I recently finished my book, The Jiujitsu Gym Operations Manual. Please judge it:

I wrote The Jiujitsu Gym Operations Manual for people that want to teach jiujitsu, open a gym, and turn their passion for martial arts into a career, but have no idea where to start. We won Best Gym in Austin (not jiujtsu gym; gym!), have hundreds of members, and we’ve been cash flow positive since before we opened our doors. Plus we accomplished all this (and more) in less than 2 years.

You might think “2 years is not enough time to be giving anyone advice”. I agree. But before I was running this gym I was helping small businesses raise money to grow and before that I was a business coach for health & wellness franchisees. I’ve seen hundreds of examples of what works (and what doesn’t) so I know what you need to focus on if you want to turn your passion for rolling around on the floor into a fulfilling career.

The Jiujitsu Gym Operations Manual will teach you how to:

- Build a brand

- Open your doors with cash coming in

- Communicate clearly with anyone anywhere

- Organize classes and develop a holistic curriculum

If you want to preorder The Jiujitsu Gym Operations Manual click here.

Today’s article is a few short selections from the book edited together.

How To Talk Like A Coach

The best coaches aren’t necessarily the best athletes.

Ray Longo and John Danaher are two of the best combat sports coaches ever. They guided the careers of Georges St- Pierre, Matt Serra, Chris Weidman, Aljamain Sterling, Merab Dvalishvili, and Gordon Ryan.

Both Longo and Danaher accounted for MMA greats one of MMA’s biggest upsets ever. They also don’t have a competitive martial arts record.

If you’re at all familiar with Danaher and Longo you know they don’t have much else in common.

Longo is a fast talking New York native. He’s more Fonzie than fighter.
Danaher is a calm and calculated philosophy graduate student from New Zealand. Many people have described his mannerisms as Palpatinian.

They are on opposite ends of the coaching continuum except for one skill; communication. Both men are excellent at giving feedback that is simple, accessible, and memorable.

So how do you do that? How do you give helpful feedback that is not only technical but also simple and memorable so it’s accessible and actually useful?

Cue The Outcome, Don’t Describe The Body

Working with a bad coach might be the most tedious and frustrating experience on Earth. Unfortunately it’s kind of the norm in jiujitsu.

Every jiujitsu student has experienced sitting on the mat listening to an instructor drone on for what feels like hours. They use complicated language like,

“Rotate your arm approximately 40 degrees so you can further extend it until you can cleanly grab their cervical spine. Not like this, but like this. At this point you must be sure to not allow your opponent to begin to...”

You stop paying attention. You can’t pay attention.

Newer coaches have a tendency to over complicate their messages. It comes from a desire to be descriptive. And this desire fuels a perceived need for additional technical jargon.

Technical jargon is valuable only to the degree it makes messages clearer.

A good example of technical jargon is the term “scoop,” which means “leg under hook.” By saying scoop, you’ve told your athlete what to do in one syllable. “Leg under hook” is longer, less efficient, and, therefore, less helpful.

An example of more technical word choices being unhelpful comes from trying to tell an athlete to make space.

Unhelpful coaches will say things like, “Flex your triceps.”
Inexperienced coaches might say, “Extend your arm.
Good coaches will say, “Push them away.”

In sports science circles these are known as external vs. internal cues.

External cues orient athletes’ attention to a movement’s in- tended outcome. Internal cues tell the athlete about their own body and can be more confusing. At the very least, external cues get you to focus on your goal.

We can consolidate these two ideas to say that coaches should use jargon only when it shortens their message and gets their athlete to focus on the goal of their movement so their feedback is actionable and improves their performance. And really, a coach’s north star should be how well they help athletes complete their goals.

The best coaches pay attention to their athletes so well that they know what motivates them and how to best focus their attention. This is directly opposite to our example earlier of coaches that rely on overly technical jargon to wow their audience.

When you go out of your way to impress upon your athletes you’re really doing that for yourself. It’s the exact opposite of good coaching. It’s selfish.

If you need one word to describe good coaching, it would be selfless. It’s about giving your athletes the minimum instruction they need to learn, train, and get better on their own.

Really, good coaching is about how well you can get out of the way.

Curriculum, Classes, And Creating A Structure

It doesn’t matter how nice your facility is, how clean your mats are, or even if you have world class competitors; your gym will fail if your classes suck.

But what is a class that doesn’t suck? More importantly, how can you be a coach that doesn’t suck?

If you want to be a good coach you need to be good at capturing multiple minds’ attention at once.

So how do you do that? Do you focus on what you’re teaching? Or, the athletes listening to the instruction?

Asked another way, should you emphasize prescriptive instructions and drills so athletes can focus on acquiring specific movement patterns, or, should you organize training sessions in a way where individuals can develop their own unique skills and movement patterns? When you define teaching and training structure like that it’s pretty hard to argue against the latter.

Persons are unique. Aside from their personalities being different, the very structures that support individual bodies are not the same. Two people can be the same height and have different leg lengths. And even if their legs are the same length, that doesn’t mean their thighs and lower legs are the same size.

While it’s true that you can apply this logic to every single segment of everybody’s body, it’s not helpful to give everyone full creative license to choose every step of their own adventure. Plus, some people actually do want fully written novels to read.

You have to realize that a lot of people come to your gym just to have fun. They’re paying you to tell them how to get better. They don’t have the time, money, nor interest to study jiujitsu in the off hours like you have to if you want to be a great coach.

