World Jujitsu Federation - Not real Jujitsu

[Das Moose]

You are using the most bizarre and twisted logic, combined with foolish assumptions.

I'm not trained to fight expert martial artists and here's the clincher: most other people aren't either, nor do they want to be.

Sure they do. And we're not even talking about experts here. As a 3 month bjj white belt, I tapped a WJJF instructor in one of their own grappling tournaments. Three fucking months. I was terrible, and he couldn't even deal with that.

These arts sufficed for what they were mostly designed for - self-defence - for century after century with no complaints.

Do you have any proof of this?

I think you need to look at the statistical popularity of martial arts in modern times and calculate the likelihood of any one person studying them that has the athletic ability, reflexes and mental attitude that makes them a born fighter. Give that person pretty much any set of tools from any popular martial art and they are going to own most people hardcore, simply because nature wired them that way.

You do not need to have the natural attributes to be the next Matt Hughes to study MMA and become a much better fighter. With the exception of a few gifted athletes that want to compete, my BJJ club is mainly filled with normal people who train hard and so can fight well.

Most of us have to be content with being merely adequate however and I'll say again, not every martial artist on the planet is preparing themselves for life and death encounters in the great outdoors.

So your argument is that you don't expect to get in a fight and so it doesn't matter whether you get better at fighting?

For the average wannabe assailant who just wants your money, a lot of the martial arts work just fine.

Bullshit. A person with the "athletic ability, reflexes and mental attitude to be a fighter", as you put it, will probably be okay using the vague resemblance to basic boxing and judo some of your techniques have. Other people will go to pieces because they have never been in a remotely stressful training situation with hard contact

If they have a knife, or a gun then at least be realistic - you're probably fucked anyway, regardless of what training you have.

Yes, that goes without saying. So why did you bother bringing it up?

Just bear in mind that for every Ken Shamrock, or Wanderlei Silva there's probably 100's of guys out in the World, quietly minding their own business with no knowledge or interest in the human cockfights that most of you guys seem to worship. Each one of them capable of ripping these living legends a new arsehole.

Who exactly are these people? What makes you think they would win a fight with people who's occupation is fighting and training to fight better, and hone themselves into athletic machines?

And yeah, as you mentioned AGAIN, having a black belt in BJJ won't save you from being stabbed. You shouldn't go around picking fights with people. No ****. That's not the argument.

[PaDJW]

I don't do quote wars as a rule. I find them insulting, as if I need a highlighted pointed reminder as to what I typed.

However:

tapped a WJJF instructor in one of their own grappling tournaments

Since the WJJF do not condone, compete in or in any other way sanction competitions of any description, I have to call bullshit on that one.

With regards to the rest of your dissection, in particular prepping for streetfights, no I guess I'm not paranoid enough to think that certain death will meet me in a barfight, or a mugging if I'm not training 6hrs per day, 6 days per week in an "alive" discipline that involves knocking the **** out of my fellow students on a regular basis.

By your own definitions, if you aren't hitting and rolling each other hard, then it isn't alive. Or is there some sort of sliding scale of "aliveness" that I'm unaware of, maybe 1 being the kata based compliant Bullshido that everyone here reckons anything besides MMA/BJJ is and 10 being the nutsack-swinging, Conquerors of the World that train BJJ etc and compete in MMA tournaments?

Who exactly are these people? What makes you think they would win a fight with people who's occupation is fighting and training to fight better, and hone themselves into athletic machines?

I'd say they're the people that if questioned on it would tell you that they find the concept of the public-sanctioned rebirth of ancient gladiatorial arenas morally repugnant and who have skills and natural abilities that would ****-up any of these guys outside of the ring sans the rules and limits that accompany them. Their occupation is fighting and training to fight better in the ring. Think about that for a while.

Not everyone has a penchant for being in the public eye, soaking up the adulation of the admiring masses of wannabe sycophants.

[Sophist]

It is however very troubling for me to see thousands of years of martial traditions pissed on because of that.

Which traditions?

Most of the oldest arts surviving to this day are full-contact prizefighting arts. Muay Thai and sumo are really goddamn old, with sumo predating koryu jujitsu. Boxing traces a lineage through pugilism back to the 16th century or before. Various wrestling styles go back a long time, although the widespread Greco-Roman was codified in France in the 19th century.

