsu instructors what they didn’t have in
wrestling, without losing their wrestling as a foundation. A combination
that has proven to be incredibly successful. Which basically meant that
these wrestlers didn’t just learn how to defend armbars and triangles
coming from their opponent’s guard, but they now also knew how to take
the back and apply kimuras and guillotines from just about everywhere.
That and whatever else they felt didn’t compromise their wrestling
foundation of being on top no matter what. Of course, there are exceptions. Demian Maia managed to win almost exclusively with the tools he took from jiu-jitsu in what might have been the best adaptation of pure jiu-jitsu for MMA ever. Not even Rickson or Rodrigo Minotauro can claim such a successful adaptation. And then there is Charles Oliveira who dominated by smoothly blending jiu-jitsu with striking. But Demian and Charles are dying breeds in a way, the Last of the Mohicans of sorts. Because despite the worldwide growth of jiu-jitsu, this growth was largely around the competitive world, where successful practitioners in the past would have had no financial outlet other than vale-tudo. Today jiu-jitsu practitioners have a burgeoning professional jiu-jitsu circuit, online instructionals, schools, privates and seminars from which they (we) are all making a comfortable living. Vale-tudo is no longer the only financial option on the table. Accordingly, the vast majority of its most competitive representatives go through their careers without even considering MMA as an option. Hence, jiu-jitsu today is sadly largely underrepresented in the cages of the world. This
coupled with the evolution of jiu-jitsu in a direction that had less and
less to do with the reality of combat have made jiu-jitsu a bubble
completely independent from the reality of combat that launched it into
prominence. The results of all this, were basically the lack of results in
the cages of the world. Hence the accusations that jiu-jitsu is dead. To be
fair to jiu-jitsu, the rules don’t favor it: short rounds, resets on the
ground and untrained judges certainly don’t help. And by “untrained”
I mean exactly that: judges with no previous fight experience. Once a
commission judge gave a seminar at Xtreme Couture where I was training at
the time, I asked him if a near submission counted as much as a near
knockout, a proposition that made him laugh, as he explained to me that
even a nice takedown was worth more in the eyes of the judges than a near
submission. Despite a near submission, from a practical and objective
perspective, being the exact same thing as a knockout as it almost
finishes the fight. Albeit, a near knockout normally has a long-term
effect in a fight that a submission rarely has (as in a rarer event of a
torn ligament for example). But how much fairness and reason can you
expect from someone who has never been in there? Not much I suppose. The
crowd, generally uneducated in terms of grappling, prefers a knockout over
a tight choke and prefers an exchange of punches over an exchange of
grappling sequences. Naturally, the organizations as well as the athletic
commissions that give structural support to MMA, follow the money. But
that’s not all, there is the bias and resentment against jiu-jitsu and
its popularity. Wrestlers primarily, who despite overall being better
trained athletes and for the most part more dominant in the cage, resent
their efforts normally leading to nothing after college (unless they
succeed in MMA or as high-school or college coaches, essentially the only
financial outlets for wrestlers). Jiu-jitsu coaches, however unsuccessful
and incompetent they may be, have the luxury of opening a school and
watching a flood of students walk through the door with virtually no
effort due to the current jiu-jitsu fad. It is
this sort of resentment towards the financial success and growth of
jiu-jitsu that leads people to say things like “jiu-jitsu is dead in MMA.”
Ignoring perhaps that the act of defending an armbar or triangle is in
itself an act of successful use of jiu-jitsu… But
there is more. Interestingly, critics of jiu-jitsu often use the inability
of a jiu-jitsu to finish a fight as the fault of the art. Perhaps ignoring
the amount of right hands and left-hooks that are thrown and missed in a
fight. Are we to apply the same standard and say that right hands and
left-hooks no longer work in a fight? Or stick and admit to a
double-standard instead? As the saying goes in It is
undoubtedly true that the days where jiu-jitsu alone was a major force in
MMA are long gone. Was there any other way? Probably not. As Carlson
himself well knew, a fighter needed to be complete in order to qualify for
a kind of combat whose name is literally “anything goes.” Perhaps the
failure, hasn’t been of jiu-jitsu after all. Perhaps the greatest
failure has been in how jiu-jitsu is seen, taught, trained and structured
in the midst of the same financial success that gives it the edge
financial edge over traditional martial-arts and wrestling. Have we
become what we once criticized? Have the true to the core strikers and
wrestlers remained loyal to the reality of fighting, while jiu-jitsu has
lost that same reality oriented spirit it used to represent and that was
perhaps best represented by Carlson and his students? It is a curious feature of this whole discussion that the MMA
world has learned a lot more from jiu-jitsu than jiu-jitsu has learned
from it. The respect for jiu-jitsu, despite claims to the contrary, is so
obvious that few MMA fighters would venture inside a cage without a
fundamental understanding of it. What about jiu-jitsu? Does it still
watch MMA as closely as MMA fighters are learning from jiu-jitsu? I doubt
it. Most jiu-jitsu practitioners have completely abandoned their interest
in real-combat. The reasons for the rise and fall of jiu-jitsu in MMA are complex and much of the discussion in this article is simplistic and arbitrary. What seems obvious is that by watering down the intensity and the quality of the product in order to please the commercial demands of jiu-jitsu had the added benefit of making it a viable financial reality for thousands of instructors like myself. On the other, it has steered jiu-jitsu away from exactly that which made it special and brought it to prominence in the first place. The days of a jiu-jitsu “raiz” (traditional, tough, and true to its “roots”), might be over, but the days of the raiz use of jiu-jitsu by those who took what was best from it, are far from over. Jiu-jitsu, once the most dominant art
inside the cage, will survive no matter what. Just not by the hands of its
representatives. (c) Robert Drysdale, 2022. All rights reserved.
More by Robert Drysdale-
The Fallacy of Submission-Only Rev. of Breathe, by Rickson Gracie Winning at Jiu-Jitsu while Keeping it Real Creonte: Loyalty versus Self-Perfection The Rectification of BJJ's Rules: To Gi or Not to Gi Americanization of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Reflections on the Evolution of BJJ Rev. of book by João Alberto Barreto Maeda Promotes Five Brazilians Is Oswaldo Fada Jiu-Jitsu a Non-Gracie Lineage?
|