What I’ve found to be helpful is giving everyone the same goals, suggesting technical ways to achieve those goals, and letting them develop their own distinct skillset along the way. To do that, you need to do a few things:

1. Demonstrate fundamentally sound situations and techniques.

2. Instruct students to practice techniques with progressive resistance that facilitates their exploration of realistic encounters.

3. Use specific games and situational sparring to give students the opportunity to implement what they’re learning.

You can learn how to shoot a basketball alone on a court, but if you want to be a good basketball player you need to shoot while someone defends you. Then you need to practice shooting on a court filled with teammates and opposing defenders.

This doesn’t mean you should never shoot a basketball alone. Similarly it doesn’t mean you should only shoot when you’re on a court filled with people moving at full game speed.

Don’t get caught up in the fast moving fads of learning, techniques, and teaching. You need to teach more than the competition meta of jiujitsu. And if some new charismatic competitor or coach swears the method for their success is one tiny change, it’s probably only responsible for a tiny fraction of their success.

A lot of this can change if you’re only working with competitors. But if you want to be a good coach and run the best gym in your city, you need to be ready to work with all types of people. That means instructing all types of learning styles and being open to trying new things while not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

One thing you can do to separate yourself from most jiujitsu gyms is teach techniques and explain the tactics and strategies for both competition and self defense. This means your students learn the context for why they’re doing the moves they are, how those moves work, and the skills that define good practitioners.

This forces us to ask an important question. What’s the difference between a skill and a technique?

Techniques vs Skills

Let’s back up and look at jiujitsu competition. The sport was born from a self defense system that uses physical restraint techniques to facilitate you subduing opposition while exposing yourself to minimal risk.

So, ignoring technical terms, what are the skills you need to successfully physically restrain an opponent while limiting your own risk of injury?

You need to be able to go to the ground safely. This can mean ending up on top of your opponent or beneath them. What matters is not getting hurt in the process of going from wrestling on the feet to the floor.

When you’re on the floor you need to control your opponent’s posture and legs so they aren’t free to strike you. Then you need to work to keep them on the floor so they can’t get back up. You can achieve this from bottom or top, but the latter certainly makes it easier. If you are playing on bottom you need to use your limbs to off balance your opponent, get on top, get back to your feet, or at least maintain control of their posture and base the whole time. Once your opponent’s posture and base is controlled you need to be able to isolate limbs for submission holds.

Takedowns, reversals, passes, pins, submissions, and escaping from these techniques as people attempt to perform them on you. That’s jiujitsu.

Understanding these as the primary skills of jiujitsu doesn’t mean we can immediately design the best way to teach the sport. To do that, we need to subdivide these broad, non-specific skills into smaller and smaller skills.

If you want to get better at using your guard you need to get better at the skills of controlling posture and maintaining a safe distance. And if you want to get good at controlling posture, you can work on the skill of using an over hook to hold your opponent down.

By analyzing and subdividing the skills needed to do jiujitsu you can create situations and games for sparring to keep practice fun and interesting. This can be your system for building a flexible jiujitsu curriculum.

Creating a curriculum doesn’t mean writing out everything you can do in jiujitsu. What you want to do is outline your focus for the year and subdivide it by months, weeks, and days so you have an idea of what you’re going to teach ahead of time.

Create a plan with room to deviate. What does this look like at the most basic level?

1 Single Class Structure

Assume you’re teaching a 60 minute class about triangle chokes.

You can warm-up by putting athletes in full guard. Instruct the person on bottom to keep their opponent down. The person on top only has to stand-up without the person on bottom grabbing both of their ankles to win this small warm-up game. If the top player stands up without getting their ankles grabbed, reset them. Call out the fact that your students are working on the skills of standing out of closed guard and controlling opponents posture in full guard.

Do this for a few minutes. Then switch top for bottom. Then your athletes should be warmed up.

After warming up you can spend ~30 minutes on the technical elements of a triangle choke. You can show 2-3 methods of getting a triangle choke along with the finishing mechanics. After that block of practice, open the session up for questions.

Now that you’ve warmed up and practiced the finer details of the techniques, athletes can increase their intensity. Set up 2-3 games that reinforce the skills you worked on that day, and put those skills into the broader context of jiujitsu overall.

You might do a round where one partner starts with a triangle choke and their job is to finish it while their opponent only needs to get out of the triangle choke. Reinforce the idea that you’re working on the skill of controlling posture.

You can start the next round in side mount. The bottom player’s goal is to get back to closed guard, sweep, or stand-up and the top player has to get a submission. The bottom player is training their skills of escaping and re-guarding. The top player is working on their own skills of pinning and isolating a limb for a submission.

And for the third round you can have one athlete start with a single leg and try to finish it while the defender only has to free their leg. One athlete is working on their takedown skills while the other athlete is working on the skill of freeing a leg.

If there is an outcome in any of the rounds, switch who is on offense and defense. Keep switching until the round ends. Then switch partners. Lastly, leave the class with time for open, live training.

This is how I run classes at my gym. The difference with our fundamentals classes is we usually do a more general warm-up to teach students the basic athletic movements that transfer directly to the sport. We also don’t do any open sparring in fundamentals classes to make them shorter, reduce the likelihood of injury, and keep people focused on less so they don’t get overwhelmed. Also, our fundamentals classes are no gi. Why? There are less barriers to entry and fewer variables without gi grips. That means more people can start without getting overwhelmed by how complicated the sport can be.

Grappling is complicated. It can be hard. There’s no reason to make it hard for new students to get started.

It’s your job to make classes fun and interesting so new students actually want to come back. Increase accessibility and reduce the friction. Remove as many barriers to entry as possible while preserving the integrity of the art of jiujitsu.