Koryu jujitsu is also quite old, but fell into kata-based practices through the peaceful Edo period. It suffered a huge reduction in popularity after the Kodokan defeated school after school in challenge matches.

Tae-kwon-do and aikido are 20th century inventions; karate wasn't seen outside Okinawa before the 20th century and it's hard to say how old it really is or how tested it has been. Some kung fu variants are verifiably old, others are not, but most of the older ones tested themselves in lei tai challenge fights before largely falling into modern choreography-based practices.

If you're going to cite "thousands of years" of tradition, you're going to have to clarify what traditions you're talking about. About the only arts with any possible claim to that would be sumo and muay thai, possibly some other wrestling styles, and long-dead styles like pankration.

Pretty much all the martial arts are now seen as ****, worthless and a waste of time because so-and-so Gracie owned some so-and-so karate/kung fu <insert currently considered useless style here> guy on the telly.

And many of these styles were never tested adequately in the first place from their creation onwards. So, they got stuck in a cage with a ruleset that let them use all their moves, and they failed; should we mourn their loss?

These arts sufficed for what they were mostly designed for - self-defence - for century after century with no complaints.

How do you know they made any difference whatsoever? And where are you getting your claims of antiquity from? Which arts are you speaking of?

I think you need to look at the statistical popularity of martial arts in modern times and calculate the likelihood of any one person studying them that has the athletic ability, reflexes and mental attitude that makes them a born fighter. Give that person pretty much any set of tools from any popular martial art and they are going to own most people hardcore, simply because nature wired them that way.

Not unless they're learning with the right training methods. The Kodokan proved this over a hundred and twenty years ago.

There are a lot of arts teaching choreography, not combat. A guy may naturally be equipped with all the attributes to be a champion racing driver, but if he never gets in a real car and confines his training to sitting on a sofa turning a dinner plate back and forth in his hands, he will not kick ass when he enters a real race.

Yes there's a lot of crap out there and a lot of instructors that criminally allow their students to go about puffed up with false confidence in their abilities. That isn't the art at fault though, assuming what is being taught isn't complete 100% ****, that's ego, misinformation and false assumptions combining into a recipe for disaster.

Not fighting in training turns what you're doing into 100% ****. You can drill the highest-percentage techniques ever, but if your opponent is a rag doll, you won't be learning the vital subtleties of making them work against people who're fighting back.

Just bear in mind that for every Ken Shamrock, or Wanderlei Silva there's probably 100's of guys out in the World, quietly minding their own business with no knowledge or interest in the human cockfights that most of you guys seem to worship. Each one of them capable of ripping these living legends a new arsehole.

If you're talking about knives and guns, make that billions. If you're talking about unarmed single combat... you must know you're being stupid. This is like claiming that there are hundreds of people who could beat Kasparov at chess who never enter tournaments or show off their skills, but who just play their friends; to even make such a claim shows such a desperate ignorance of the level of study, knowledge, skill and access to the latest cutting edge of theory required to hang at a top level that it marks you as essentially totally ignorant of the subject of which you speak.

Also bear in mind that in my experience there's a very thin line between confidence and arrogance. Most MMA/BJJ guys I've met tend to have that little twinkle in their eye, the one that says, "I'd fucking rip your head off if we ever fought" every time they see another man.

I think that's your insecurity putting it there. I've seen a lot more assholes in arts where they don't have to live with being bested by others on a regular basis and make their peace with that. People who don't know how good they really are, or whether they could handle a crisis situation, tend to be a lot more panicked and defensive about it.

I'm sure all you guys are a humble bunch, but for those that aren't that sort of attitude tends to attract violence. Paradoxically increasing the likelihood of encountering that which you are spending all that time preparing for. There's always a nutter with a knife with someone's name on it and he won't give a **** about your BJJ black belt, he'll stick you just the same if you give him one single chance. In fact, wasn't a top UFC fighter hospitalised in just such an incident?

