Limitations of Sport Grappling?

TrevorRoss

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There’s thousands of cool little nifty tricks these days, but what are some positions / techniques that would get you hauled away on a stretcher if you attempted to use them in a self-defence situation? I think it would be cool to see some more non-tournament and MMA oriented threads.
 
STFU n00b! I’ll tap you from xyz guard with an inverted testicle lock of doom!!

Now, I like Mario Sperry’s old tapes where he was using Bustamante as a grappling dummy. It really showed the stripped down essence of BJJ.
 
There's loads of stuff from open guard that can do you more harm than good. Half guard in BJJ is a good attacking position, but in MMA is maybe just as bad as being mounted. Deephalf guard, inverted guard (if you don't attack the legs fast). Closed guard is pretty neutral, guys on top don't get triangled all the time nowadays and fighters are more and more able to defend against strikes with closed guard and butterfly guard. But there's still a shitload of stuff that fighters didn't really explore in grappling from your back with strikes.

What I don't understand, it's why there's not more single X entries to attack the legs. If your stuck on your back with a guy standing over your butterflies, you can just enter into SLX and attack the legs from there. If you don't manage the sub, you'll have a scramble to get back up and it's low risks because it's tough to GnP someone when you're on your ass with a leg locked up.

Right now, the top leg grapplers doing MMA are generally the best grapplers and are pretty much always on top, and like Danaher said, he won't let go of a top position to try a leg attack in a MMA fight. I don't think we'll see Tonon pull guard on purpose to attack heel hooks.
 
Damian Maia's entire late career is basically a refutation of the idea that there's no viable way to play half guard against strikes. GSP and the Nogueria brothers have used deep half in specific, but it's sometimes hard to notice because they're often able to sweep or escape out the back door so quickly that they're out before you recognize the position.
 
Damian Maia's entire late career is basically a refutation of the idea that there's no viable way to play half guard against strikes. GSP and the Nogueria brothers have used deep half in specific, but it's sometimes hard to notice because they're often able to sweep or escape out the back door so quickly that they're out before you recognize the position.

Bisping used an octopus guard sweep on GSP, I didn't expect to see that one in MMA, and certainly not at that level.
 
Damian Maia's entire late career is basically a refutation of the idea that there's no viable way to play half guard against strikes. GSP and the Nogueria brothers have used deep half in specific, but it's sometimes hard to notice because they're often able to sweep or escape out the back door so quickly that they're out before you recognize the position.

I really hope it continues to evolve, because there's still a shitload of situation in MMA where you have a guy on the bottom barely surviving in bottom half guards with very few attempts to sweep or to get back in butterfly or closed guard. They're getting better at not being tko'ed but they spend a lot of time losing rounds flat on their back.
 
Bisping used an octopus guard sweep on GSP, I didn't expect to see that one in MMA, and certainly not at that level.
Hughes Penn II, dude!

*grumbles softly to self* Kids these days, don't even know the classics.
 
We will see. Even Ben Askren once pulled guard to attack a heel hook.

Tonon is a beast in scrambles, maybe he won't care about giving a top position. Askren was so many leagues ahead from his competition that he could pretty much do whatever he wants while grappling.
 
Tonon is a beast in scrambles, maybe he won't care about giving a top position. Askren was so many leagues ahead from his competition that he could pretty much do whatever he wants while grappling.

Askren was trying for the heel hook because he was struggling against how roided out his opponent. Being fat in PED untested organizations is a big disadvantage.
 
There's loads of stuff from open guard that can do you more harm than good. Half guard in BJJ is a good attacking position, but in MMA is maybe just as bad as being mounted. Deephalf guard, inverted guard (if you don't attack the legs fast). Closed guard is pretty neutral, guys on top don't get triangled all the time nowadays and fighters are more and more able to defend against strikes with closed guard and butterfly guard. But there's still a shitload of stuff that fighters didn't really explore in grappling from your back with strikes.

What I don't understand, it's why there's not more single X entries to attack the legs. If your stuck on your back with a guy standing over your butterflies, you can just enter into SLX and attack the legs from there. If you don't manage the sub, you'll have a scramble to get back up and it's low risks because it's tough to GnP someone when you're on your ass with a leg locked up.

Right now, the top leg grapplers doing MMA are generally the best grapplers and are pretty much always on top, and like Danaher said, he won't let go of a top position to try a leg attack in a MMA fight. I don't think we'll see Tonon pull guard on purpose to attack heel hooks.

I think the main reason is that really good grapplers don't spend much time on their backs in open guard situations. Generally speaking if you have enough space to enter SLX, you have enough space to work to get back to your feet which is overwhelmingly what MMA fighters are trained to do. You are right that it can work though, as much as he's vilified for his ground game Conor MacGregor used a really nice SLX variant sweep against Diaz in the first fight and easily got back to his feet off it.
 
Generally speaking I think most of what you see in no-gi grappling works fine in MMA, you just don't see a lot of it because it's rarely the best choice in any given situation. That is, you can invert from RDLR and come out the back or whatever, but the situation where that would be your best option is not one that arises much in MMA because the dynamics of playing and passing guard are so different with striking. When I'm rolling with MMA fighters I find that my repertoire shifts in terms of which positions come up a lot, but I've never done anything sporty and gotten beat up for it (though in fairness my game is not at all sporty in the first place).
 
Generally speaking if you have enough space to enter SLX, you have enough space to work to get back to your feet which is overwhelmingly what MMA fighters are trained to do. .

That is, you can invert from RDLR and come out the back or whatever, but the situation where that would be your best option is not one that arises much in MMA because the dynamics of playing and passing guard are so different with striking.