If you want to read more about coaching and how to run the gym of your dreams, click here to preorder The Jiujitsu Gym Operations Manual here.

Around 1905 Theodore Roosevelt decided that his work as the President was getting in the way of his training. He installed mats in the White House basement to remedy the situation.

Roosevelt would religiously practice boxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu. He trained so hard and so often that he blinded himself in one eye. Roosevelt would profess his love of combat by bestowing the following line on our community,

“The art of jiu-jitsu is worth more in every way than all of our athletics combined.”

Maybe Donald Trump knows this. Maybe that’s why he’s allowing Dana White and the UFC to erect a stadium on the White House lawn this Sunday.

Or, maybe, White is able promote a fight for the President’s birthday because his company allowed Trump to launder his image so he could resume his temper tantrum of a presidency and use the office’s influence to manipulate the financial system and collect billions of dollars through insider trading.

If you told me that the barely legal sport I fell in love with as a teenager would make its way to the White House and become a national spectacle I would have laughed out from my bright red UFC hoodie. In retrospect I can only see the event as an inevitability.

The UFC’s success in creating an entertainment category and inserting itself into sports, culture, and politics can not be overlooked. And understanding the UFC’s success is critical to understanding how power games are won before the other teams even knows they’re competing.

Want to understand The United States of America? Watch combat sports.

Where else can you see people of all races, creeds, and intellectual flavors fight for a place on the world stage to better themselves and their children and their children’s children? That’s why I fell in love with fighting. That’s what it is supposed to be about.

Then you follow fighting for long enough and you learn about the reality of contracts, the unserious world of “unbiased” rankings and matchmakers, and the precious modern prize of site fees and you say, “I thought this was about who’s the best?” It is, as long as your definition of best is something like biggest cash creating moment.

What powers fighting is the same thing that drives our current culture. Attention.

Purists pray to see the best take on the best. Realists know that doesn’t put asses in seats.

You need contracts to ensure fighters fight.
You accept matchmakers’ existence because someone needs to pit contracted athletes against one another.
You learn site fees put money back into the business that should be paying the fighters more and more.

The sad thought that every real fan has to grapple with is they are the mark buying the ticket to see people bludgeon one another. You hope the men and women accepting the punishment are rewarded fairly for their contributions to the entertainment sphere. You tell yourself you tolerate it because you enjoy the craft. You love the technique. You play the games and you want to know how to win them.

Fair weather fans leave the arenas’ seats as soon as enough is enough. But hardcore fight fans trick themselves into thinking they get something else from the sport. Something beyond the psychotic vision born of a wannabe boxing manager’s thirst for power and influence.

If you want to know how one boy from the North East managed to become one of the most influential men in America keep reading. Just don’t expect the story to walk a straight line.

Human Cockfighting:
The First Rule of Fight Club Is You Tell Everyone About Fight Club

Combat sports were, and still are, regulated state by state through boxing commissions. There was no legal framework addressing mixed martial arts in the United States before the UFC existed. The sport had no promoters, no revenue streams, and no regulatory classification.

WOW Promotions and Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG) produced the first event at McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado on November 12, 1993. The event was delivered directly to consumers via pay-per-view. The UFC continued like this in an unregulated space until 1996. Then New York became the first state to enact legislation that legalized professional MMA fights in the United States. That’s right around the time that American mixed martial arts and the UFC met their first major road block.

Senator John McCain launched a campaign against MMA. We have him to thank for the term “human cockfighting”. He sent letters to the governors of all 50 US states asking them to prohibit the sport.

36 states enacted laws that banned “no-holds-barred” fighting. The New York legislature passed a bill that banned professional MMA fights just one year after legalizing professional MMA. The UFC had almost no means of hosting or broadcasting events and they were running out of money.

How did they climb out of that chasm? People like me. Chronically online fans.

The UFC was dying. The larger sport of MMA was not. Frankly, the most interesting action in martial arts was happening outside of the US in Japan.

Shootboxing, RINGS, Shooto, and Pancrase were all promoting professional contests before the UFC was. The rules were not uniform and to do a thorough explanation of every divergence between these promotions would be a book in and of itself. You just need to understand that these oversees organizations were fostering a live audience that the promotion PRIDE FC would capitalize on.

PRIDE was the biggest spectacle in MMA. Ever. To this day 2002’s PRIDE Shockwave (co-promoted with K1) is the most well attended mixed martial arts fight with 91,107 attendees. That many interested people meant there was plenty of talk online. That chat was, and still is, hosted on message boards like The Underground, Sherdog, and others.

John McCain thought he stopped the UFC and MMA in the USA by destroying the distribution. He didn’t understand that technology was evolving to solve this problem.

BitTorrent and peer-to-peer networks became the informal distribution layer for MMA content. Private communities like MMATorrents, MMA-Tracker, and XtremeWrestlingTorrents formed and fostered hoarding fight footage to create digital archives.

Piracy? Sure. But hardly anyone cared that an informal amateur hacker group was keeping the fighting spectacle we know as mixed martial arts from dying in the USA.

Then came another problem. People not like me.

I’m a hardcore fan. An addict. I gotta train, watch, and teach this stuff to keep my life in order.

Most people are not addicts. Most people don’t know the difference between MMA and the UFC. They don’t care because they think fighting and the people obsessed with it are weird, if not outright insane.

That meant me and the UFC were fighting a hard uphill battle through the 2000’s to get people to think we weren’t weird for enjoying fighting and that you should give fighting a chance because people exactly like you are already into it.

We’re Not So Different:
If You Do Watch, You’ll See We’re Actually Just Like You

I’m going to show you a picture of a man. I want you to guess his job.