There's not a lot you can do about knives. But then, most of us aren't selling what we do as a panacea for self-defence; we're just pissed off at people who are doing things even less relevant to self-defence making borderline fraudulent claims that they can't back up.

[Sophist]

Also, I assume you're aware that the original UFC rules, which were carried on for some years by the International Vale Tudo Championships after the UFC added extra regulations to get itself codified as a legitimate sport, ran to just these three:
1) No eye gouging.
2) No biting.
3) No fish-hooking (repealed for one UFC, but in there to prevent people rule-gaming the "no biting").

The rules and limits you speak of were very minimal at the start of the latest round of testing whose **** works. You can't condemn it as ruleless cock-fighting on the one hand and then claim that the rules are holding back the true fighters from strutting their stuff.

[Das Moose]

Since the WJJF do not condone, compete in or in any other way sanction competitions of any description, I have to call bullshit on that one.

Beg pardon. It was a WJJF instructor competing in a Northern Ireland Tai-Jutsu Organisation Tournament. Hint: He's the one wearing the black belt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmFGcYyl_vo

With regards to the rest of your dissection, in particular prepping for streetfights, no I guess I'm not paranoid enough to think that certain death will meet me in a barfight, or a mugging if I'm not training 6hrs per day, 6 days per week in an "alive" discipline that involves knocking the **** out of my fellow students on a regular basis.

I'm sorry who said anything about 6 hours a day 6 days a week? you are deliberately misunderstanding what I said. I said normal people who train hard. Most of them train 3 times a week, for around 2 hours each time. I train a bit more than that because I'm a student and have a lot of free time.

By your own definitions, if you aren't hitting and rolling each other hard, then it isn't alive. Or is there some sort of sliding scale of "aliveness" that I'm unaware of, maybe 1 being the kata based compliant Bullshido that everyone here reckons anything besides MMA/BJJ is and 10 being the nutsack-swinging, Conquerors of the World that train BJJ etc and compete in MMA tournaments?

Hard is not the same as knocking the **** out of your opponent. Hard rolling involves nothing more than using strength and pressure and speed; hard striking sparring involves striking your opponent hard - if you stun him or knock him down, you don't follow up and finish. I said you need to spar hard to get used to the feel and pressure of a real fight; we do not always spar hard with striking and rolling because sometimes we wish to work on other areas or improve on certain techniques. Aliveness gains ability; hard sparring ensures you can make it work under pressure.

Aliveness is defined far better by Matt Thornton (see http://www.straightblastgym.com/aliveness101.html)

What do you mean by timing, energy, & motion?

For something to be truly alive in what we do then it has have three key elements, movement, timing, and energy (resistance). If you are missing any one of these then it is not Alive.

Movement means real footwork, not contrived, not in a pattern... on the ground it means exactly that also... movement... if the person is just laying there, not moving as you apply your lock or move....that is not Alive. In the clinch its the same... pushing, pulling, moving.

Timing is of course just that... if its in a predictable rhythm, a pattern, a repeatable series of sets, then you are not acquiring or developing timing, just motion speed.

And of course energy... swing the stick like someone would really swing it... don't stop at centerline. Punch with the energy of someone who wants to hit you. Not locking your arm out so your partner can look good doing the destruction, or trap, or silat sweep, etc.

I'd say they're the people that if questioned on it would tell you that they find the concept of the public-sanctioned rebirth of ancient gladiatorial arenas morally repugnant and who have skills and natural abilities that would ****-up any of these guys outside of the ring sans the rules and limits that accompany them. Their occupation is fighting and training to fight better in the ring. Think about that for a while.

The issue of whether or not MMA is morally repugnant is seperate from our debate. What is relevant is that an arena that allows for testing of fighting methods and training exists and we can use that to help those of us who aren't going to compete in it.

[PaDJW]

That supposed WJJF instructor isn't wearing a WJJF gi. For a start, he would have been wearing a blue gi top, handed to every 1st dan upon completion of their grading. There were no WJJF badges that I could discern, in particular the very prominent WORLD JU-JITSU FEDERATION badge that takes up the entire space between the shoulders on the back. If that was a swap-out tournament gi that might explain that, but it doesn't explain what he was doing competing in the first place when bona-fide WJJF students do not compete. Where's his classes held, if he's an "instructor"?

