Originally Posted by
Cecil Burch
Like makul, you are missing the entire point of the article. You both mistake form for substance.
Do I think that most BJJ schools train on carpet or asphalt, or have regular Vale Tudo classes? Of course not, and that is irrelevant. What is relevant and is the point is that the SPIRIT of that, the willingness to do that type of training, and the willingness to fight in a manner, environment, or situation different from “normal” training does exist in most legitimate BJJ schools. Even in the most sport centric of them, the bulk of the time training is spent against a partner who is doing his best to make you lose, and can do whatever is allowed in the rules to do so. He is not artificially constrained to only attack with “grab my wrist” opposition. When you face that all the time, having to deal with something else on top of that is not much of a problem, and few people collapse just because they are not on the mat in a gi. The “street” people love to talk about sport guys being unprepared to deal with a real attack, and yet the real world proof of that is utterly absent. In fact, what we see, is that even guys who do “sport” BJJ handle themselves in a self-defense scenario over and over again, and we rarely, if ever, see one of these guys trying to do a berimbolo while the other guy is punching them. The Ryan Hall incident is a fantastic illustration. Here is a BJJ guy who never spent any energy talking about self-defense in his BJJ career (up to that point) and was known for being one of the guys who loved to do inverted and cool guy moves. And yet, what did he do in the video? He shot a double leg, mounted the guy. Slapped him gently in the face and when the guy turned over choked him out with a rear naked. The exact opposite of what he did regularly in competition, but what he did under pressure. If playing for points and doing competition only moves was actually bad, Hall should have been thumped. But it did not happen. The sport critics love to hypothesize that the sport guys will fall apart in anything outside of sport, and yet we don’t see it.
Regularly going up against a resisting partner with opposing will, malevolent intent, and freedom of action is pretty good preparation even when the situation is new. Does that mean the sport guy automatically wins in the street? No, but he also does not instantaneously collapse in a fetal crying position the first time a guy tries to punch him either. That sounds great, but has little to no proof behind that trope.
I am so frickin’ tried of people throwing points around as some kind of condemnation of competition BJJ. Especially with a look at the black belt finals of the world championships as some kind of ultimate “gotcha”.
So two elite athletes, in their physical prime, who have been prepping for months to peak at a specific time, who are roughly the same age, and the same weight, and are as far as technical knowledge are as equally matched as humanly possible end up without a submission after 10 minutes? I am shocked! Really? Someone thinks that is surprising? To me, that seems like a really ignorant understanding and poor grasp of BJJ. I am a fairly mediocre black belt, and I can guarantee that against almost any black belt in the world, I have a pretty good shot of defending a submission. I would mount exactly zero offense and threaten him in no way, but I can keep him from tapping me. But the score would probably be something like 87 -0. Is that in any way not an indication that in a fight, I would be dead?
The reason points exist is that because between two peers, a submission in a reasonable amount of time is hard. In a typical 6 minute sparring round, I can pretty much tap any lower belt, but another black belt? Especially one who I train with multiple times a week and have done so for years, and knows my game? That is zero reflection on whether I can fight against a criminal attacker in the street who knows almost nothing about grappling, just as Lucas Leite not tapping Renato Carruto in a single match means nothing towards whether points affect the ability to fight and/or means competitors “play to win”. Which is a nonsense term .
Points were introduced in BJJ because you know what is worse that watching someone win on points? Watching a fight between two great black belts and there being no submission at the end so there is no winner. THAT truly sucks, as most of these submission only tournaments are finding out.
And further, the points in BJJ are geared towards winning a streetfight. You get no reward for escaping or defending, you only get points for progressing towards the finish. If you take someone down and show that you are controlling the fight to take it to where you want, you get 2 points. If you do nothing else, you get nothing for it because you are doing nothing else. If the other guy establishes guard off your takedown, he gets no points because he is expected to defend. If he then sweeps you and gains a more dominant position he gets 2 points. If his sweep takes him straight to mount, he gets 4 more points. Let’s say that is where it ends up for the remaining minute of a match. So someone is going to argue that the second guy was not winning the fight and would not have done so in the street, whether a submission happened of not? If it was the street, maybe INSTEAD of a submission, the second guy deploys a pistol and goes to town. He can do it because he controlled the fight and went to where he wanted to go. The points in BJJ clearly show that. It is crazy to argue that working for points in that manner is somehow unrelated to fighting. I have been fortunate to be around the best competitors in BJJ history, and I have yet to find one of them who would not prefer to win a fight with a submission. But when going against your peer, that is not commonly possible. But doing it to a white belt, or someone who knows no grappling? It will be another Ryan Hall scenario.
Someone wants to believe that BJJ training is watered down now and that most schools are only interested in competition? Cool, it does not harm me in any way for someone to think that. But it does not mean it is correct.