Biggest Loser of UFC 214: Jiu Jitsu (and wrestling)

[ippikiookami]

No BJJ at all in any of the main card fights (aside from a few seconds of Cerrone/Lawlor), and the much-hyped 3-time world BJJ champion was as helpless as a child because fights start standing up and if you don't know how to take someone down, your art is useless.

I've trained BJJ for ten years, and last night was a big wake up call: If you're good on your feet, you'll win a lot more fights than if you spend years perfecting a ground art. Even wrestlers have to be discouraged: a great wrestler like Woodley is much better known for his hands than anything else. And how many take down attempts did Olympian Cormier try? One?

Sure, many of the fighters on the main card were more stand up guys than ground fighters, but for the entire card the ground game was non-existent or completely neutralized by kickboxing.

I started BJJ because stand up was taking too much of a toll on my knees, and -- back in the day -- ground specialists were schooling the stand up guys, but we've come full circle, and now any stand up person needs to do is avoid takedowns and clinches and they'll win.

MMA is quickly becoming just kickboxing with a little takedown defense. As Donald Trump would say, "Saaad".

 

[ineverpost]

Every fight starts on the feet. You better know how to strike

 

[dickcheney]

Yeah but are you training bjj to get in shape and protect yourself if you have to against general population or are you training bjj because you think you are going to get in a streetfight with the top 3 UFC fighters in each weightclass?

 

[Ashenthorn]

Can't believe that Maia wasn't using punches to set up the takedown and just took bad shot after bad shot.

 

[Law of One]

Though Maia was clearly trying his best, I wonder how much of the shift away from grappling is due to fighters wanting to please the fans.

I tend to watch with casuals (how many diehards are really out there) and the overall perception they have is "Quit grabbing him! He don't want to fight!" It's annoying and makes me wonder if MMA will ever be truly seen as a sport.

But for me, I find the opposite, I constantly get injured grappling and almost never from striking, even with my bad knees. Recently tore my patella tendon off a takedown. Lost a tooth from another takedown.

 

[HangNail]

That's because everyone has been training their grappling and striking to death. Nobody is a "specialist" anymore. The people you see fight on Saturday night are world class grapplers, or train their grappling at the top level. The ground game wasn't "neutralized" by kickboxing but by wrestling and grappling. Anti-grappling is a myth. You aren't going to avoid takedowns if you don't know how to grapple, period.

 

[Thunderflash500]

These are trained athletes. It's silly to compare what they do, to what you do. But yes, of course having striking is better than not.

It's unlikely you'll be fighting Olympians on the street.

 

[Akula77]

I've trained BJJ for ten years, and last night was a big wake up call

No offense, but hardly a quick learner.
This trend has been going on since many years.

As a matter of fact, BJJ is so effective that now everybody trains it quite a lot, including td defense that is an inherent part of BJJ (and of course wrestling).

Dynamics have changed but to say that BJJ is useless is foolish. BTW ask Brian Ortega.

 

[bad seed]

you just need to train the bare minimum bjj and wrestling to defend takedowns and escape submission attemps. Spend all your other training time on making dynamite for dem hands.

winning a streetfight with your legs wrapped around another man on the ground is no win at all.

 

[Uber_Noober]

Just let them Bang bruh

 

[JosephTessaro]

BJJ hasn't evolved.

 

[TheGrouch]

Maia is just not athletic (relatively speaking), and can't really shoot a decent takedown without the other person either making a mistake or being weaker. Glad that hype-train is over. Now please give Woodley someone who will actually fight with him.

 

[ippikiookami]

Agree that BJJ needs a big reinvention if it's going to be relevant to fighting. Most gyms I've been in don't teach takedowns at all (practice matches start on the knees usually), and not a single BJJ class I've ever been in trains using the art against strikes (when I started -- in MMA -- the ground class would go one guy starting in guard and using punches and trying to escape while the guy on the bottom could only use jiu-jitsu and had to defend, sweep or submit).

Yes, there are a lot of MMA classes that incorporate BJJ and combine it with real-world fight situations, but the traditional schools either need to make some big changes or go the way of Tae Kwon Do and Kung Fu -- good spectacle, but not effective against anyone that's done any basic fight training.

 

[PolishHeadlock]

Lol at thinking that pajama wrestling wins real fights

 

[CerebralKnievel]

Can't believe that Maia wasn't using punches to set up the takedown and just took bad shot after bad shot.

You must have never seen him fight before, because telegraphing his struggling but persistent single leg drag is literally all he ever does.

 

[ippikiookami]

Maia was a perfect example of what's wrong with traditional BJJ: didn't know how to do a takedown or set one up, didn't try to pin his opponent against the fence and try to work TD from the clinch, didn't know how to use kicks to bait Tyrone into a takedown, etc. All these years after Anderson Silva and he -- and traditional BJJ -- haven't evolved at all.

 

[D 1 Wrestler]

It was a loss for bjj but not for wrestling. Wrestling is what allows the better striker to keep it standing. This is why Stipe, Jones, Cody, Tj, MM, etc are all champs because they like to bang and have elite wrestling background to keep it there

 

[CerebralKnievel]

No offense, but hardly a quick learner.
This trend has been going on since many years.

As a matter of fact, BJJ is so effective that now everybody trains it quite a lot, including td defense that is an inherent part of BJJ (and of course wrestling).

Dynamics have changed but to say that BJJ is useless is foolish. BTW ask Brian Ortega.

No sense debating with the mentally inept clods on this forum. The day after an event is always the worst, when all of the inbreds come out to pose as fight professors, allowing the fight results (rather than the actual events within the fights) to dictate their shallow opinions.

Also, anyone proclaiming that BJJ is "dead" because a guy just earned his second title shot using (essentially) nothing BUT that art is at the height of sherdog moronocy.

Tyron did what no one has been able to do to Maia for some time - shut his grappling down for an entire fight.

 

[CerebralKnievel]

Maia was a perfect example of what's wrong with traditional BJJ: didn't know how to do a takedown or set one up, didn't try to pin his opponent against the fence and try to work TD from the clinch, didn't know how to use kicks to bait Tyrone into a takedown, etc. All these years after Anderson Silva and he -- and traditional BJJ -- haven't evolved at all.

Maia definitely attempted to pin Woodley to the fence to wrap his legs and ground him - he simply wasn't able to do it.

 

[anhedonia]

Jiu jitsu is fucking fine. Every fight is a struggle to get a fight into the position or range that you excel in and your opponent is the weakest. Oh 70 year old Maia couldn't take down D1 All American wrestling champion so BJJ must not work anymore? You see wrestlers fail to TD other wrestlers all the time and strikers fail to keep it on the feet it's just fighting. Every striker in the UFC cross trains desperately to stop takedowns and if they didn't they wouldn't be there.