Hey BJJ! Let's not unite the grappling world. *annual rant

***Omega Supreme*** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 6:34pm

I mean seriously, I think this BJJ mentality is really getting fucking stupid. I went to a USA grappling tournament. They went into this nice speech on how they are trying to get this into the Olympics, and how there hasn't been that great of a turn out, and how it's up to us to keep the dream going and how they're trying to bring wrestling and bjj merger a sport.

Okay, now I had to think about this. I like bjj, I like judo, I like it all but this **** get's very tiresome after awhile. Then I have some fucking idiot yelling "JIU JITSU" every5 minutes during the match missing the point that 50% of the participants were from a wrestling background. I've never been to a grappling tournament, mma tournament, pankration tournament, hell any tournament where somebody screams out a particular style.....except BJJ. So I ask all you BJJ guys are you that guy? Are you that guy who is so elitist that you think that everything you do has never been done before, and that everything that ever exists in BJJ only came from BJJ? So now I have to say **** USA wrestling and their grappling tournaments.

**ADM** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 6:38pm

Ouch :\

I was in a comp this weekend, it had 350 competitors (biggest turn out I've ever seen / heard of in Australia). And to make you fee la bit better, no one was yelling out "ZHOO ZITSHOO!" or any crap like that.

So no, I'm not that guy. I'm just the guy that wants to always get better.

***Omega Supreme*** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 6:41pm

Originally Posted by ADM

Ouch :\

I was in a comp this weekend, it had 350 competitors (biggest turn out I've ever seen / heard of in Australia). And to make you fee la bit better, no one was yelling out "ZHOO ZITSHOO!" or any crap like that.

So no, I'm not that guy. I'm just the guy that wants to always get better.

Ditto, but this attitude sucks.

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 6:46pm

Originally Posted by Omega the Merciless

Then I have some fucking idiot yelling "JIU JITSU" every5 minutes during the match missing the point that 50% of the participants were from a wrestling background.

Their not missing the point; that is the point. Yelling "Jits!" durring a fight or match is traditionally a cross-styles thing. And yes it's stupid and obnoxious, especially when it's in a night club vs a regualr person. Imagine the other guys mates gathered around chanting "Untrained n00bspaz! Untrained n00bspaz!"

**Alucard619** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 7:11pm

Would you have been just as annoyed if some guy shouted "**** JIU-JITSU" and instead shouted "TAEKWONDO!"?

:)

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 7:17pm

I would. Less obvious is always less annoying.

***Omega Supreme*** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 7:18pm

Actually yes I would.

**kultist** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 7:40pm

It's because all this stuff is old school for you. You've been around it for years and years and years, competed professionally and have (I assume here, but it applies to others on the board) known about MMA since it was in it's larval stages.

I did little bits of judo for years as a kid, and started when grappling was waning out of it's dominant phase and it was all becoming much more mixed. Despite this, I had no idea what MMA was, what fighting actually involved or that judo was anything more than a sport unless you were a master until 2006, more than a decade after Royce made his UFC debut.

Up until then I thought that judo was mostly useless, since throws were much harder to do properly than punches and pins were obviously pointless. I'd never seen a GnP or a picture perfect double leg dominate someone who had only trained karate or kickboxing. Hell, the idea that anyone other than an adult judoplayer with chokes and armlocks dominating anyone was alien to me at that stage.

When I talked to my cousin about MMA and saw the first season of TUF, it was a personal apocalypse. It was like a kid who had heard nothing about baseball but what the commentators said one day reading a Bill James' abstract. Suddenly, 95% of what I knew about fighting was utter bollocks.

As it turned out, doing karate or taekwondo didn't make you an awesome fighter. Ninjitsu was run by fakers. Traditional jiujitsu wasn't far superior to judo in most cases. Boxing and kickboxing were actually brilliant.

As for seeing the true potential of grappling, groundwork especially; it was similar to realising that breasts are awesome and all the girls around you have two each. Morote gari to ground and pound was suddenly as obvious as girlfriends = handjobs. Getting more into groundwork and jiujitsu was all I could think of sportswise for a long time. Who needs takedowns or standup when you can just pull guard? Besides, there was so much to learn you couldn't fuss yourself with than kind of thing. You dived headfirst into grappling until it became an obsession, and since jiujitsu had the biggest name, the most familiar ruleset and the coolest brand you dived into the jits first and foremost.

Etiquette? What's that? What do you mean 'Wrestling is an integral part of grappling training'? What's this 'Crosstraining' you talk of? Why shouldn't I be hugely boorish about my art, everyone needs to hear about it!

All that seems puerile and childish after the initial giddyishness wears off, just like as an adult you would cringe if your friends started going on about unhooking some hot chicks bra and fingering her, but BJJ isn't so stratified by age. It's popular and designed to appeal to young men who are into fighting. They will grow out of it, but there are more people who have never even heard of it having personal revelations and getting into it all the time. I'm sure time will eventually remove the worst of the immaturity from the sport as it becomes more old and dignified, but for the moment we're just going to have to put up with the 15 year old Dorian Grey of martial arts.

**DKJr** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 8:00pm

**** YOU OMEGA! All hail the rise of BJJ Revolution! All Hail the great Motherland of Brazil and Art of Helio!

**CarlosJesena** · Posted On: 5/09/2010 8:04pm

I'm part of a team of Machado and Fabricio linage (Kamphuis-Fabricio/Machado. Yeah we're affiliated with both). We cross train like hell. Our sister team is called S.P.R.A.W.L.; a Wrestling based MMA team. They do BJJ with us, we do wrestling with them. And one of our head coaches is part of the Judo national team.

I guess over here, BJJ people are a little less elitist. The top BJJ team (Atos-VPF) is actually a team composed mostly of Judokas (some black belts) who do BJJ as it's basically a university's varsity Judo team's BJJ side. A lot of Judo, wrestling and even FMA (like Hybrid Yaw-Yan) teams are invited and encouraged to join. So thankfully, there is a bit of an attempt to unite grappling.