BTG 63 - Slam KOs, Fixing Stalling in Grappling

Hello and welcome to the Break the Guard podcast. I'm your host, David Avalon, and we have some topics to cover today, particularly with the UFC brought a lot of interesting uh matchups and side things that I would like to discuss. The first being I'll just quickly go over the results if you haven't already. Uh spoiler alert. Okay. Um I'm just going to go over the main card. Although just to note, Misha Tate did uh she was the main event so to speak at the prelim card and she won by Rene Choke. So uh good on her getting back on the on the winning track. Um, I always like seeing people who are veterans being able to make a resurgence kind of recreate themselves. And it's it's difficult with this game that's constantly evolving to to stay on top. You know, uh, on the May card, uh, Soraniano lost by submission to Stofist. Uh Klay Gita again another vet. He ended up losing a majority decision to not majority decision. He lost a decision but it was two rounds to one to Wim Silva but again dude has been fighting forever and he's still hanging in there. You know super impressive. And then the the the main draws Shawn Brady versus Kevin Gastelum. Brady ended up winning. Uh, again, that's a that's a good win to have. Although, I've seen some of the comments as well, which is that Kelvin's game doesn't seem to have grown much um over the years. He's kind of like the same guy that he's always been, whereas, you know, that's kind of it says again, he's not he's a veteran as well. He's been in for a while, but if your skills are not developing, your people are going to be able to study tape, figure you out, and be able to beat you pretty convincingly. In this case, Brady uh was using lots of ground control and ended up getting in with a Kimura to finish. So again, I always like Kimura finishes. Uh pretty basic version though, just from side control. Nothing fancy, right? But it got the job done. Figuredo ended up winning decision against Rob Font. Uh mostly a striking affair except for I think the final round figured got a takedown and was starting to re in some punishment. And then finally, Bobby Green, not finally, but co-main event. Bobby Green, Jaylen Turner. Turner as a last minute replacement comes in and absolutely starches Bobby Green. And uh it's kind of crazy because Bobby Green was getting into postfight pre-fight antics where rather than focusing on his opponent, he was I well not entirely his fault, but Armen Sukian who is a main event. So apparently they had footage of this where Bobby Green was just in it looks like a hotel hallway minding his own business sitting down and Arman and his boys kind of box him in and you know start trying to like intimidate tough talk him. He gets up and he's trying to you know talk his way through it and you know the same crap that you know high school kids are doing. They're just talking to each other the whole time. At one point, Bobby Green say, "Hey, I don't like this face to face thing. You know, either do something, do something, otherwise get out of my way." And he's he moves to push him out of the way. And then Bobby Green made first contact, although it wasn't a strike, you know, he's just trying to get out of the way because he literally was cornered against the wall, had nowhere to go, and he didn't want to be there, which I wouldn't blame him. This guy ends up slapping him and then a whole commotion ends up. Then later on, Bobby Green gets them from behind as they're leaving and starts smacking them. And it's crazy because these guys are talking really tough just moments before. And then when the shoes on the other foot, they are running like you see people jumping and trying to avoid getting into uh into a fight with Bobby Green. So to me, uh, it looked pretty bad on those guys, but I think the end result was probably worse for Bobby Green. I don't know psychologically how that affects somebody or how it affects him, I would say. Right. Uh, because he had a really bad turnout and that he got knocked out I think within two minutes of the first round. Uh, was that the reason why he was distracted and he was thinking about other things? I don't know, but uh you shouldn't overlook your opponent and particularly someone like Jaylen Turner who's a really tall striker and obviously very dangerous, you know, and uh unfortunately that's one of these other cases where it was a really bad knockout because if I remember correctly, I think Turner caught him with a with a cross right in the temple, dropped Bobby Green, and then Bobby went to uh like Turtle, and this guy landed a right hook that looked like it knocked him out and then he hit him again and it kind of woke him up and then he hit him like five or six more times. It looked like this guy went out like two or three times and the referee just let it go. You know, I'm going to mix back of this and this for me if I'm the fighter, I'm always accepting responsibility for whatever happens to me, right? Like uh but at the same time, the referee is supposed to be looking after fighter safety, right? That's the only reason they're there. So to let this punishment go on, it seemed pretty I don't it it's it's very inconsistent, right? Because sometimes in the UFC we see the early stop where like a guy gets stumbled and then they they they