If you guessed actor because you thought this guy was a young Jim Carrey you’d be wrong. If you guessed fighter you’d only be half right.

The guy above, Rich “Ace” Franklin, was a math teacher. And if you don’t know that, you probably avoided the UFC’s marketing machine through the early 2000’s.

The UFC started out as a No-Holds-Barred one night tournament. That earned them the ire of John McCain and his label, “human cockfighting”.

Cockfighting is illegal. Human cockfighting won’t be far behind if it ever gets regulated.

The UFC didn’t want that label so they rushed to get some type of recognition and regulation in the mid 90’s so they could continue to operate. The UFC started a war on two fronts. They fought to win the hearts and minds of the plebes, patricians, and, most importantly, politicians.

That’s why they went out of their way to tell everyone Franklin was a math teacher. Every time Chuck Liddell’s mohawk and tattooed head were on screen, the UFC was quick to remind us that he graduated from California Polytechnic University with a degree in accounting!

They were signaling that he, like you, is civilized.

You might think these people are scary but they’re a lot more similar to you than you can imagine. The fighting thing is basically just a hobby. A way to express their artistry. And you can understand that even if you don’t engage in the same pursuits that they do. That’s why you should watch.

MMA fighting was sold as a display of human will, technical mastery, and artistic flair.

This is martial arts marketing 101. They’re for everyone so anyone, including women, men, and skinny twerps, can learn them and use them to better their life.

Big Tent Sports:
Fighting Is Egalitarian

It’s hard to argue that the UFC is less egalitarian than other sports. Think about it like this, what other organizations promote men and women together? What other major sports even have them do the same activity?

The WNBA uses a different ball, rules, and court.
The MLB sponsors the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) instead of having a women’s baseball organization.
If you seriously want to discuss women’s tackle football you first have to look past the hilariously dumb and retrograde Lingerie Football League.

The UFC didn’t add women to the organization until UFC 157 in 2013. When they did, the card was headlined by Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche. Rousey went on to become one of the highest paid fighters ever and she recently came out of retirement to headline Netflix’s first MMA card. That event ended as the most watched MMA fight in American history.

Carmouche, the other half of the UFC’s first ever women’s fight, is openly gay. The woman who usurped Rousey’s claim as the UFC’s best WMMA fighter, Amanda Nunes, spent most of her time as a champion married to another woman in the UFC. Even as far back as 2009 Dana White was saying,

Outside of gender and sexual orientation, what other sport has high profile athletes from every corner of the world? America, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Siberia, Dagestan, Australia, New Zealand, and The United Kingdom all currently have a UFC champion. Half of those regions have never even put an athlete into the NBA, MLB, or NFL.

To say that the UFC and mixed martial arts more broadly doesn’t have representation from all walks of life is ludicrous. That’s why it’s so sad to see the turn the organization is taking.

If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Watch:
Enemies Make Dollars

Dana White knew that mixed martial arts and the UFC could turn into one of the biggest spectacles in the world. He convinced the financially necessary Fertitta brothers of that, they made it his job to tell everyone about the UFC, and he did not care if you listened to him or not.

There’s a marketing cliche that says if everyone is your customer, no one is. White exudes that. If you love him, or, as is more likely, hate him, he does not care what you think about him or his business because he knows someone next to you will love the punches he’s peddling.

This was exactly the leader that the UFC needed in its nascency. Not just a fighter, but a pressure fighter. A person who goes forward until their opponent flinches, folds, and he can run over them.

White occasionally made unforced errors like every other confident pressure fighter.

This quote above is actually what sparked the earlier quote where White claimed his PR Team wants him to do an interview with GLAAD.

Instead of getting in GLAAD or sparring with every journalist, White would often just push people out of the UFC’s orbit.

White pushed Loretta Hunt away for reporting that the UFC has removed fighters’ managers’ backstage access.

White blacklisted Josh Gross after Gross rejected his offer to become the editor for the UFC’s website, revealed the finalists of season 4 of The Ultimate Fighter, and wrote an open letter to White asking that he fix the fighters’ steroid problems and thuggish images.

White kicked Ariel Helwani out from a UFC event and got him removed from the press tour for Conor McGregor versus Floyd Mayweather for announcing that Brock Lesnar would headline UFC 200.

White even banned all of Bloody Elbow’s staff for years before the company was bought and repurposed as an AI slop factory.

White and the UFC fought against “fake news” before Donald Trump cemented that phrase into our lexicon forever. They portrayed every media member they didn’t like as losers who have never and could never accomplish anything.

White and the UFC started inviting influencers and content creators to replace the credentialed unbiased journalists you expect at pro sports events. They could make videos, promote the events, and they wouldn’t question the organization giving them good tickets to said events in fear of losing opportunities to create monetizable content about their lavish life.

What the UFC was doing was creating a culture of total control.

Competition Thrills Monopolies Kill:
The UFC’s Success Steals From A Sport

When the UFC was fighting for relevancy, a few other organizations were putting on some of the best fights you’ll ever see.

PRIDE was dominating in Japan and many fans thought their heavyweights and light heavyweights were the best in the sport. Names like Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Shogun Rua, and Wanderlei Silva were just some of the stars carrying their brand.

On the other end of the world and weight divisions, WEC was leading the charge. Demetrious Johnson, Dominick Cruz, Jose Aldo, and Anthony Pettis are only a few of the men who fought there and later became UFC champions.

Both of these organizations were purchase by the UFC in 2006 and 2007. Alongside them came World Fighting Alliance, International Fight League’s assets, and Strikeforce all were folded under the UFC’s parent company Zuffa.

