BTG 103 - BJJ Surpassing MMA?

Welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. I'm going to keep today's episode on the shorter side and start off with a topic that my brother and I were talking about as he's been digging back into researching a lot in particularly a lot of the new game of jiu-jitsu and in MMA and he came up with something which I've observed firsthand is MMA doesn't seem to have grown as much as far as development of technique. versus jiu-jitsu which is constantly growing in techniques and strategies and different positions that are being used and he's like am I crazy or or this is something that only I'm seeing and I felt the same way. I feel MMA has not really evolved past its current state. it. If you watch an MMA fight now and look back five years, they're about the same. You can go back 10 years, maybe a little different, but not that not that different. Most MMA matches now tend to be more striking based. You have some exceptions like Kabib and whatnot who play a strong ground game, but for the most part, most people are adopting a striking game plan, anti-jiitsu, anti- wrestling games where they're trying to avoid getting stuck on the ground, trying to force the fight on their feet. And the groundwork that you do see is very limited. Mostly ground and pound and people giving their back to stand up right away and not really working into what we would see. Whereas in jiu-jitsu, the games are always changing as they like to say the meta, right? Like uh at one point everybody was doing leg locks and then everybody got into going into pressure passing and then people started working you know into Smount and then they worked the back attacks like it's always changing and we have things now like um guys like Lachlan and Levi Jones have made Kaggar very popular you know and of course De Laiva right where we see evolution like things are growing like in for example As somebody who's been doing the sport for like 27 years, it's harder to keep up with jiu-jitsu than it is MMA, right? Like your level of ground fighting in MMA is very basic. And I mean there's people if you were start to say like Dehiva Kg Guard or anything like that, you already lost them. They don't even know what that is, right? And you can argue, well, it's not that useful for MMA and fair, right? That's not a inaccurate assessment, right? But the they won't know very simple positioning tactics either. Like you'll see people in MMA from bottom half guard not go for under hooks, get cross face immediately, you know, and don't seem to know how to frame properly or use a knee shield to get up to their feet. They just know turning to their force and standing up, right? And counting on the other guy not being a good grappler either so that they're able to escape the back control, right? Now, I'm not saying everybody, right? So that's not there. There's of course very good grapplers out there and they I think they take advantage of this negligence right of of this ignorance rather. But on the most part that's what you see. And that's odd for me because being in MMA generally you're going to be making more money as an athlete than you would as a BJJ or grappling athlete, right? is just especially if you're in the UFC and I'm not talking about like lower tier organizations. I'm talking about UFC. I I at this point I've trained with a lot of people who are in the UFC or Bellator or PFL and I feel the level of athleticism has gone up. The the the strength and conditioning, the weight cutting science like these guys are cutting 30 40 lbs easy, right? It's like, man, that's that's wild. I thought like a 20 pound cut was a big deal back in the day, and that's nothing to them. That would be an easy day at the park, right? So, they have a lot of stuff dialed in, but technically, I don't feel they have advanced nearly as enough. I feel like they're they're going over the things that are easier to attack, right? Like, you find a coach that teaches you fitness, you can get there quickly. You find a coach that does your weight cut, boom, you're done, right? You get a coach that does your your diet work. Boom. You're done. Uh you get guys who train you for toughness. Boom. Right? And I'm not saying these are easy things, but they're easier to find. Right? Whereas I want you to develop techniques in the most complicated martial art on the planet. And I don't think that's negotiable here, which is jiu-jitsu, ground fighting. And that takes a lot of work, right? Because there's a lot of technique involved. And even guys and myself spent 28 years of my life more or less doing it and I'm still behind, right? There's still things I need to catch up on. And I'm someone who w in the past 10 years I'm not training as much as I used to, but spending a couple hours at least uh on a daily basis studying techniques or training, right? It's more than the average bear, but it's not an athlete level, right? When I was an athlete, you're talking about four hours, five, right? Um, and I'm including studying video and stuff, not just actual training, right? But time dedicated