|
I will probably watch it live. 112 was going to be the best card of the year until Vitor Belfort pulled out from fighting A. Silva. As it is, Demian Maia poses little threat. If he cannot get it to the mat quickly, Silva will demolish him because he only needs the tiniest of openings to flatten openings with his boxing. The way he has clowned guys since starting in the UFC is just disgusting. For not be being an actual boxer, he puts on boxing clinics.
However, BJ Penn and Renzo Gracie are two of my all time favorite fighters. So I will watch with great abandon.
Riov:
I respect what Eddie Bravo has done immensely. The rubber guard system he has developed is one of the best ways to control your aggressor's posture while protecting yourself from blows. However, I find it greatly falls within the realm of use for sport, rather than self defense, and here's why I think that and why I think that it being so is a problem. I'm sure you know most of it, but I want to be comprehensive.
Firstly, MMA came from Vale Tudo and challenge matches the Gracies used as way to hone and develop their art and try out techniques. They received this philosophy from Mitsuyo Maeda who was Jigoro Kano's student. The Kodokan forbid challenge matches and professional fights since the Kodokan's purpose was to develop Judo not only as combat effectiveness self defense style, but to be a social and educational tool within Japanese society so that the martial skills that Japan used pre-Meiji Restoration might be preserved more readily.
However, MMA has become a sport, far removed from challenge matches. Things like round times, stand-ups, judges decisions and use of gloves greatly favor wrestlers and kickboxing styles over grapplers like Judo, Sambo and Jujutsu players. Grapplers have to contend with not only round timers but being stood up and thus have a time pressure which works directly against the philosophy of exhausting your opponents, advancing your position and then finishing the fight. Gloves hinder our ability to grab and feel while grappling and greatly help wrestlers punch with full power without fear of breaking a hand. Judges decisions mean working from the guard often loses you the fight because top control is erroneously considered more important than guys like BJ Penn or the Diaz brothers who are great guard players and could probably finish the fight from underneath given enough time. Just watch round 3 of Diego Sanchez against Jon Fitch. Fitch did his usual lay and pray style which comes from his wrestling pedigree while Sanchez tried to end the fight with at least 9 submission attempts from guard. Jon just survived.
So MMA is a limited tool for measuring success of how well jujutsu can be used to defend oneself, because unlike the vale tudo fights and challenge matches, it is further removed from a street fight situation.
But what we do see in MMA is this: those fighters who are most dangerous inside the guard are typically world class wrestlers with enough submission knowledge to avoid getting swept or submitted from inside the guard. Ken Shamrock way back in the day was the first guy to do this, which makes sense because he was a catch wrestler and had great submission knowledge, but also a freestyle wrestler which gave him good positional knowledge and takedowns. The guys most dangerous from guard and half guard are guys like Georges St. Pierre, Brock Lesnar, Jon Fitch (more conservative) etc. These guys all have world class wrestling pedigrees, particularly GSP.
Where Mission Control is so powerful is its ability to break the posture of wrestlers and control the ground fighting ability to sit in guard and rain down very devastating punches. In a street situation, most attackers aren't going to know how to posture out of a guard, how to avoid submissions and will likely make basic mistakes allowing you to pin their wrist for a keylock or give up a triangle or arm bar. Furthermore, most attackers in the street are not going to be knowledgeable enough to pass the guard, at least not before you can advance yourself from guard and get a sweep to put yourself in full mount.
So Mission Control really has its best uses in Sport Jujitsu, Submission tournaments or MMA. However, the cost of using it means it requires good flexibility and more extraneous movements which use energy. The guiding principals that were used to develop Gracie's jututsu system are energy efficiency, natural body motions (low flexibility) and limited requirements of strength, power, speed and general athleticism.
Like I said prior, Mission Control and the rubber guard positions you can advance to beyond it are great for breaking an aggressors' posture. Against a big enough guy, they might be one of the few ways survive.
Of course, jujutsu is constantly being refined and Eddie Bravo might have stumbled onto the next very important pieces of the puzzle. And I'm only a beginner/novice at any rate.
Most of my workouts always include drilling the fundamentals, sweeps from the mount and guard, submissions from full guard, full mount, rear mount, side control, knee on belly and positional moves. I have a repertoire of very basic moves, maybe 40 techniques and a variation or two on each, but I drill them into memory and try to tweak them each time to make it better, more energy efficient and tighter.
_________________
"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