come in and rush right away to stop which is frustrating especially as a fighter because you believe you can come up and we've seen people like Czech Congo come back against Pat Barry where he looked absolutely dead and came back and knocked him out, you know. So there's always a fighter's chance, you know, to come back in. So you don't want to stop early, but at the same time, the guys like hands down and just getting bludgeoned. We don't want to see someone die either, right? Like that's the two extremes. We have to be somewhere in the middle, right? Like if I'm the fighter, I want to lean a little bit towards uh giving me a chance, right? Um but yeah, this was clearly a case of letting it go a little bit too far. Uh I mean fortunately he was he looks like he was okay. Um, but that's something that we want to see, you know. But in general, this is why for me when I talk about um, you know, talking antics and like rallying people up, personally, I was never about that, right? I don't think, at least for me, that adds any value to the fight to have anger or animosity or, you know, try to trade words with an opponent. I feel that's a distraction, right? I I rather focus on what I'm going to do in the fight and and perform. Again, it obviously works out. It's not good for marketing, right? So, maybe don't listen to me if you want to be the next Conor McGregor, right? Clearly, the the the shit-talking is what got him to the stage that he's at, right? But if you're more concerned about winning fights, then you have to know where your strengths lie and psychologically how this type of game affects you. Again, I could be speaking completely out of turn, right? Maybe he was just outclassed and outskilled. He wasn't distracted. Again, I can't speak for his mental state, but it makes you wonder, right? Because I know that's the first thing I s thought of when I saw that uh hotel fight, right? And this was before the the fight actually took place. I'm like, is that is that a distraction? You know, for me it would be. If I I got swung on and I was swinging on people and chasing them around. It's kind of hard to let that go, right? So, I mean, there's that. All right. And then the main event, uh, Denil Barenil Darush versus Arman Sarukian. I'm butchering that last name probably. That was another short affair where Arman was able to land a big knee that I believe it was a right hook or that just completely floored uh, Benil and he was out for a while. And that was it. Another quick fight. It was at 1 minute into the first round. So, that guy's stock is definitely rising up. Um, but again, it it's funny because I've met Benil before and I thought he was my age, you know, because he's got the really silver gray hair. Um, and he kind of looks older to be honest, but he's only 32, but everybody thinks he's too old to fight and but I don't know about obviously he's not too old to fight, but um the the amount of time that he was down for is concerning because he didn't get hit a lot, not like Bobby Green did where it was a lot of post knockout punishment. He got like two or three shots that were pretty hard, although they were really solid shots, right? But still he was down for a long time. You know, if I was his trainer or loved one, I would be definitely be concerned about uh career longevity there. You would definitely want to make sure that you don't have any uh existing issues as far as with his uh brain or whatnot that could cause potential long-term consequences, right? Because being out for that long is scary. I know my brother and I once hosted an event where we had a double knockout situation from a slam and uh the guy was out for maybe what I I I didn't have a clock on me but it felt like two three minutes unconscious which is terrifying. Fortunately, the guy got up and he was okay. He actually went on to try to attack his opponent. It was kind of a funny scenario um in the aftermath at least. But um it's definitely scary to see someone unconscious for a long time and you definitely want to make sure that that guy's checked out. And speaking of slam knockouts, there was actually two KOs backto back from submission attempts which was pretty fascinating. Uh I think one was from an arm bar and the other one was from a triangle choke and bad KOs and same thing you know arm bar lift boom slam them. And of course, when you're holding off to that submission to dear life, you can't post and you you get slammed at the back of your head. It's lights out. And similar with a triangle choke, which just reminds people and apparently this is a record of slam KOs in one event, let alone I think in a year they like they I saw a graph saying like 2022 21 all the way back and there's like one slam KO per year from the off submission and this was two in one event in Austin. So pretty crazy. And then after that there was like two submissions, right? So, you have to be careful with your your submission holds. I think people forget that you can get slammed. Like, if you have an arm bar and you're just holding on with both hands for dear life and you forget that for me, if I'm going airborne, I'm thinking about bailing out, right? or if I if I'm on a triangle choke and I'm not hooking the leg and someone starts picking me up again, thinking about bailing out, dropping for a leg lock, you know, like