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The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

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Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#31

Post by kasey_junk »

qrendel wrote: post #27
adamnemecek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there. Do you know the difference between martial arts and martial sports? Fundamentally if there is competition, it's a sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques. Also differentiate between lethal and brutal.

There's a lot of vitriol between people who practice different styles, with a lot of guys from traditional styles (karate, tae kwon do, kung fu, etc.) claiming combat sports are worthless in a Real Fight (TM) because it's just competition. Completely inaccurate in my experience - people who compete in full-contact combat sports will almost always beat the people who don't, other things being equal. The techniques don…

> BJJ, judo, and wrestling guys will mess you up if you're not trained in how to defend against them.

This has been made painfully aware to me on enough occasions that it feels ingrained as instinct.

That said, too many people assume that violence is an easily categorizable thing. Most people simply don't have a lot of exposure to the risk of a violent encounter between exactly 2, largely similarly sized, unarmed belligerents, that you can't talk your way out of or run away from.

Quite contrarily if you are going to experience violence outside of a military or professional context in most parts of the Western world it is overwhelmingly going to be either domestic violence or a surprise attack with multiple attackers and/or weapons. In many of these cases the absolute worst case scenario is ending up on the ground.

The point being that grappling/boxing/etc are fun activities and are great ways to win a fight, but honestly you aren't likely to get in a fight.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#32

Post by Retozi »

codewithcheese wrote: post #30
sfjailbird wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will be the sole responder who agrees with you that promotions like the UFC cross the line in terms of acceptable injury to fighters. Most professional MMA fighters with a few years in have severe debilitating injuries. I am not talking about a bad knee of slipped disc, I am talking about severe chronic pain and brain damage, something that is the inevitable result of the kind of punishment they deal with. Just loo…

Can you link the info about GSP forgetting the last 6 months, didn't hear that one.

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/joe-rogan-gsps-alien-abductio...

he mentioned it here originally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFsUV5ICKk

his theory is that he was abducted by aliens, but it sounds like brain damage...

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#33

Post by sanoli »

Pxtl wrote: post #13
charlieglass wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cagefighting came into existence as a way to test the efficacy of traditional martial arts. So much of what is taught is complete rubbish ("lethal techniques" that only ever practised against compliant opponents, etc.). All the beautiful movements and choreographed dancing of traditional martial arts fly out of the window when you face a skilled fighter that is trying to hurt you. The fighters know exactly what they…

> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas The article paints a very different picture, an upper-class family dynasty developing the martial art.

No, it was not born in the favelas. The article is right. The Gracies were never poor and never lived in favelas. I'm a Brazilian with a pretty good knowledge of BJJ history (my father watched Helio's fights, etc).

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#34

Post by mikekchar »

peatmoss wrote: post #4

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujits…

I'm not a aikido-ist, but I've had some friends who were very high level. They explained to me the origin of aikido was as a technique that policemen could use with plausible deniability. When people watch someone fight against an aikido-ist they see: "The guy charged at him and something happened and then the guy ran right into that lamp post and knocked himself out".

Whether that is really true, or I misinterpreted what I was told, I'm not sure, but I always find it an amusing thought.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#35

Post by sanoli »

roel_v wrote: post #19

For some reason, these stories always leave out that UFC 1 was organized by a Gracie with pretty much the goal of showcasing Gracie JJ. UFC 2 (I think? or was it 1 already?) even had a half-time 'ceremony' where Rickson gave Helio a 'lifetime award' of some sort - while booed by the audience; and rightfully - that was clear self-promotion and put a shadow over the objectiveness of the whole event. In that light, the…

You're saying this in a time when every good mma athlete has a very respectable BJJ game. Before that, people stuck to their art. It was either BJJ guys winning, or big wrestlers. Then people started to get more well-rounded. But I remember watching fights in Brazil where there was almost ten different styles represented, including judo and wrestling. BJJ would win. When the others started learning BJJ it changed a lot, and the BJJ people had to suck it up and begin to strike/stand-up. Actually, I still think it is the achilles heel of brazilian MMA fighters. There's still this 'BJJ' is king attitude here, which leaves a hole in many athletes' wrestling game. Look at the USA: there are now a ton of great bjj black-belts teaching there. How many top-level wrestlers teach in Brazil? Two? Three? Only top MMA guys in Brazil train wrestling specifically, whereas in the US the wrestling kids can learn very good BJJ and striking.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#36

Post by dbs »

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is less about the show and more about a philosophy of life.

