will the u.s. take over as the #1 bjj country?

thewhiterooster

thewhiterooster

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I doubt the overall popularity of jiu jitsu will every be as big in the u.s. as it is in Brazil. but the majority of the worlds best bjj practitioners and teachers now live in the states. given that, do you think the u.s.a. will soon be taking over (with many more people winning the mundials, pan ams, etc)?
 
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thewhiterooster said:
I doubt the overall popularity of jiu jitsu will every be as big in the u.s. as it is in Brazil. but the majority of the worlds best bjj practitioners and teachers now live in the states. given that, do you think the u.s.a. will soon be taking over (with many more people winning the mundials, pan ams, etc)?
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Some time in the future... may be.
 
I don't like people thinking their country is superior
 
Probably. We're the best at every other sport that matters ;)
 
I doubt it. We have many of the best coaches and the best facilities,but our best athletes aren't training BJJ and the best athletes that are, aren't really getting supported. The US has all the advantages (best coaches, Worlds and most Invitationals are held here, etc etc) but it is a Middle class sport. BJJ is riddled with nonathletic competitors who have disposable money and time to train.I was an avid BJJ enthusiast and year in year out I heard about some American guy dominating the Invitationals,doing interviews,and seeing highlight videos of them, only to see them get dominated by some Brazilian kid I never heard of. BJJ in Brazil is available to the lower class which is where the best athletes usually are.The Miyaos,Lo,Jackson Sousa,Jacare,Terere, etc wouldn't be training BJJ in the US because they wouldn't be able to afford the $200/month unlimited membership or IBJJF fees and travel costs of the Invitationals. Lloyd Irvin has a program where he subsidizes the cost for kids that can't pay, has developed some of the top Americans in BJJ, but he got shitted on. I grew up playing soccer here and we have alot of money focused on the sport here, but we will never be dominant until we make soccer available to everyone. The sports that are available to everyone here(Basketball and Football) we dominate in.
 
JustTheTip said:
Matters to us. We suck at Soccer which matters to everyone else.
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I wouldn’t say we outright suck, just that we massively underperform relative to our usual showings in world sports.

Also I doubt making soccer available to everyone is the issue ... with 300 million people, you only need to make it available to 1/4th of the population and you are already in the range of Germany/Spain/Italy/England etc. And soccer isn’t exactly an inaccessible sport anyways, which is why it’s such a favored world sport. We don’t need more people to have access, we would need Americans to actually give a fuck about professional soccer. As it stands, to be a fan of MLS strikes most people as somewhat eccentric, like a passion for LPGA or something.

I’m sure there’s an NCAA soccer league, for example, but I’ve never seen a single article about it, and have no idea which schools have won championships in it. It may as well not exist in the public’s mind.

Same with BJJ, which has zero monetary reward, and zero spectator sport potential ... just like judo, karate, and other combat sports with no spectator value. You are never going to have much infrastructure behind developing elite athletes in such areas unless you can do it through a school system or state sponsored competition (like the Olympics).
 
thewhiterooster said:
I doubt the overall popularity of jiu jitsu will every be as big in the u.s. as it is in Brazil. but the majority of the worlds best bjj practitioners and teachers now live in the states. given that, do you think the u.s.a. will soon be taking over (with many more people winning the mundials, pan ams, etc)?
Click to expand...
Honestly, I think that it may have already surpassed Brazil in terms of best teachers and schools in the world. I think athletes from around the world come train here. Southern California and New York have some of the top schools in the world. The issue is there is no money to be a top competitor in BJJ. So you win a medal at worlds, well so what. I guess you can make money on seminars or whatever. I mean there are people trying to make professional grappling contests, EBI, Polaris, etc., it’s still not NFL or NBA level, so people don’t really give a fuck.
 
Zankou said:
I wouldn’t say we outright suck, just that we massively underperform relative to our usual showings in world sports.

Also I doubt making soccer available to everyone is the issue ... with 300 million people, you only need to make it available to 1/4th of the population and you are already in the range of Germany/Spain/Italy/England etc. And soccer isn’t exactly an inaccessible sport anyways, which is why it’s such a favored world sport. We don’t need more people to have access, we would need Americans to actually give a fuck about professional soccer. As it stands, to be a fan of MLS strikes most people as somewhat eccentric, like a passion for LPGA or something.