you you have to be weary of getting slammed. I don't know if people are very comfortable on the mats or with training partners that are not trying to KO them and they're just letting things happen, but from a I've always fought from a self-defense point of view. And I would never allow someone to pick me up without me getting ready to get slammed, right? Um so something unfortunately for those two that they're going to have to they learned the hard way. You have to have preventative measures in mind for not getting lifted. And if you are getting lifted, you need to bail out and uh get ready to receive a a slam. And you know, posting up makes a big difference. Obviously, if you're just landing on the back of your on your back or on your head, it's going to be bad news. So, um there was that as well. Now, uh, one thing I wanted to touch on. I know I talked about the who's number one results a couple days ago, but I did want to get into, uh, the topic of the day, which is the importance of rule sets, right? Uh I think in a podcast way back with Robert, we touched on a rule set that I would advocate for. But I'll just reiterate again because on that who's number one, the two of them then the most anticipated fights of the car, which is uh uh Bodini, right? Uh versus uh was he pacing Mourinho? Damn. Um my memory is pretty weak right now. But there was them, right? which they had a really long drawn out wrestling match which didn't really go anywhere, right? No takedown attempts, no scores, just lots of near catches. Um, and then of course we had another uh heavyweight matchup which was similar where nobody was scoring takedown or Lovato, right? Uh where it was very clo and and Hulk, right? I think I got I think I'm sorry, Loato went against Mourinho and then Hulk went against Boudini, right? But both of the matches very similar. Uh a lot of wrestling for 15 minutes with no real takedowns. Uh at least uh Bodini's match, Lovado um Pedro did score two takedowns early, but it was like within the first two minutes and then that was it. Right. Anyhow, this is fixed by rules, right? Now, people say, "Oh, well, you can look at other people like Mika. They didn't need rules to make an exciting matchup." You know, there's always going to be people who will fight the way they're going to fight and they don't care about the way the rules dictate. Especially somebody like Ma who's looking for finishes or you look like Marcelo Garcia, same thing. He's looking for finishes. And part of their strategy is that their submissions lead to their takedowns and lead to their guard passes and lead to their sweeps and stuff like that. So like it is a scoring mechanism for them, right? But people who are more conservatively minded, who are more like sportminded are very conscious of points or any type of advantages being scored, right? Now what's funny is that with who's number one, there is no scoring, right? It's judged. But they act like by having no scoring that that makes the fighters more free to risk for submissions. And in my opinion, that's not necessarily true because for in order to have a true noring that means when it goes to a decision is just a draw, right? Because there's no criteria for being a winner. If you're still deciding a winner after the the time period's over, there is a score. It's just invisible, right? It doesn't mean there's no score. I think that's a like for example, EBI is a no score format, right? And that's why if you watch those matches, they tend to go a little bit wilder for the most part where people are trying to do lots of submissions and whatnot because they know there's no real consequence. But when you have these rules for who's number one where they say it's no score, right? But well, again, I might be putting words in their mouth. I don't know if they actually use they say has no score, but the idea is it's supposed to be who's the better grappler, right? And they're not showing scores, but there's clearly advantages being placed and and then they show like every five minutes who's got advantage. Then that's just an invisible uh scoring board. Now, I bring all that up because the main problem, and this is with all the rule sets, except for submission underground, which I'm not sure they're running anymore, when you don't have a boundary, a fixed boundary like a wall or a cage wall, when people go out of bounds and are free to go out of bounds without penalty, it makes it very hard to wrestle, right? If you look at wrestling itself nowadays, if you get pushed out of bounds, you get a point, right? It's a push out. If I'm scoring a takedown and it goes out of bounds, I'll also get points for that takedown depending on, you know, where my feet are positioned at or where the opponent is. So, there's no uh escape rule, right? Like if you try to flee the mat or you're just being very passive at allowing your opponent to push you out of the bounds, you're going to lose points and you're going to end up losing the match. So what that does is that it forces the opponent to have to push back otherwise they're going to get scored on, right? And this is where you get takedowns, right? Because wrestling doesn't work well if you're not able to close a distance. And since there's also no passivity really called in jiu-jitsu, right? you can always essentially back up and