There's so many weird positions when someone strikes from the top, there's a lot of squatting over the guy without even having passed the guard but you just barrage punches from there. Also there's a lot more people standing in half guard than in BJJ or half done knee slides where you just stop passing to throw punches. That's the postions where I think there's some possibilities to enter SLX, or X guard, RDLR or even deephalf to get out of trouble or to attack.

But you're right, the best grapplers are usually on top anyway.
 
There’s thousands of cool little nifty tricks these days, but what are some positions / techniques that would get you hauled away on a stretcher if you attempted to use them in a self-defence situation? I think it would be cool to see some more non-tournament and MMA oriented threads.

I think people really miss the forest through the trees on this. Depending on the context any individual position or movement can succeed or fail in basically any situation. I would say something really obvious like a berimbolo is probably less safe in a street fight than a tripod sweep. But honestly if a well trained grappler is fighting a non-experienced person I think they could probably berimbolo them just fine of they really wanted to.

There was a thread recently about leg locks in MMA and when we'll see more of them. The best posters mentioned that we likely won't ever see a ton of them, but not because they aren't effective in MMA, but that even if there were zero risk in going for leg locks, there are still a lot of smarter strategies for winning fights on average.

Besides camping out in inverted guard, I think most bottom positions are not as bad as they're made out to be for self defense or MMA provided that you actually move and don't just chill there.

I would also like to see more threads about grappling for MMA. For self defense no one asked me but I think we see less posts about that because what holds people's interest in jiu-jitsu tends to be grappling against other skilled grapplers or fighters, and not against people with no training. Empty handed skills are still important for self defense, along with lethal and less-lethal weapons, and retention of those weapons, first-aid skills, etc.
 
Tonon is a beast in scrambles, maybe he won't care about giving a top position. Askren was so many leagues ahead from his competition that he could pretty much do whatever he wants while grappling.
I think another thing to consider is what's fun. A lot of guys that grapple end up falling in love with punching people. Tonon said that his fight was the most fun he'd ever have. I think someone even asked him about if he thought to sub the other guy or not and he said he easily could have but thought it was way more enjoyable to just punch the other dude. In Ryan Hall's first couple pro MMA fights he passed up sub opportunities to get TKOs and Demian Maia even had a period where he tried to stand and strike instead of takedown and submit.

MMA is an opportunity to do something different for a lot of these grapplers and even if they still take the fight to the floor a lot of times they enjoy the feeling of getting T/KO win instead of a sub win.

So in my humble opinion Tonon is not going to become the same heel hooking machine in MMA that he was in submission grappling. I think that's more because he likes to hit people though.

There's loads of stuff from open guard that can do you more harm than good. Half guard in BJJ is a good attacking position, but in MMA is maybe just as bad as being mounted. Deephalf guard, inverted guard (if you don't attack the legs fast). Closed guard is pretty neutral, guys on top don't get triangled all the time nowadays and fighters are more and more able to defend against strikes with closed guard and butterfly guard. But there's still a shitload of stuff that fighters didn't really explore in grappling from your back with strikes.

What I don't understand, it's why there's not more single X entries to attack the legs. If your stuck on your back with a guy standing over your butterflies, you can just enter into SLX and attack the legs from there. If you don't manage the sub, you'll have a scramble to get back up and it's low risks because it's tough to GnP someone when you're on your ass with a leg locked up.

Right now, the top leg grapplers doing MMA are generally the best grapplers and are pretty much always on top, and like Danaher said, he won't let go of a top position to try a leg attack in a MMA fight. I don't think we'll see Tonon pull guard on purpose to attack heel hooks.
Yeah I always thought SLX and butterfly were very underused in MMA. Joe Lauzon always had an awesome butterfly guard and has put it to great use over the years.
 
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I think another thing to consider is what's fun. A lot of guys that grapple end up falling in love with punching people. Tonon said that his fight was the most fun he'd ever have. I think someone even asked him about if he thought to sub the other guy or not and he said he easily could have but thought it was way more enjoyable to just punch the other dude. In Ryan Hall's first couple pro MMA fights he passed up sub opportunities to get TKOs and Demian Maia even had a period where he tried to stand and strike instead of takedown and submit.

MMA is an opportunity to do something different for a lot of these grapplers and even if they still take the fight to the floor a lot of times they enjoy the feeling of getting T/KO win instead of a sub win.

So in my humble opinion Tonon is not going to become the same heel hooking machine in MMA that he was in submission grappling. I think that's more because he likes to hit people though.


Yeah I always thought SLX and butterfly were very underused in MMA. Joe Lauzon always had an awesome butterfly guard and has put it to great use over the years.

The Tonon journey in MMA is very facinating to me. He has the occasion to prove that high level grapplers can do whatever they want in an MMA fight. Good strikers can't be effective if the other guy is around their hips every second of the fight.

But it takes special guys, guys with high pace like GSP, Askren, Maia, Shields… Who only had trouble against strong wrestlers that can brawl.

I think Tonon is in that line of fighters, relentless, always attacking, doesn't care if he loses a position…
 
MMA is an opportunity to do something different for a lot of these grapplers and even if they still take the fight to the floor a lot of times they enjoy the feeling of getting T/KO win instead of a sub win.

I feel Ryan and Tonon went for strikes not for fun but to gain some experience rather than dispatching inferior opponents as fast as they could.
 
I feel Ryan and Tonon went for strikes not for fun but to gain some experience rather than dispatching inferior opponents as fast as they could.
I think it too. Definitely. But if you want to check out Ariel Helwani's interview with Tonon I'm 90% confident that Tonon said he was just having a blast throwing hands and even on the floor thought it was more fun and novel to go for the TKO instead of the sub.
 
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