Know Something?

I hate people who join a discipline and think they know more than  they do.

It happens all the time in martial arts. Stupidly, everybody seems to think they know something about fighting.

Usually they don’t.

Let’s assume somebody shows up who actually knows something. Let’s make them somebody who has been a member of a boxing gym for a year or so. He certainly should be able to hit, and to block, and to move in a boxing context.

He knows nothing about fighting, and less than nothing about Jiu-Jitsu.

Let’s say he shows up on open mat night, and wants to spar with somebody. Let’s say that they find a willing partner who doesn’t even mind if boxing-boy wants to start standing, and allowing punches.

Boxer moves forward, but the finds he isn’t getting any closer. Boxers shuffle, and it’s easy to stay well outside of their striking range, at least for a while. A while is all it would take.

Jiu-Jitsu people understand the danger, and will move from far-and-safe to a tight clinch in a blitz. Don’t believe me? Watch any of the first half dozen UFC events; back before everybody turned into experts in striking, kicking, and grappling.

I dare you to show me a single instance of a high-level striker being able to stop or injure a grappler blitzing in. The evidence all says that our boxing friend will find himself either clinched, or double-legged straight to the ground.

Let’s say the grappler establishes a clinch, which means our boxer is still relatively safe and on his feet.

As he knows nothing about grappling, how long do you think he’ll be able to stay upright? It will be measured in seconds.

So now the fight is on the ground, likely with the grappler on top. What comes next? The boxer tries to escape, of course. Will he succeed in making up something on the spot that the Jiu-Jitsu person hasn’t practiced handling a thousand times?

This is where the lack of skill really shows. He will try futilely to escape, and will be totally exhausted in very short order, and this will be followed by a submission. He might just be too stupid to give up to a joint lock, and might get hurt, but maybe it will be a choke and he’ll quietly take a little nap.

In the early days after Gracie Jiu-Jitsu’s arrival in the USA there were a great many challenge matches. A cash prize was offered to anybody who could beat the Jiu-Jitsu representative, and the bouts filmed. The money never had to be paid.

Dozens of these fights are available on Youtube now. They are almost monotonous in how they go. I have perfectly described them all in my boxer example.

Sometimes they were boxers, or Karate people, or body builders, or wrestlers, or street fighters. It didn’t matter.

Remarkably, the fights were so short, and shocking to the loser that they wanted to try again. Usually the second attempts end faster than the first as the Jiu-Jitsu person learned what to expect from that first exchange.

That was all pretty much settled a very long time ago. Want to see an incredibly clear example of this?

Look up “James Toney vs Randy Couture” on Youtube. This fight happened in 2010 between a former World Champion Boxer and a former UFC Champion. At that time, the UFC had been in operation for 17 years, and you’d have thought Toney would have shown up better prepared.

Couture was cautious, and took his time. The takedown happened about 20 seconds into the bout, and the submission about halfway through the first round.

I find it a hoot that people claim that Toney was too old at the time of the match. He was 42 at the time, but they ignore that Couture was 47.

So what has the boxer in the example done? He has not only shown that he doesn’t know how to fight, but also that he doesn’t know how fighting should even be done.

But what if he were instead somebody who wrestled in high school? It wouldn’t matter, although the story would have gone differently.

Likely the wrestler would have been the one to have caused the takedown, after which he would have been wrapped up in the guard. Wrestlers don’t study or train in the guard, as it puts your back on the mat which means instant defeat in that sport. They also don’t train in any submissions, or in how to defend them.

Watch “Royce Gracie vs Dan Severn.” Severn was a world-class wrestler who outweighed Gracie by almost a hundred pounds. The match had no time limit, and went 16 minutes. Severn got caught in a choke and had to tap.

So if you show up at a Jiu-Jitsu class thinking you know anything, you are wrong. I showed up with a Black Belt in Shotokan Karate, and experience as a wrestling coach, and yet kept my mouth shut it.

Some skills did transfer, but not the ones that you might have thought.

Karate sparring is full of lightning blitzes, both in and out. Although not exactly as it is done in grappling, this movement was already second nature to me.

Wrestlers, like all grapplers, are comfortable with rolling around on the mat.

Both disciplines require comfort and relaxation during combat-like training, and I had this down pat, too.

Other than that, there wasn’t much that was directly applicable. I remember how exciting to work the first armbars I’d ever done, and triangle chokes were like voodoo.

In our little group, there are four people who hold Black Belts in other arts, and yet we all put on White Belts again when we started Jiu-Jitsu. We did this both literally and figuratively. The actual belts we started over with were white in colour, and we also accepted that we were fresh students who knew nothing and needed to be taught.

Does a tennis player think he knows how to play baseball?

Does being a basketball player get you ready to join the NFL?