I’m sure there’s an NCAA soccer league, for example, but I’ve never seen a single article about it, and have no idea which schools have won championships in it. It may as well not exist in the public’s mind.

Same with BJJ, which has zero monetary reward, and zero spectator sport potential ... just like judo, karate, and other combat sports with no spectator value. You are never going to have much infrastructure behind developing elite athletes in such areas unless you can do it through a school system or state sponsored competition (like the Olympics).
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I'm not talking about making soccer available to MORE people,but a more diverse amount of people. Currently, competitive soccer in the US is mainly available to upper middle class people. In other countries, Soccer is available to everyone equally. Just like Basketball is here. I played Soccer in High School and every year we got foreign students(parents were diplomats or in Tech) from Brazil,Spain, Italy etc and they usually were not good in Soccer. I asked one of them about it and he said "Soccer is a common man's sport in Brazil. I played badminton." If sports like Soccer, Wrestling, and BJJ were equally accessible to everyone across all wealth categories,race, and environments, we would dominate and those sports would be far more exciting.
 
Dogstarman said:
Honestly, I think that it may have already surpassed Brazil in terms of best teachers and schools in the world. I think athletes from around the world come train here. Southern California and New York have some of the top schools in the world. The issue is there is no money to be a top competitor in BJJ. So you win a medal at worlds, well so what. I guess you can make money on seminars or whatever. I mean there are people trying to make professional grappling contests, EBI, Polaris, etc., it’s still not NFL or NBA level, so people don’t really give a fuck.
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There is a ton of money in Soccer,but we still suck on a World level.
 
JustTheTip said:
I'm not talking about making soccer available to MORE people,but a more diverse amount of people. Currently, competitive soccer in the US is mainly available to upper middle class people. In other countries, Soccer is available to everyone equally. Just like Basketball is here. I played Soccer in High School and every year we got foreign students(parents were diplomats or in Tech) from Brazil,Spain, Italy etc and they usually were not good in Soccer. I asked one of them about it and he said "Soccer is a common man's sport in Brazil. I played badminton." If sports like Soccer, Wrestling, and BJJ were equally accessible to everyone across all wealth categories,race, and environments, we would dominate and those sports would be far more exciting.
Click to expand...

Again, enough total numbers takes care of this. Other nations don’t seem to require such diversity to produce elite teams, and they do it with far smaller populations. The major obvious difference is that we have no credible local pro and club teams that people are involved with. There’s two MLS teams in LA, for example, but they are still super niche.

The lack of personal identification is why so few people like soccer here, not lack of access. Every high school has it more or less, but nobody cares about it. My high school had it; nobody cared. I never heard about what they did, nor did I care. My undergrad had it I’m sure, but tbh I don’t even know because again, nobody cared. It wasn’t access, it was indifference by the population. Hard to get people to devote their life to a sport with no money and that almost nobody in gen pop cares about (much like BJJ ...)

You would have to generate some sort of local pride in the teams for people to care more, but as it stands, for your school’s soccer team to win is felt to be about as impressive as its women’s volleyball team winning. You’d feel embarrassed for bragging about it, unless your own kid was on the team.
 
JustTheTip said:
I'm not talking about making soccer available to MORE people,but a more diverse amount of people. Currently, competitive soccer in the US is mainly available to upper middle class people. In other countries, Soccer is available to everyone equally. Just like Basketball is here. I played Soccer in High School and every year we got foreign students(parents were diplomats or in Tech) from Brazil,Spain, Italy etc and they usually were not good in Soccer. I asked one of them about it and he said "Soccer is a common man's sport in Brazil. I played badminton." If sports like Soccer, Wrestling, and BJJ were equally accessible to everyone across all wealth categories,race, and environments, we would dominate and those sports would be far more exciting.
Click to expand...

This is the problem USA faces.
You have the most unfriendly athlete program in existence. Having a sport tied to a school system is ruining soccer and Many other sports. Also I heard that college athletes are unpaid. Like, what the fuck, they are playing high level football, why can't they be sponsored or paid to perform? In Europe people live from playing soccer at way lower levels, and it means people are able to dedicate their lives to it.
The level of entrance, having to take a college education and the lack of payment for athletes are the biggest problem the USA faces when it comes to creating soccer stars.
 
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