I can't hold a discussion on multiple fronts against multiple people all playing the quote warz game, so it's time I called a halt to this, which I should have done on the last page to be honest. I'm sure you'll see that as a cop-out on my part, but horses for courses and all that...

In closing, I don't think I'm deluded in thinking that if there were better fighters out there then they'd be up there doing the cock-of-the-walk act in the UFC. If you think that there AREN'T better fighters in the World that don't want to compete, for moral and ethical reasons among others, then it isn't me that's misguided. Nor can you argue that because they aren't competing that they aren't better fighters because they haven't been tested against these athletes. Not everyone has a burning drive to prove they're the best of the best and reap world acclaim.

If you want to think I'm alluding to secret clans of mystical ninjers living in seclusion on some mountainside in Japan then by all means do so. Whatever helps you sleep at night, comfortable in the fact that y'all are practising the deadliest arts known to man and God and are well on your way to becoming Ultimate Warriors.

Adios.

[Das Moose]

He teaches (or is at least a black belt) in the WJJF class at my University. A lot of them have taken to wearing Koral (a BJJ manufacturer) gis, something which pisses me off as I find it BJJ pretenderism. Feel free to disbelieve me. I have given you logic and now a video of one of your precious black belts losing to a (shitty) bjj white belt.

Go ahead and live in your dream world. If you're not going to listen to reason I can't change your mind.

[Hanniballistic]

PaDJW, my instructor had his blue gi, a black one and a white one. What he wore depended on his mood and how clean his other gi's were. The fact that this guy is not wearing a WJJF gi does mean that he is not WJJF.

I am a cop even out of uniform.

No, you do not need to train MMA to be effectove at combat. However, you do need to train in an MMA type methodology - i.e. resistance, progressive power i atacks and a genuine consequence (i.e. pain) if you drop the ball.

The Police SCT I work with are generally suspicious of MMA type techniques for several reasons, but we train the techniques we do with an MMA mindset so they can be proven to work.

And for the record the WJJF randori I experienced is NOT proper randori, but it is not a static drill either. It is more a series fo attackers fired out at you and you respond with the appropriate technique. This unfortuately usually ended up being a series of right handers as the imagination of most of the attackers is lacking!

[Askari]

So, we have a claim that WJJF Black Belts do Randori.

We have a video of a WJJF Black Belt being completely humiliated in competition by a self-proclaimed "shitty" White Belt (who does a nice triangle to arm-bar sweep combination btw).

HMMM, I'd say BJJ WB > WJJF BB.

[Sophist]

In closing, I don't think I'm deluded in thinking that if there were better fighters out there then they'd be up there doing the cock-of-the-walk act in the UFC. If you think that there AREN'T better fighters in the World that don't want to compete, for moral and ethical reasons among others, then it isn't me that's misguided. Nor can you argue that because they aren't competing that they aren't better fighters because they haven't been tested against these athletes.

Again, all this says to me is that you know pretty much squat about fighting.

You've approximately as much evidence for the existence of these dudes as exists for the Tooth Fairy. Less, perhaps, since teeth do actually vanish from under childrens' pillows, and every time we see a hardcore too-deadly-for-the-ring proponent actually step up and face a real fighter on video, they get squished.

You don't seem to understand the nature of training required to make a successful fighter. It requires full-contact sparring. We know this, because we've seen over and over again how badly people who don't have that background go to pieces and get owned once they're subject to even a moderate adrenaline rush. To be really good also requires a fairly skillful coach and top-notch sparring partners. You can't substitute for this simply with barfights; that way you get far fewer bouts with a higher risk of injury and a much lower quality of opponent. For MMA, you also have to train all the ranges - striking, takedowns/clinch and groundfighting - because as the rules get taken away, you can't rely on being able to remain in your range of choice.

Carry on deluding yourself if you like. Keep telling yourself that there are barely trained amateurs out there who can hang with the best of the professionals in every walk of life, that somehow "natural talent" trumps skill and training. Just don't expect to convince anyone here who's used their skills to overcome superior strength and aggression, who's seen just how incapable the self-proclaimed "talented" can be.