Having so many great fighters under one roof makes for a convenient viewing experience but it leaves fighters without many options to fight elsewhere. That meant they had little leverage in contract negotiations. It was the UFC’s way or the highway and rhe coming years would make the UFC’s way that much harder.

For the majority of MMA’s existence UFC fighters earned extra cash by accepting uniform sponsors. Companies could strap a logo on fighters’ shorts in exchange for additional compensation. This made the athletes’ clothing look not uniform.

In 2014 the UFC signed a 6 year deal with Reebok worth $70 million to outfit all of their athletes in similarly branded gear. Then CEO Lorenzo Fertitta announced all of the money would go to the fighters. When the deal ended in 2020, only $39.3 million made its way to the fighters and it cut many fighters’ overall pay.

Brendan Schaub said,

Schaub went on to say one of his coaches, Greg Jackson lost additional sponsorship income. Even cutman Stitch Duran was never contracted by the UFC after speaking out against the Reebok deal.

After creating an organization for everyone to watch that allowed anyone to compete in to improve their life, the UFC bought competitors and removed their contracted athletes means of making additional money so they would be more desperate to fight. Dana Whit even spelled out his logic in a Stanford Business School lecture.

It’s quotes like this and the actions above that resulted in the UFC’s former and ongoing antitrust lawsuits.

Financialization Over Fighters And Fans:
The Money Makes Its Way Out Of The Sport

In 2016 the UFC sold for just north of $4 billion. That was the largest transaction in professional sports history. Since then there has been a gradual degradation in fight promotion.

Before 2016 the UFC was run by fanatics. A name you don’t hear often and a face you never see was largely responsible for the UFC we loved. Joe Silva. The tyrannical matchmaker’s story is emblematic of the UFC’s early days.

Silva grew up in Richmond, Virginia, reading Black Belt Magazine, watching boxing, and studying pro wrestling promotion. His wide love of combat gave him a clue that boxers weren’t the best fighters on the planet. When he encountered the UFC, it was like his entertainment dream was coming to life.

Silva saw an ad in Black Belt Magazine from the UFC’s parent company at the time, SEG. They were looking for fighters. Silva decided to call the number and reached then owner of the UFC, Campbell McLaren.

McLaren was enthralled by Silva’s knowledge of the sport. He convinced Silva to attend Ultimate Ultimate in 1995 and hired “the UFC’s greatest fan”. Silva even worked with John McCarthy and Jeff Blatnick to write the sport’s first rule book before the UFC was sold to the Dana White and The Fertittas.

Once White and The Ferittas did have control of the promotion, Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz convinced White to hire Silva as the company’s matchmaker. He had no experience negotiating contracts, matchmaking, or anything else. He was just the “UFC’s greatest fan”.

Silva would go on to handpick the fighters for the first season of The Ultimate Fighter reality show, pitch the idea of having the WEC go all-in on smaller fighters before dissolving the promotion, and mentor one of the UFC’s current matchmakers, Sean Shelby.

Silva only wanted to make the best events he could. As the promotion grew, his job became more about filling up time slots. When the UFC was purchased in 2016 he saw the writing on the wall and left a year later.

Silva built events to sell to us so we would buy them on Pay-Per-View. It was riskier and required more marketing to get us to buy in. The UFC has de-risked their business with two major developments since then.

If a local municipality is hoping the UFC will come to town they have to pay. Saudi Arabia reportedly paid $20 million to get a fight in 2024. In addition, broadcast partners now pay for streaming rights to show the UFC. The most recent deal with Paramount was worth $7.7 billion for 7 years. This deal doesn’t even cover every country in the world’s broadcasting rights either.

You have to take a step back and acknowledge how impressive the UFC’s business is. In 2025 they hit $1.5 billion dollars in revenue with $851 million EBITDA.

That means they have plenty of money to put into signing and developing talent. Instead, we regularly read reports of athletes not signing with the UFC because of the pay offered to them.

The last man to beat Alex Pereira in kickboxing, Artem Vakhitov, didn’t sign with the UFC because they offered him the standard $10,000 to show and $10,000 to win contract.

The PFL paid another kickboxing star Cedric Doumbe 10 times what the UFC offered him.

KSW gave Salahdine Parnasse 20-30 times what the UFC offered him.

The UFC makes so much money it has no incentive to keep working like it once did, much like Dana White predicted during his Stanford Business School lecture. They aren’t investing in the athletes like they used to, they hardly have to tell their fighters stories because the money is already made and there’s effectively no competitor to force them to change. Plus they can literally call in favors from the White House whenever they need to get something done.

Partners To Rivals To Necessary Alliances
MMA Moves On To Politics

If you listen to Dana White explain his relationship with Donald Trump he’ll call him a friend. A once necessary ally that saved his company and the sport in America.

That’s not exactly the whole story.

It’s true that Trump hosted three UFC events between 2000 and 2001 at his Taj Mahal Casino. The first of those events, UFC 30, was the first event that White and the Fertitta brothers promoted after buying the company. But the UFC also hosted 23 events between 2000-2004 and Trump even tried to compete with the UFC after the success of The Ultimate Fighter reality show.

Trump, Michael Cohen, and Tom Atencio started a promotion called Affliction in 2008. They signed former UFC champions Tim Sylvia, Josh Barnett, Andrei Arlovski, and Vitor Belfort, plus future champ Robbie Lawler. It was a promotion centered around the all-time great Fedor Emelianenko. The fighter who former UFC Heavyweight and Light Heavyweight Champion Randy Couture tried to exit the UFC in hopes of fighting.

