GracieMag will be coming out with an article on the controversial 50/50 guard used by Atos JJ black belts like Raphael Mendes, who used it to defeat the great Cobrinha at the World Professional Jiu Jitsu Cup.
Here's the post with the video of that match. First video. Mendes is in blue.
On the first glance, the 50/50 guard is a sort of hip grapevine. You can see instances where Mendes locks his ankles and instances where he locks his legs, half guard style (Kesting calls it the "leg triangle") to the outside.
You can see how bewildered Cobrinha is by the end of the match when he realizes he's been beaten by this kind of jiu jitsu. And the talk is whether or not the 50/50 is a legitimate guard style or "just stalling." I'm tempted to argue that it is neither.
I don't mean to say that it is illegitimate. But I do wonder if the 50/50 Guard represents the "best practices" of the guard player in the same way that other "alternative" guards like the spider guard, half guard and butterfly guard do.
I see Mendes using his grips to help keep Cobrinha's leg trapped between his two grape-vining legs, for example. This seems very inefficient to me. Any time you are using your hands to supplement what you can't accomplish with the strength of your legs is not likely to be a very good time.
I don't think that "best practices" means that a guard has to have an equal share of submission and sweep possibilities. But the guard does have to have a nice variety of one or the other. I'll grant legitimacy to the rubber guard, which is more a submission guard than a sweeping one, in the same way that I grant legitimacy to my beloved half guard, which is more a sweeping guard than a submitting one.
The 50/50 seems to have very few submission opportunities. I don't see the leverage for a choke or for attacking an arm. You are so deep hip-to-hip that the idea of attacking the knee or foot or ankle seems tricky. And the one sweep that Mendes seems to get on Cobrinha basically results in them being in the same mutual 50/50 like position (it's hard for you to be in the 50/50 and the other guy not somehow be at least halfway stuck in it himself) only with you being angled a bit more on top.
Enough to get reversal points - as Cobrinha learns to his great alarm. But does anybody want to spend 8, 9 or 10 minutes like this? Maybe going back and forth?
I don't think the 50/50 is stalling. It is a strategy of picking a side, locking your opponent's body, and trying to use your angle to put him off balance. What I don't like about the 50/50 fundamentally speaking is that it involves locking your body to lock your opponent's. And that doesn't get anybody anywhere. It's like guys who use the body triangle from the bottom in guard. (Actually, I take that back. Nothing is worse that the body triangle from the bottom in guard ...)
The 50/50 also speaks to another sin of the lighter weights (light feather and below typically), one of obsessive guard pulling. There are almost no takedowns in jiu jitsu below lightweight (approx. 167 in the gi) which leads to these weird simultaneous guard pulls. So a part of me sees the 50/50 as a curse that the smaller guys - whose jiu jitsu virtuosity is often without peer - have inflicted upon themselves with their relentless guard-playing obsession.
In any event, I'm looking forward to getting my copy of GracieMag and reading the debate. I'm even more looking forward to seeing how the top guys begin to figure out ways to pass and defeat the 50/50 as jiu jitsu continues to evolve.
