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First Things First

This past week we had two major professional Brazilian jiu-jitsu cards. We're going to analyze some of the more interesting technical sequences and explain why there's never been a better time to do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Now, the onus is on the athletes to make the most of the platform that’s been built.

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The State of Professional Brazilian Jiu-jitsu

In less than two weeks, we were treated to three separate major professional grappling cards. These three cards each had a unique combination of rules and playing surface.

To be clear, we also got events in Enigma, AIGA, GrappleFest, and ADXC. But that’s just too many matches to talk about for one edition. Today we’re going to stick to The UFC’s Fight Pass Invitational (FPI), the IBJJF GP, and Karate Combat’s Pit Submission Series.

Karate Combat had the most viral moment of the three with Craig Jones's showtime triangle. But top to bottom FPI 6 ran circles around both cards.

UFC Fight Pass Invitational

The UFC brand has fully embraced Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition. After Fight Pass briefly flirted with streaming the Olympics of grappling, the ADCC World Championships, they've pushed ahead with their own grappling promotion, FPI. FPI comes equipped with its own unique ruleset.

FPI matches have a hybrid scoring system. The matches are fifteen minutes broken into two distinct periods.

FPI’s matches’ opening periods are ten minutes of submission only. During submission only you cannot score positive points, but you can accrue negative points.

The last five minutes of an FPI match come with scoring and your negative points carry over. This actually incentivizes athletes to work the entire time.

FPI 6 ended with a 75% finish rate. Two of the marquee matches even had submission finishes that look like two sides of the same coin.

Nicholas Meregali

The gi specialist Meregali looks more and more like a no gi natural every time he competes. Fight Pass Invitational 6 squared him off against -88 ADCC world champion Matheus Diniz. Meregali was so effective he looked borderline bored.

It’s important to notice Meregali’s base, posture, and distance. When Diniz tried to off balance him and wrestle up, he stood over him and pushes his face away. This gave Meregali the space to stack him and attack his back.

Meregali's rate of improvement is unbelievable. Every time he competes he looks markedly different.

Previously his wrestling looked like a technical liability. This time he came out confident and competent to take Diniz out quickly.

Craig Jones

The main event featured the people's champ. Professional grappling's funniest athlete, Craig Jones.

Jones has been playing more of a top heavy and pressuing game recently. In this match against American grappling legend Rafael Lovato Jr. he went back to his roots for a quick leg lock finish.

Did you see the sequences’ similarities? Both have their roots in K Guard.

Diniz was trying to enter a leg entanglement from K Guard. Maybe he was looking for the back take or maybe he was going for the leg lock. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is Meregali puts his own weight back and pushed Diniz's feet open before Diniz can get going. From there, Meregali stacked Diniz to get to the finish above.

Contrast Diniz's entry with Jones's. Diniz swung his leg wide in front but Jones hooked his leg to Lovato’s hip. This meant Lovato had a hard time pushing Jones’s leg off. Then Jones locked his legs high on Lovato’s thigh, freeing his hand to grab Lovato's far ankle for a double ankle sweep.

We touched on this briefly during Friday's premium article. Your leg entanglement should off balance your opponent and you need to knock them down to finish your submission. If you can't, that means you’ll get punched in the face in MMA. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu it often turns into a back take like Meregali’s above.

Right Athletes, Right Arenas, And The Right Rules

The quality difference from the three professional events over the past few weeks is staggering. Both of the Pit Submission Series matches ended in quick submissions, six of UFC FPI 6's eight matches ended in a submission, but only 3 of the 18 IBJJF Absolute GP matches ended in a submission.

I'm aware that grappling isn't all about submissions, but some of the matches literally had no scoring. The tournament's winner Kaynan Duarte even looked like he didn't even care to be there while he cruised through his victories. If he's not interested, why should his audience be?

You shouldn’t care that athletes play risk averse games to get wins. They are incentivized to win, not appease our appetite for violence.

What we should care about is seeing athletes get more opportunities to make more money. In that respect, I'm actually concerned that rulesets that are viewed as boring will prove to be commercially unviable. No one will watch them and they’ll die a slow death. No one should want less competitions.

Professional Brazilian jiu-jitsu events need to do something to encourage action so people watch and more money continues to come in. I know it's not easy, but it should be that simple.

Karate Combat's Pit looks like it will work because it literally pushes athletes together.

FPI looks like it will work because the scoring simultaneously allows for athletes to play open without fear of being scored on and penalizes inactivity.

The IBJJF's scoring looks stale because they don't call stalling enough. They let athletes be boring.

Competition between competitions is a good thing. It is already forcing iteration and innovation, and it’s brought new rules and arenas. 

I'm happy athletes can choose where they want to compete. I just hope they make the most of these new platforms and compete in ways that brings more eyes and practitioners to the sport.

Further Reading And Three Stories You May Have Missed

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