Trump bragged about how Affliction was going to take over MMA, “All the fighters want to be with us, and I think it probably will take over.”

It didn’t.

Before Affliction put on their third event, Josh Barnett tested positive for a banned substance. He was unable to headline the card against Fedor and Trump’s attempt at promoting MMA was dead and gone much to the delight of White.

Trump mostly stayed out of MMA until he decided to run for President. Then he began sitting cage-side at UFC events to appeal to more young men that felt disenfranchised by previous political administrations.

Trump got elected in 2016 and 2024 but that wasn’t the end of the UFC’s utility for him. He appeared cage side at UFC 264 in July, several months after January 6th’s attack on the capitol. He was met with boos and cheers but it was clear he had people in his corner. White would even introduce Trump at 2024’s Republican National Convention.

Like all good relationships, this one has plenty of ongoing reciprocity.

Paramount+ is the UFC’s current streaming partner in the USA and Canada. 7 years of broadcasting cost them $7.7 billion dollars. Paramount was only able to afford that price after Trump’s FCC approved their merger with Skydance 18 days before the transaction. Trump has since taken additional interest in the success of the UFC by purchasing stock options in the UFC’s parent company ahead of the event on his birthday. An event that might not even be legal.

A recent lawsuit filed against UFC Freedom 250 argues that the UFC and its partners are being allowed to profit from access to some of the nation’s federal sites which means it does not qualify for special authorization under temporary rules adopted for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

Just yesterday it was announced that Marco Rubio and UFC are planning use cage fights for diplomacy. What the fuck does that even mean?

You just can’t look at the UFC’s alliance with Trump objectively and think it will continue to be a net positive for the company. He literally has the lowest approval rating of any president at this point in their term. He sucks and it sucks that the UFC is joined with him at the hip. With the event at the White House approaching, you do need to remember that mixed martial arts is bigger than this weekend.

Mixed Martial Arts Are For Everyone:
Fight For Something Better

In case it’s not obvious, I love mixed martial arts. Talking, training, and watching fighting has taken most of my time since I was a teenager. And because the UFC makes up the majority of MMA, I can’t help but have a special place in my heart for the company that has given me so much joy and helped define the activity that gave my life some direction.

When I was 17 I was briefly homeless. I like to say I was homeless-light. I hate the term “unhoused” but I have to acknowledge it perfectly explains what happened to me.

My father was unable to pay the mortgage of the home that I slept in. I watched police change the locks on our front door. I was forced to face up to his eviction notice and my housing was undone.

I was able to live at my best friend’s house. His dad had a spare bedroom and I had a way to pay for my own food so I wasn’t really in the way. I was as happy as a hermit crab finding a more spacious shell. But really my happiness had more to do with where I was when I wasn’t in my temporary home. My gym, Combat Fitness.

Combat Fitness still inhabits a warehouse in Concord, California. They had bags to hit, people to spar with, and real role models to learn from.

I spent hours of my days there. I found passion in a physical struggle. It lit a fire in me and told me I don’t have accept whatever position I find myself in, in and out of a ring. And I can’t help but see a version of my experience in people across the world.

Martial arts can satisfy when I see as a necessary experience. A type of initiation ritual into the beginning of adulthood. The accepting of responsibility for your development.

If you want to get better you have to train. You have to take it on the chin and come back to get better. You have to care enough to actually work for something.

Dojos, gyms, and rings around the world can create places where particularly at risk youth can mature. With professional combat sports, these people can find means of turning their skills into money. They can sell their skills to gyms, promoters, and people wanting to learn from and be entertained by them.

The writer Gerald Early wrote,

Man if Early could see the UFC.

Political corruption. Market consolidation. Tailored suits taking out the fans and craftsman that made the company and its product special. They really have take the psychotic vision and ran with it.

But I am here to say that much like America is bigger than Donald Trump, combat sports exist outside of the UFC.

The three highest attended events to this day are PRIDE Shockwave, OKTAGON 62, and KSW 39. All three of those events happened in different years and countries. The market for mixed martial arts exists and it is ready for more players.

We have new people putting new money into MMA, exquisite pageantry from promotions like Rizin, European promotions like Oktagon and KSW are selling out stadiums, and the most watched MMA fight in American history was not promoted by the UFC. I mean, even the PFL is in the middle of contract negotiations for a new streaming partner and they’re coming to my town soon so I will be in attendance.

I’m not self-righteous enough to pretend that fighting professionally or even training for fun is solely some virtuous pursuit. It’s bloody. It can be gross. And, as I hope you can see from above, many of the people in it are ripe for exploitation.

But combat sports and martial arts have, and will continue to, benefit countless disenfranchised people so I’m not going to let one guy’s egomaniacal birthday party ruin my sport. And I’m definitely not ready to secede from what I love.

The man that founded the martial art that the Gracies adapted, rebranded, and used to win UFC 1 described the two principles of his system as,

Highest efficient use of energy for mutual aid. That’s what martial arts, combat sports, and MMA are about at their core. I will die on that hill whether it’s during this administration or next.

The UFC returned to Miami this weekend. We got a great lesson on anaconda chokes and some of the most egregious sorts washing you’ll see. Today we’re going to review both.

A Lesson On Anaconda Chokes:
Why Luque’s Worked And Holland’s Didn’t

I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I teach grappling for a day job and I am fascinated with how people get it working in mixed martial arts.

One of my favorite parts of watching MMA is when a single fight card shows us how to finish one submission through a positive example and a negative example. UFC 327 gave us that with anaconda chokes.

Both Kevin Holland and Vicente Luque found the choke but only Luque was able to finish it. Let’s look at how he did it.