there's no real call on you. If I'm able to keep distance and there's no penalty for going out of balance, I'm pretty much free to stall as long as I want. Again, wrestling, the moment you take a step back, they're getting ready to blow that whistle or, you know, give you a hand sign uh for stalling. They're very quick with that. So, it essentially forces the two athletes to be essentially in contact with each other the whole time, which makes it much easier to score takedowns. You can see that's why in MMA it's harder to score takedowns because you know they don't have stalling calls really. So you can back up and circle and if you have good footwork you avoid the back of the cage but that cage is where a lot of takedowns end up being scored because now they have run out of space to move right and if the opponent like I said is able to box them in they can get there. In jiu-jitsu we don't have these cages. I I understand why if I'm holding a grappling tournament with 18 mats that the logistics of getting cage walls all around it is just impossible, right? It's going to be too cost prohibitive. It's going to probably be a poor experience for the audience because they're going to have to be looking through these cages and it's just a logistical nightmare. I get it. But if you're doing this oneoff superfight type events, I think it warrants putting in some type of barrier, maybe not like again the cage kind of sucks for visibility, right? Anybody who's uh been to watch fights through a cage, especially if you're at some distance away, is not a great spectator experience. Even as a quarterman, when you're on the cage, there are blind spots and you get blinded sometimes. You like, I can't see well, right? and I'm right there, you know, the TV is arguably the best way to watch cage fights, right? Um, unfortunately, but that's a sad reality of it. So, I get from a spectator point of view, not the greatest uh viewpoint. However, having some type of barrier really fixes that. But if you don't have that, which is fine, you need to make a penalty for going out of bounds. There needs to be a penalty for being overly passive and backing up. This is not, you know, a striking sport. So, there's no reason to be far away from your opponent. And when you see people always keeping people out of arms distance, it makes it hard to score takedowns. And then you're going to get these really long drawn out matches. If you add these rules to add a push out just by doing that, you're going to then create incentive to score because what's end up happening is that somebody will get pushed out of bounds and now they're down one point. Guess what? He's going to have to push back now. And if the other guy runs out, now we'll even out. Otherwise, if the other guy pushes back in, now they're very close together. Now takedowns are easier to happen, right? So you'd I I think every rule set in grappling should have a push out point rule. Doesn't have to be a lot of points, just one point. That simple change will make a huge difference. And these two matches that we saw would be entirely different because as you saw if you watch who's number one, those both of those uh matches had multiple push outs, a lot of them. And several times there was a takedown getting ready to happen and then they went out of bounds, right? And then it the the way the rule set starts, they restart from standing, right? So it's like all the hard work you did to get a clinch is essentially negated with no penalty. So in my opinion, at the very least get a point for pushing someone out of bounds. And if you wanted to be more controversial, if you had a takedown attempt and it went out of bounds, you know, you might even score two, right? You give him the takedown. That I'm not too clear on. U unless the takedown was actually scored like it would be on the mats, I don't think it's warranted. But at least the one point for pushing the guy out I definitely think is uh necessary to avoid these long drawn out stalling matches because they're no fun for anybody to watch and especially when you have two guys like for example with Boudini and Hulk very talented obviously very good on the ground there's a lot of skills they could be showing but instead we just saw lots of clinching u not a lot of valueable like transaction actions as far as like taked down attempts and whatnot. It was very limited for a 15-minute match. We saw very little. When you compare to what we saw with, let's say, Nika, for example, um we saw lots of action. There were suplexes, there's, you know, melons, armbar attempts, lots of crazy stuff that happened. That match is very exciting to watch, right? But when we had like again Loato with uh Mourinho again not allowed to watch uh just because the rules are not rewarding, right? So again my whole thing the rules will dictate how the fight is fought and if you allow the rules to give people areas where they it could exploit for example not getting taken down they will. Right? It's kind of like for me my my whole gripe with the ADCC rule set is how the turtle negates scoring, right? If I get taken down, a guy could clear out suplex me or double leg slam me and I just turtle real quick, hold it for three seconds and then roll the guard, it's considered zero points, right? Like it's like nothing happened. That's silly to