Rickson's Way
Jiu-Jitsu icon accepts to be interviewed by three-time world champion, replies to Wanderlei Silva, clears his criticism on the level of MMA fighters and bets on his new tournament, which creates a worldwide BJJ ranking and promises to valorize the sport-–and the athletes-–in an unheard-of way.
I wanted in the first place to create a competition where all sorts of grapplers could face one another; gather, in one event, Jiu-Jitsu, sambo, wrestling… Budo Challenge is a new sport! I think in the future there will great technical exchange going on among those athletes, because they will have to study a bit of everything in order to perfect themselves and become Budo champions. And that will be good for the gi-sports. The creation of the rules was a lot easier than I had imagined. I took away all that stalls the fights, like advantages or too many points for attaining a certain position. Submission attempts are worth a lot more than achieving positions. Submissions are considered not only at the time of the fight, but also in the overall calculation, which generates the yearly ranking. In my opinion, the beauty of the gi-sport is in the submission, in the vast variety of technical possibilities. With the gi on you have a lot more possibilities of submitting, sweeping, taking down, controlling your foe… Because you have a lot more grip options. Thus I reached my goal: fights had much moving going on and technique came out – you only have to see that the percentage of submissions was very high. Most fights ended in that fashion. This technical advantage gi has over no-gi was something that made me choose a gi-on competition right away.