to learning the craft. So, what perplexes me is how come the MMA athlete is not able to develop that type of skill? I think personally it's one the rule set doesn't incentivize doing that right Dana White does not like people who fight on the ground he they he was begrudgingly got Numeradov in there and I think the only reason Kabib became a big star was because he came from you know Dagistan he he was Muslim he attracted a whole new audience that wasn't previously engaged with MMA in the UFC UFC, right? He brought that audience in which turned out to be a sizable one. And for that reason and that reason alone, I think Daniel was like, "Okay, let's get this guy. Let's give him some juice." Right? Uh otherwise, if he was from the US and instead of Khabib, it was Kevin, right? I don't think he would have gotten the juice, right? They would have not promoted him. they would have not thrown all this super at him. I don't think they would have given that to him, right? It's kind of like the Conor McGregor effect. Although Connor was a good marketer for sure. Coming from Ireland is what gave him the upper hand. He was able to get that new audience, pull them in, and Dana is always going to give juice to people who are going to bring eyeballs. And of he should, he's a promoter. That's what he's supposed to do. Uh get people to sit down, watch the fights, and pay for them. But I'm getting sidetracked here. The point being is he doesn't like ground fights. He wants standing fights. He wants knockouts. Those are easily entertaining for anybody. You could be completely ignorant of all combat sports. But when you see someone get kicked in the head and knocked out, it's very easy to understand and appreciate. Holy cow, that's amazing. When you see guys rolling on the ground and it's getting convoluted, if you're not training, you're not skilled, it just looks like a mess to you and it's boring. And that's when you get the guys, oh, kick them in the balls, right? Or, you know, like you get those uh crowd chants of people who are ignorant of the the ground game. And that has always been the bane of ground fighting, which is why I believe wrestling never really popped in the world. Uh, and why jiu-jitsu had such a hard reception. You have to be skilled to appreciate it. If I just wa get like a 5-year-old to try to watch a game of chess, they're going to be bored to tears because they don't understand what's going on. They can't appreciate the the the strategy or the brilliance behind a chess master's move, right? It's the same thing for ground sports. If you're not skilled in it, it just all looks like chess to you. You just don't get it, right? So, you're bored. So, I again, I don't blame Dana. He's supposed to sell fights, right? And the easiest fights to sell are standing fights, right? The ones that have big knockouts, quick submissions, right? And generally, the knockouts are easier to gain. And even when a fight is drawn out on the feet, it's still easier to appreciate because most people have some type of understanding of striking encounters, right? because they've been slapped in the face before or they've gotten into a fist fight, you know, especially since it's a male-dominated audience, they can see that and understand it easier. All right? But that means that as an athlete, you're not being encouraged to fully round out your game. So rather than spend a couple hours on ground work, you're going to spend more of your time working on your striking, working on your cardio, building toughness, right? And uh improving your striking abilities, that type of thing. You're not going to put the time to the groundwork, let alone mix the arts together, which is a whole different thing, right? Because there's a lot of people I see that train with the ghee, right? And to me, if you're an MMA fighter, training of the ghee is mostly useless in the sense, not well, I'm being a little harsh, not mostly useless, but it's not great because you're going to start using things you're not going to have in a fight, right? And plus, if you're not mixing in the strikes, a lot of the stuff is also not going to apply to well. So, at my gym, you know, Freestyle Fight Academy in Miami, Florida, my brother high has always taught MMA and grappling as one. Like, we were always teaching MMA basically, right? So, if we are doing a class that's grappling specific, I will make comments. I'm like, hey, this is a position that has to be used in flux, right? You can't just sit, you know, in an open guard and not expect to get beat down, right? But if I'm moving in transition, yes, this is applicable, right? Like a deep half guard can be used in MMA, but I can't just camp out in a deep half guard like this, you know, with my opponent like sitting on my my hips and think nothing bad's going to happen to me, right? I'm going to get pounded out. But if I came here and then start sweeping right away, then it works, right? So, like we always add these caveats in there so that people understand, okay, this is um how you would use this in an MMA context versus just a pure grappling