me, right? You're not rewarding risk taken by the guy and you're not rewarding u entertaining technique done by the other athlete, right? I feel that should be scored, right? And I'm not even talking about the no score period. I'm talking about the scoring period. It's the same for ADCC, right? ADCC also doesn't have a pushup rule when you can notice ADCC can have those matchups, right? Where those guys are just pushing each other out of bounds and long drawn out wrestling matches that don't really amount to anything. Again, out of push out rule there, you fix that, right? And if you fix I I I feel like another area because to me, I think scoring is important. I don't think that uh the what EBI does is okay in that they do the no score period, but the problem is then they do the overtime, right? And the overtime is to me not that great, right? I think it's you're putting people in very bad positions and then having to score off bat. And there's some people that I know strategically they're facing an opponent and they're like in their head the calculus is I'm not going to beat them in the regulation. I'm just going to conserve my energy so that when we get to the overtime I'm going to beat him in the overtime because I'm fresher and I train specifically on these positions for overtime. That to me is boring, right? It's kind of a lame way of trying to win a match. I think it defeats the spirit of what we're trying to see with that rule set, right? And the spirit of that rule set is that we're supposed to be gunning out for each other, trying to finish each other within the time the the regulation time period. And then if we weren't able to, then the sudden death of the overtime is basically like the coin toss, right? It's just one guy edged out the other guy through the overtime. Instead, what I see happening at times is that a guy's like, I'm just going to stall out the regulation period. So when I get to the overtime, I'm fresher and I know I'm stronger in these positions than my opponent. So I'll beat them there. Again, uh the the the rules allow it, people will abuse it, right? So that's the weakness to me to the EBI rule set. The the amount of overtimes that you see generally are very high. If you think of other professional sport like NFL, NBA, NHL, it's usually very seldomly that they get into an overtime, right? Why? Because the scoring criteria is created as such where it's easier to score points. So, it's harder for there to be a tied matchup, right? Like people will score and generally there will be a victor decided within the regulation and on the off chance it isn't, then the the overtime takes place. I remember I think looking back um when I had did a little study I think it was like a 30 40% in the incidence of overtimes in EBI matches which is crazy high right that's really high uh to me that means well the regulation rule set is not doing enough to be able to reward a winner right so that's not ideal and um I so I think scoring is fine you just make the scoring in a way that it rewards the fighter who's trying to finish and creates an entertaining rule set. Okay, so people usually are afraid of score because like, oh, somebody's going to just game it and, you know, score, you know, a taked down and then just hold the guy for the whole round and win by two points. Nobody likes seeing that either, right? That's very boring. That's why you call stalling, right? Stalling has its role, right? That's why in wrestling it's hard to have boring wrestling matches because if you're just sitting there for like 20 seconds not doing anything, you're going to get hit with a stalling call probably in shorter time than that. I think in jiu-jitsu since there's a bit more buildup we are more hesitant to make those calls and like I think coming back from the early Ra jiu-jitsu it was a lot more relaxed you know so the the pace wasn't as it is now where now we have a lot of wrestling influence there's a lot more athletes in there where the pace is significantly higher so I think it's clearer to see when somebody's stalling and when they're not All right. Uh or when your opponent is actually keeping you in a position, right, and not allowing you to progress. For example, someone gets a figure four guard and this ties up with you, you know, and it's not letting you move, right? Uh that's obviously like another stalling position. So, it's not just the top guy or the the bottom. Either guy could stall, right? So, I think there needs to be rules placed there where we can start making stalling calls. Again, uh this is simply just to push the action to avoid an athlete from basically scoring early and just sitting on the lead for the whole fight. That's obviously the worst thing to see as a when you're watching jiu-jitsu, someone scores a takedown or someone scores one guard pass and then just holds side control the whole round, you know, so like five minutes or 10 minutes of just stalling. That's atrocious, right? We don't want to see that. We want to see progress. So, you have to reward advancing positions, right? you have to reward the submission attempts uh and you also have to reward uh opponents recovering from bad positions, you know. So, there's a lot of ways you can do that. Like one of the things that like my brother and I had a league once we called the IGC, I think it was like the International Grappling Championships and whatnot. We only did one event with it because we got out of grappling tournaments afterwards, but that event we had a rule set which was similar. It was like a cross between I would say IBGF and Naga where uh we scored takedowns. So it's like two point takedowns. There was uh also a minus one guard pull but one point for the bottom guy if he gets back up to his feet. Now you're like why would you do that? Well that's from wrestling but it makes sense, right? Let's say I'm fighting someone with a better wrestle at me. I pull guard. I get a minus one. Maybe after a minute I realize I'm not able to sweep. I back out, get up to my feet. I recover that one point. 