Luque elbows Gastelum.
Gastelum responds with a triangle that Luque shrugs out of.
Gastelum turns to turtle.
Luque catches an anaconda choke.
Luque immediately leans his weight over Gastelum’s trapped shoulder while pulling his choking arm into Gastelum’s neck.
Then he drops onto his side to finish the submission.

Generally people are taught to roll under their opponent’s trapped arm to finish the anaconda choke. I actually prefer what Luque did above. It allows you to pull your arms in tight, cutting off the carotid arteries and there’s less risk of everything slipping open as you do a dynamic roll.

Now that we’ve seen how to finish the choke, let’s look at Holland’s and why it didn’t work.

Brown reached for Holland so he threw his hips back to cinch an anaconda choke.
Holland sits down and hooks Brown’s legs.
Brown uses his trapped arm to make space and push his legs out from Holland’s connections.
Then he pushes on Holland’s hips to get space to go belly down.
Brown turtles, Holland tries to switch to a d’arce, and the fight returns to the feet.

Here are the most important frames from these submissions.

1. Luque is hanging his weight over Gastelum, pulling his left arm directly into Gastelum’s right carotid artery

2. Luque starts dropping to his right while pulling his forearm into Gastelum’s neck

3. Luque pulls Gastelum’s head into his chest for the final inches of strangulation

Now let’s look at how Holland tried to secure his victory.

1. Holland’s left arm is so deep that his elbow is under Brown’s chin

2. Holland falls on his side so his left elbow is trapped against the mat
   Holland is now relying on crunching Brown’s neck down while compressing his elbows to finish

3. Brown’s head has slipped to the floor and his trapped elbow his high so he can open his arms and push off Holland to get inches of air

I’m not saying you can’t finish an anaconda like Holland is right here. Holland even finished Luque with an anaconda choke of his own last year. He’s got a great squeeze!

I do find Luque’s method to be mechanically superior. The initial bite that you get on the neck with the forearm is powerful and it makes everything downstream much tighter.

Unfortunately for most people in and out of MMA, the biggest headlines from this card didn’t come from the fights.

The Elephant In The Room
Politics Happens To You

I put this section second to spare you. If you only care about technical analysis skip ahead.

UFC 327 took place in Miami’s Kaseya center. The UFC generously hosted two of Florida’s most infamous residents to enjoy the festivities. You can see something of a meeting of the minds below.

I can only assume President Donald Trump attended UFC 327 to seek counsel from his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Rubio is the chief foreign affairs adviser and the United Stataes is at war after all.

Sorry. They’re not at war. Only Congress can declare war.

The United States simply bombed Iran because they were inches away from developing nuclear weapons like Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling us since the 90s. The United States bombed Iran to maintain peace. Plus, Vice President JD Vance went over to Pakistan this weekend to clear everything up with them.

You might be like millions of people across the world wondering why? Why are these western leaders taking time away from their conflict posts to watch fights?

Dana White says he doesn’t think like that. He claims that even his speeches at Republican Conventions aren’t political. I swear that’s not a typo. He really said that.

The Greek historian Pericles said something like “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you,” and that’s exactly what’s happening here.

I am not particularly obligated to any one person or party. I have a very abnormal circle of friends and family. They coalesced to paint a picture of the world many don’t see.

My dad is as blue collar as they come. A construction worker turned contractor turned handyman living in the southwest. He regularly votes democrat. On the other hand (one of) my moms is gay and she voted for Trump. I bring these two examples up to say that I understand that politics don’t map as evenly as you might think and I am more than willing to hear what other people think, why they think the way they do, and find a common ground to work towards mutually assured prosperity.

You can’t understand someone’s opinions simply by looking at them and you should value diversity of them.But you don’t have to value being force fed political figures at every inch of the entertainment you consume.

I don’t want to escape. I also don’t want to worry about how negotiations with Iran are going when I’m watching the sports I love and live. And I’m not alone.

UFC 327 recorded a gate of $6,518,684 from 17,741 in attendance. That’s almost half of what the first event at the Kasyea Center did. That’s hardly within striking distance of any event the UFC has done at Kaseya.

UFC 287 recorded around $12 million, less than UFC 299’s $14 million, and just over last year’s UFC 314 gate of over $11 million in ticket sales. You can argue that those cards star power combined with the rapidly eroding purchasing power of the dollar is played into UFC 327’s lower revenue. I wouldn’t disagree with that.

I would add that propping up political figures and playing AI promo videos instead of focusing on the fights people want to see isn’t improving ticket sale revenue.

Whatever effort is going into promoting is not working and playing politics isn’t helping.

If you’re familiar with White you’ll know he would tell me and all detractors to shut up and watch the fights. I promise I want to.

How is anyone supposed to shut up and enjoy combat sport sedation being when the events we’re being sold are turning into social hour for the least enjoyed people alive right now?

Politics happens to you. You are affected by who does and does not happen on The Hill whether you like it or not.

UFC, we’re all begging you, stop pushing us to politicalization so we can go back to watching the fights.

Help Desk Updates:
Vicente Luque’s Indirect Chokes

Vicente Luque has been a professional fighter for 17 years. That’s half his life.

Luque came to the UFC through The Ultimate Fighter: American Top Team vs. Blackzilians in 2015. He lost his first fight in the UFC only to rattle off four finishes over Belal Muhammad, Héctor Urbina, Álvaro Herrera, and Hayder Hassan. The final two being two indirect chokes.