context and even the self-defense concept uh context, right? Like I want to teach people real fighting, right? And I feel if you're a professional fighter, you shouldn't be outclassed by a blue belt hobbyist. I feel that's sad, right? Like if I have a blue belt or purple belt hobbyist that trains like three, five times a week, an hour each session, and you're a professional fighter in the UFC, and you don't know as much as that guy, it's like, what the hell are you doing, man? Right? Like, you know, on your free time, you shouldn't be playing Xbox or, you know, doing other hobbies. Like, you should be learning the ground game, right? like you're a professional and to me that means you should be the most knowledgeable in your sport as possible, right? And your sport includes ground fighting and even though it might not be your primary focus, it might not be the most incentivized part of the game, you should at least be knowledgeable and skilled enough about it where you know how to negate it, use it yourself just in case you do get caught in there, right? I've had a fighter once that he um I'm sure he won't mind this so old hat, but back in the day we had um a kickboxing trainer, Eric Castanos, who uh very good world champion kickboxer. He was teaching a counter to a cross, right? So from a conventional stance, opponent throws the right cross and you counterattack is spinning back kick, right? And basically what happens is that your head gets off the center line, right? As you do the spinning back kick and it lands just right in the liver, right? And it's just a brutal counter because and since you're moving into it with the cross, it's a collision. So it's a nasty hit, right? Now you might say, "Oh, it's kind of a little fancy, right? and it requires good timing to pull it off. And a fighter of ours was like, "Ah, that's garbage. My opponent's never going to fall for something like this or do something like this, right?" And didn't pay much attention. Well, couple weeks later, his fight comes in and he's fighting a taekwondo stylist who does spinning back kicks and lo and behold, he throws a right cross and he gets countered with this same exact setup. Spinning back kick hits him in the liver, ends up be uh dropping him and it becomes a TKO sequence which he loses. All right. And why? Well, I think in part because he didn't respect the position of the technique. He didn't think it was worth his time. He didn't recognize a potential danger in seeing someone who might set him up this way and ended up happening to him, right? And you might say, man, that's such a like a niche scenario that that's not very common. But if it's in your wheelhouse, it's in the set of techniques that uh that incompassive sport, you should be training it. Don't be a novice in what you do, right? You should be an expert at everything. To me, it's an embarrassment. If you've been a fighter for 15 years and you're like a white belt in jiu-jitsu, it's like, what the hell's going on, you know? I mean, you must be good at one of the skills in the in this sport, right? Or do you just pride yourself in being a tough guy? you know, uh, even guys who talk a lot of crap about jiu-jitsu, like Sean Strickland, he's a black belt, right? Now, he might not like it now, but he's a black belt in jiu-jitsu, right? So, and I've trained with him, grappled with him, and he's good, right? He's not going to get caught in silly things. Uh, right? So, he knows enough how to negate positions and get out of them and use it to his advantage as well. So even when you don't like the discipline, you still have to respect it enough to train in it and be skilled in it, right? So this is not a talk of saying like, oh, every MMA guy should be 10th degree black belts and specialize in jiu-jitsu and use it as much as possible. No. Uh, but should you be at a high level of skill on the ground game and know how to use it inside and out, but just opt not to do it? Yeah, that's what I think, right? And as a professional, you know, you could probably get there depending on how much time you actually invest in it, somewhere in the 5 to 10 year range, right? And probably diminishing returns at that 5year point for most people if you're not a grappling specialist, right? where, like I said, you just want to know enough not to get into trouble and have the best defenses in case of worst case scenarios where you do fight a guy who's a Kabib and is going to try to drag you into the ground, you have all the best counters available to you, right? That's what I'm talking about. But I do find it interesting that even in the skill sets that are in MMA, which I believe are very wrestling and striking heavy, mostly defensing wrestling for the most part. um those don't really evolve as much, right? Whereas in jiu-jitsu, lots of evolution. And some of these are rediscovery of positions. Like my brother was telling me the other day, he's like, "Oh, I just saw like a like a documentary on the choy bar." And like had my mind blown. All right. And it's funny because I've saw the choy bar and I'm like, it's a kimora lock