A popular refrain among jiu jitsu people, a compliment often granted a particular performance or performer, is that so and so “goes for the submission, not just the points.” The inference is that there are jiu jitsu people whose time on the mat is an endless and incessant quest for the holy grail of the submission on the one hand, and jiu jitsu people whose time on that mat is characterized by “going for points” on the other.
Maybe so, maybe so. But I think we are starting to see the discontents of this “go for the sub” at all costs mentality. These discontents are not showing up so much in the sport arena, but in mixed martial arts where world class jiu jitsu guy after world class jiu jitsu guy has come up short against tough competition.
In particular, I’m thinking of Alberto Crane’s performance against Roger Huerta in the UFC and, to a greater extent, Rani Yahya’s performance against Chase Beebe in the WEC bantamweight title match. In both instances, the jiu jitsu fighter had a clear advantage on the ground. And in both instances, the jiu jitsu fighter had numerous opportunities to gain and maintain control of the fight on the ground. Yet in both cases, the jiu jitsu fighter came up short, losing by TKO in the later rounds in Crane’s case and by unanimous decision in Yahya’s contest.
What characterized the jiu jitsu of Crane and Yahya, in my opinion, was “going for the sub.” Both fighters threw submission attempt after submission attempt—with an unfortunate focus on leglocks—at their opponent. From the bottom, from the side, from the scramble, wherever Crane or Yahya was positioned, there was some submission attack that could be launched. That is definitely to their credit, their encyclopedic knowledge of submission attacks.
But a mixed martial arts contest, a Vale Tudo match is not a spelling bee of techniques. I think back on the “Gracie in Action” tapes, the sampler videos of members of the Gracie family fighting challenge matches against various opponents. The recipe in those contests, like the Gracie streetfighting recipe, is almost banal in its simplicity: take the fight to the ground, secure dominant position, attack with submission attempts based on what the opponent gives you.
To me, it seems as if too many jiu jitsu fighters in MMA are forgetting the middle step, and are attacking with submission regardless of position. This tends to mean a lot of attacking from the guard. And while we have seen some impressive work from the guard recently (Diaz v. Gomi and Aoki v. Hansen come immediately to mind), the fact of the matter is that the guard is an inferior position relative to others such as the mount or rear mount.
This is all the more so in mixed martial arts. We can all remember watching Fedor plunge through Minotauro’s guard in their three contests. And while reasonable people can argue about how good Nog’s guard game is (Rickson Gracie, famously, was not impressed), if ever there was evidence that the guard, as good as it is, remains an inferior position to attack from compared to other positions such as the mount or rear mount, those contests between Fedor and Minotauro proved it.
Over-reliance on the guard—which arguably cost BJ Penn his fight with GSP and his rematch with Matt Hughes—is one problem of the modern jiu jitsu fighter in mixed martial arts. The other tendency is leg attacks.
What is it about mixed martial arts that turns talented jiu jitsu fighters into catch wrestlers? Obviously, if a leg lock falls into your lap, then you should exploit that mistake. But to attack the legs as a primary objective in a mixed martial arts contest is madness. As I have said in conversations about jiu jitsu and MMA, losing position is very expensive. And there is no surer way to lose position than to build a gameplan based on attacking an opponent with kneebars.
There have been plenty of close kneebar finishes: Stevenson v. Neer, Mishima v. Florian, Barnett v. Nog I, and now most recently Yahya v. Beebe. But the emphasis is on “close.” None of those leglocks finished the fight. In fact, I think Kevin Randleman might be the last top contender finished by kneebar in recent memory. Jiu jitsu fighters—who shouldn’t be preoccupied with kneebars in the first place as far as I am concerned—should pay closer attention to this.
Paulo Filho takes a lot of crap from some fans. But I’ll tell you what: Filho knows the importance of position before submission. Filho will take you down, pass your guard, mount you, and pound on you until you give him your arm or your back. That’s jiu jitsu 101 and while a number of people have professed this, Filho is one of the few to consistently approach his contests with this fundamental jiu jitsu in mind.
So what does this have to do with points? Compare two fighters. One pulls guard, and then begins working for submissions. The other takes his opponent down, passes his guard, takes dominant position, and then begins working for submissions. Which fighter is more likely to be successful—all else equal?
In my opinion, the second fighter has a number of advantages. Not only is the second fighter way ahead in terms of scoring (2 for the takedown, 2 for the pass of guard, 3 or 4 for the dominant position), but the fact that he is as many as eight points ahead puts tremendous pressure on his opponent to do something or risk losing the match. That pressure, that urgency, makes it much more likely for him to make a mistake and leave himself vulnerable to a submission attack.
Additionally, there is a psychological advantage. The second fighter's jiu jitsu is completely in control. He has already shown an ability to impose his game--in three different contexts--on his opponent. That's the kind of thing that can increase the sense of desperation on the part of the opponent, and make him that much more vulnerable to submission.
I haven’t seen it quoted, but apparently Mario Sperry encourages fighters to pursue this “point-oriented” approach to fighting—and for exactly the reasons I’ve suggested. The goal of fighting is to put your opponent in the worst position possible so that, in his desperation to avoid defeat, he makes a mistake. I’ve always said that the point of jiu jitsu isn’t to test your jiu jitsu. It is to put the other guy in a position to test HIS jiu jitsu. I’m reminded of the line from the movie, PATTON: “The point isn’t for you to die for your country. The point is to get some other poor son of a bitch to die for HIS country.”
And in the context of mixed martial arts, as in most fights, that test means putting the other guy on his back, not inviting your opponent to test how good you are from your back.
Obviously, if an opportunity to submit an opponent from your back exists, then sure, take it. But the more I watch MMA, the more I realize that jiu jitsu guys don’t necessarily have the time it takes for an opponent, particularly one content to attempt to strike from within the closed guard, to make a big enough mistake to get submitted. Obviously it happens. But the issue is one of probability.
In a sport with five minute rounds, with a bias toward “standing fighters up” when the action on the ground is not sufficiently chaotic, the jiu jitsu guy cannot afford, in my opinion, to lie there on his back waiting for the guy on top to make a mistake. He instead needs to change the game, by working more to take a dominant position, so that the biases and rules of the sport of mixed martial arts—which rewards takedowns and positional dominance as much or more than failed submission attempts—can work for him instead of against him.
Think about it: the most dominant jiu jitsu fighter, in sport jiu jitsu, no less, almost stereotypically finishes fights from a dominant position. Isn’t that lesson enough for the rest of us?