Being trained in the arts many years ago, things like "a body is as strong as its weakest link", have served me well in life and business.

I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. You learn how to survive under very harsh conditions and how to be resilient.

You don't need to be the strongest, the faster... You just need to stay alive and be aware. And you learn how to respect human life, because you come to understand how fragile it is.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been responsible for taking many people out of the streets, giving them something to abide for. This will be the greatest legacy of the Gracies.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#37

Post by bmelton »

peatmoss wrote: post #4

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujits…

"Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo."

Sincere question, but when did that happen? I suspect that you're conflating Gracie Jiu-Jitsu with MMA. The art of jiu-jitsu seems to me to be as passive as it ever has been. There've always been choke holds, and armbars, and while the techniques evolve over time, none of that has changed in BJJ.

A punch is not a BJJ technique, for example, but a boxing, or Muay Thai, or whatever technique that gets incorporated into part of a competitor's MMA toolkit... but that doesn't make it BJJ.

When I first read that sentence, I was reminded of having sparred with a BJJ practitioner way back in the mid-90s. He practiced a brutal form of BJJ that I had never encountered. To be fair, BJJ wasn't popular back then, and there certainly weren't gyms in every city, so it was a bit foreign. Long story short, even though it was just a competitive sparring competition, I lost, and I lost in embarrassing fashion because he used some kind of pinky lock that made me want to cry. So, reading about re-brutalization, my first thought was that they were teaching the small joint manipulation again, but I haven't heard of anybody doing that, which is kind of sad, because it's super effective as a defense. But they wouldn't, because the gaming commissions won't allow small joint manipulation techniques in the octagon, so there's not really any point in teaching it outside of shops specializing on self defense, and even those can't be trained effectively because you can't employ those techniques against other humans without a severe risk of injury.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#38

Post by mcv »

RobertoG wrote: post #10
peatmoss wrote: post #4

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujits…

"Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury." I think is not strange. This oscillation is normal. There is a tension in all the martial arts that serious practicants are very aware of. If you practice only the form, where you can practice everything, you are not really practicing, because you are not used to what means a real fight. In th…

I've done about one month of Pencak Silat many years ago, and in that month, I learned to attack the eyes (a whip with the fingers to cause pain or temporarily blind) and how to rip out a throat. It was obviously not done as sport. And yet this was also a fairly defensive style where every move started from a dodge and you never attacked with a fist. But it was a very aggressive defense.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#39

Post by dagw »

adamnemecek wrote: post #24
charlieglass wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cagefighting came into existence as a way to test the efficacy of traditional martial arts. So much of what is taught is complete rubbish ("lethal techniques" that only ever practised against compliant opponents, etc.). All the beautiful movements and choreographed dancing of traditional martial arts fly out of the window when you face a skilled fighter that is trying to hurt you. The fighters know exactly what they…

> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there. Do you know the difference between martial arts and martial sports? Fundamentally if there is competition, it's a sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques. Also differentiate between lethal and brutal.

sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques.

A blood choke is probably one of the most lethal move in all of (unarmed) martial arts and is also one of the most standard techniques in BJJ and Sambo and also taught in Judo and most other grappling arts, all of which are "martial sports".

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#40

Post by joeletizia »

peatmoss wrote: post #4

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujits…

Classifying Gracie Jiu Jitsu as re-brutalizing Judo isn't the term I'd use. To be completely honest, it's simply wrong to describe BJJ as such. Brutal is the last word I would use to describe it.

Jiu-jitsu lends itself much more to the preservation of the health of both combatants in a self-defense or sport scenario as compared to other martial arts. Certainly more so than striking based systems. I would argue that the main focus of any jiu-jitsu practitioner is to end the fight via choke. Look at sport jiu jitsu such as the ADCC or IBJJF. They aren't gladiatorial. The injuries suffered in these contests are as severe as those in any non-combat sport such as soccer or baseball.

MMA on the other hand is by definition violent. The connection between MMA and BJJ is of course undeniable; the fathers of modern MMA are the children of the father of BJJ. However, they are VASTLY different things.

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