down, but instead of using the kimora grip, you're going to just, you know, shoulder crunch grip. And I I said this not because I think it's a dumb position. I think, how come I didn't think of that? I was already doing this type of position where you weave the leg over, you have it in, you could do the back take all the same finishing sequences, triangles, you know, side triangles, inverted back mount triangles, leg locks, you could do all the arm bars, of course, all these things. But I only saw the Kimora, what I call the Kimora lock down, right? Where rather than a shoulder crunch grip for the toy bar, you have a Kimora grip. But every the leg work and everything else is the same. However, the troy bar is easier to enter because it's not a immediate submission threat. When they put a cumor on somebody, they're already on high alert. Whereas, if you have that shoulder crunch position, it's a little less of a spidey sense moment, right? Where you're you're not imminently going to get attacked, right? And easier to access because I don't have to be as close to get a kimmoral grip. I have to be a little bit closer and be able to have control that uh wrist whereas getting under the armpits a lot easier. So, it's a genius setup. You know, credit to I guess Troy. I didn't watch the documentary, so I don't know the origin of the the position or who got credited for it, but um these are things that are coming up, right? And there's always new techniques on the horizon like we see people with Zlocks and stuff like that. So this just I feel there's a few things. One, the grappling arts are a lot more complicated. The striking is not nearly as complicated as grappling. There's just so many more positions on the ground. There's so many more ways to manipulate your opponent that it doesn't compare. Right? Whereas in striking there is complexity. All right, don't get me wrong. Like there's a lot of strategy with footwork, with pulling people in, head movement, the different angles of attack, different targets of attack, right? So you can make, but they're kind of simple. There's not as many variables. You can, you know, tweak little things that will make one person's footwork, you know, 80% better than someone else's footwork and make them a lot more effective. But it's a bit more simple, right? Whereas we're in the ground. I say half guard. There's like 30 different half guards, right? And that's one position in jiu-jitsu, right? Well, it used to be one position in juu. Now, like I said, you got half guard, you got the knee shield, you got deep half guard, you got half butterfly, you have half open, right? You got deahiva, and you got all these all these little things that come out, right? So like there's lots of ways that that game that one position becomes many and then all the different attacks from each of these positions and the different entries and the different transitions. So I don't think there's any argument in in my mind that ground fighting is the most complex of the martial arts, right? Wrestling, standup wrestling and takedowns and judo and all that would be second, right? And you could see wrestling evolves like wrestling watching wrestling now is different than watching wrestling when I was 15 years old. So what like 25 years ago or so? Very different, right? People now wrestling like acrobats all of them and they can, you know, it's like a common thing now when someone shoots a single, you just do like a front split, you know, and now you get your hips further away and you can hand fights. Dude, that's nuts, right? Like uh so the level of athleticism has increased substantially and a lot of unorthodox techniques that we used to not see before. Guys like Ben Aspirin doing funk rolls and stuff like that. That's like a new game that's being played but now at a higher level. So I think if we separate the three major disciplines as we see it like striking uh wrestling and then ground fighting, ground fighting is the most complex, wrestling is second most and then uh striking is the simplest as far as the diversity of technique. Right now like I said there is nuance in all this thing. So for sure you can get a lot more complicated as or get if you fine-tune there's lots of things you can tweak with the with striking but when we get to grappling there's so many positions that when you start getting magnified man like you'll never master everything in grappling right I feel it's one of those sports where you could spend your whole life doing it and you're still not going to be close to the the end right like I feel like in the human lifespan as far as physically and mentally, there's just too much in it where you're going to be able to master everything, right? It's just like not enough time, right? And not enough body to go around. And and that's not to say that might not be true for striking or for wrestling. I think that's wrestling is probably similar, right? Although there are some really great wrestlers that but like usually they're niched, right? They have particular areas they're really good at and they avoid certain