0 0. When you look at it from a practical standpoint, I essentially conceded the takedown on my own will, but then I also was able to recover the position. Nothing really happened, right? My opponent didn't do the actions necessary to score a takedown, and I was able to get back up to my feet. So, it makes sense there, but it also makes sense that let's say someone takes me down. Boom. Gets two points. Now, I'm able to escape, get back up to my feet, one point, right? His takedown lacked the control needed to hold me down. He still applied some damage and, you know, positional technique to get on top of me, but me being able to create space and get back up, get my one. Right now, I've minimized that advantage since he's no longer on top, and I get my one point. And these interactions are going to create scrambles which promote more excitement, right? So it made sense there. We also had points, you know, the the standards for sweep for guard passing, comboing a taked down with a guard pass or a sweep to a dominant position. Um, one of the other things we did was we were scoring taking the back without the hooks. It was, I think, only a point, but we did score it, right? So turtling wasn't something that got you out of it was like a it wasn't a free pass, right? If I was able to, you know, get a near guard pass and then you turtled to try to avoid the the the guard pass. You didn't get the guard pass, right? But I did get a point for exposing your back. And then if I got the hooks in, then I would get the additional points for getting it back. So uh again, it promotes more excitement because the scoring is easier. And then strong submissions. I believe they were they didn't count as points submissions, but they counted as like we we had our own thing for uh strong submissions. So if the score was tied, but one athlete had more strong submissions than the other, the guy with the more strong submissions went. So it basically was like an advantage, right? But like it was a submission advantage. So when we had this I remember over the course of a day which we know we had a few hundred you know matches or so um that there was a handful of overtimes. They were very seldomly had because most of the matches were done in the regulation because of all the different scoring criteria. It made it easy and it wasn't like the scoring was very foreign like you know people like IBGF guys going into ADCC is is a big step back because like man I got to learn this turtle thing and when to pull guard how to pull guard without getting the minus point. Whereas this rule set is very intuitive because it's pretty much how you would grapple anyways. Like if you took all the point systems the rule set that we had was one that you would normally grapple if you're doing an open man or something. This is like it's natural, right? Cuz we were trying to make a reward the actions that you would normally take in order to win, right? When you're doing an open match, normally I'm not trying to, you know, win by an advantage, right? Like I'm going to try to do everything I can to dominate this guy and do all the techniques and ideally get some submissions in the process. So, it is possible to do it. I don't know why nobody else has done it. Uh, so if anybody from IBGF or who's number one or whatever other league, just add the push out rule and I promise you it's going to make a huge difference in the scoring. I know people think like, oh, it's going to become a sumo match where people always pushing each other out. I'm like, even if that did happen, which I promise you it wouldn't, it would be more exciting, right, than the people pushing each other out anyways and not getting any points because if you have two guys really trying to push each other out to score that point, throws are going to start happening because you can't, it's hard to throw somebody from a standstill, but it's very easy to throw somebody when they're pushing into you and you got that initial momentum where I can lateral drop or, you know, change levels or and get into a deep shot. So, my opinion, rule sets to take the pace and the way the fight is fought and for grappling events, add a push out rule. You add a push out rule, a lot of these boring matches will disappear and you'll get a lot more exciting matches with more scores and importantly, it's going to create more scrambles that result in takedowns. So, let me know your thoughts on that. If you agree with me on the push out rule and that, I would be interested to see uh who thinks that push out rule is a bad idea or not. Thanks, guys, and I'll see you on the next episode.