areas, right? Uh but I think with grappling it's the point where like there's certain positions I don't even know, right? Like I just don't know how to even use it, right? Um, so I think that's why if we're talking about like how jiu-jitsu is growing so much more technically, it's because it's a lot more complicated. So there's a lot more room for growth. It's like living here in Las Vegas. My parents when they come visit me, they're like, "Man, this city's grown so much." Before it was just like three city blocks of the strip and that was it. It was all desert. And now, you know, the city's sprawled out considerably, but when I look around, like there's still a lot of room, right? And the city is still growing a lot because it's a lot of space, but if you go to like my hometown of Miami, there's not much place to grow, right? Like they they've got it in all the good areas, right? You can't really build too high. Uh so like the real estate is very pricey and, you know, hard to find, right? So, I feel like that's kind of the same with jiu-jitsu. It's like Vegas. Lots to grow. I think striking more like Miami, right? There's there's minor areas that you might be able to exploit that people weren't using before, but not as much room for growth. That's my opinion. Uh, I honestly don't have a dog in the fight. You know, I'm I'm more known for grappling, but I train MMA. I've trained kickboxing and Muay Thai. I've been to Thailand. I love all the arts. So, I'm not saying this out of position of being a hater of striking. I just think it's the reality of it. And I think that's in part why MMA for me seems to have stagnated a little bit as far as development of new techniques and new strategies. The rule sets haven't changed now, right? They've stayed steadily the same now for like what, like 10, 15 years. So, we're seeing the same type of fights that we have for the same time span. And I think it's because within those rule sets, this is the meta that works the most reliably, right? Which is being the striking guy that can negate takedowns and dominate from the feet. Because the reality is in five minute rounds with the amount of space you have in the cage and with good cage workmanship, it's hard to get a takedown, right? Because there's no stalling calls in MMA. I can back up as much as they want. So, it's very hard to wrestle with somebody when they can disengage with you at will and then once they know how to use the wall defensively, it's a good place for them to defend as well, right? So, it's also hard to take them down even when you do get them on the fence, right? Um, and there's a lot of risk in trying to take someone down because you expose yourself to counter strikes and counter submissions and all this other stuff. And with a short round, even if you do take someone down, maybe you have like a minute to work, which is not going to be enough time, right? You're just not going to get be able to get the finish. So, these things incentivize people. And not to mention, they do stand people up from time to time. So even if you do take someone down, they can pull you back up to your feet, right? So all these things deincentivize groundwork, right? So I get it. But I feel like as somebody who wants to see the sport grow, it's kind of stuck at the moment, at least in my opinion. Right. Personally, I would love to see MMA go into one 10-minute round. I think it would be a lot more entertaining. I think strategies will change significantly when you can't do rounds, right? You don't I can give away one round and win two. Like, no, I have to win the round. This is it. And also, there's no I can goof up and just wait for the bell to ring. Like, no, if I goof up, this is the fight. I'm done. and it gives more time for the grappler to actually develop positions on the ground and be able to utilize them. So those are at least my opinions and also I think should have all forms of striking on the ground, elbows, knees, kicks. It's going to reward the top guy a lot more, right? Especially positions that are kind of muted like north south and side mount are not really that great in MMA when you can't knee. When you have side mount or north south and you can knee to the head, holy cow, it's a different ball game. Also, not to mention people who are on their fours and right now could put a their hand on the mat and then they negate any ground striking. It definitely doesn't penalize that fighter enough, right, for getting stuck in a bad spot. And in fact, it incentivizes them to adopt this turtle position, which you would never do in a street fight. You would get destroyed in the street fight. Early UFC's saw guys get destroyed when they stayed on their knees and they would just get soccer kicked, right? So, I feel like that additional role would also spice things up considerably and make ground fighting a lot more usable. And I think we would see a lot more shift in the development of technique if we allowed that to happen. That's my take. You guys can let me know what you think. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you all next week.