Hassan ducks under Luque’s hook.
Luque gets grips for an anaconda choke before sitting to his butt and back rolling.
Hassan thrashes back and forth to get some space.
Luque maintains the position by keeping his hips beside Hassan’s head, pulling his elbow down, and closing Hassan’s carotid artery with his right forearm.

If you want to see how a master of these chokes makes them work at the highest levels of professional fighting you have to read the article I just added to The Help Desk.

If you want to learn why Luque is so good at anaconda chokes click here to upgrade your subscription and access the the Help Desk. The Help Desk has more than studies on the best grapplers in MMA. It also comes with:

• Note on the principles of fighting

• A library of technique gifs and explanations

• Analysis of classic fights with high level grappling

Subscribing to The Help Desk is the best way to support these articles. It only costs $5 per month and you can cancel whenever you want. If you want to keep getting free articles and get analysis on how to make jiujitsu work in fighting upgrade your subscription here.

Links, Instructionals, And More Anaconda Chokes To Study:

This video is the best explanation of the anaconda choke you can find.

Firas Zahabi did a technique breakdown on a variation that looks closer to what Vicente Luque did in this video.

Whenever you talk about anaconda chokes you have to mention Rafa Mendes. I just found a video of him breaking down the submission that I hadn’t found before so I’m sharing it with you here.

The Most Important News (you probably missed)

Do you remember Daniel Rodriguez? The UFC fighter? It turns out he hasn’t been able to take a fight in 8 months because he was stuck in a Mexican prison. Fortunately he had a relatively nice jail well and was able to train the whole time.

In more wild WTF MMA news, Jorge Masvidal’s Gamebred FC had another bare knuckle MMA card in the Caribbean. You can watch the whole thing here. It was pretty cool (and gruesome) to see people using grips that the gloves prevent.

Gable Steveson offiically signed with the UFC. He’ll make his debut on July 11th for international fight week.

I got some science for all you nerds out there. This study found that “for each 1% of additional rapid weight gain (RWG), the chance of winning increased by 4.5%.” It looks like the only abstract is available but the point stands. Take your rehydration seriously and you’re more likely to win!

Support Open Note Grappling

Brazilian jiu-jitsu has (allegedly) been the “fastest growing martial art” right alongside mixed martial arts for what feels like decades. Now that growth is turning into real opportunities.

This past week gave fans three separate professional jiujitsu events with three distinct rulesets and athletes competing.

The week competitions started with FloGrappling’s Who’s Number One on Tuesday. The final set of regular season matches for The Professional Grappling Federation (PGF) came on Wednesday. UFC BJJ ended the trifecta with a solid card.

There are plenty of highlights to go through but a few athletes stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Who’s Number One:
Jiujitsu For Purists

WNO 32 was this past Tuesday. WNO has been hosting cards of one-off matches. This card was a return to tournaments with two separate 4 man brackets in between several individual matches.

The best way to think about WNO is it’s a jiujitsu event for purists.

WNO promotes submission only matches that are 15 minutes at most. Athletes can accrue warnings throughout their contests but there are no points. If an athlete gets 4 warnings they are disqualified.

The announcer will say who has the “judges’ favor” at select intervals. This isn’t round by round scoring. It’s a way of saying, if the match ended right now, this person would win.

Judges favor is open scoring engineered to say “Hey you’re losing. You need to pick up the pace,” to one of the athletes.

The stand-out from WNO 32 was 20 year old Dorian Olivarez.

Olivarez is an elite grappler. He first qualified for ADCC as a teenager in 2023. That same year he won Folkstyle Nationals.

Olivarez has rare pace and pressure that comes from a lifetime of trying to get opponents to the floor without worrying about being submitted. Even when he is riding an opponent he’ll take his hooks out to stay mobile.

Olivarez is in mount.
Espinosa is turning to escape.
Olivarez gets pushed back to quarter guard so he tries to chair sit to take Espinosa’s back.
Espinosa turtles.
Olivarez throws his hips back as he takes his hook out so Espinosa can’t shake him off in transition.
Olivarez keeps pulling Espinosa into his lap as he vaults over him to win the scramble.

Olivarez got to work hand fighting after they were reset in the middle of the mat.

Olivarez covers Espinosa’s mouth as Espinosa turns onto his left to escape.
Espinosa rips Olivarez’s right off of his face giving Olivarez room to attack the choke with his left.
Espinosa strips Olivarez’s grip a couple of times until Olivarez gets his left across Espinosa’s chin to rip the face crank for victory.

Olivarez went on to beat Deandre Corbe in the finals through superior wrestling and pace.

The action gets reset.
Olivarez slaps at a single leg.
He does it again and Corbe drops that knee.
The third time ends with Olivarez picking up the leg.
Corbe tries to counter with a chest wrap.
Then he tries pushing Olivarez’s head away.
Olivarez hops off to side control, walks up, and steps into mount.

These matches were excellent for me, a jiujitsu practitioner and coach. I am the definition of a hardcore fan and the product appeals to me accordingly.

But this type of slow, pure grappling can be hard to watch for those outside of the sport. It is not designed to attract casual fans.

The next event of the week is built to be better suited for general audiences.

Professional Grappling Federation:
Jiujitsu’s Answer To Live Sports

The PGF was started by 10th Planet black belt Brandon Mccaghren. He had the vision of creating a live professional jiujitsu event circuit.

PGF has a draft, a fantasy system, and unique rules that include something like a shot clock to increase action. They also divide the matches into a season and playoffs.

Athletes compete as a part of a team during the regular season. Teams compete against one another for points.

The team with the most points splits $100,000 between their athletes. Whichever athletes accrue enough individual wins qualify for a single elimination tournament for an extra $20,000.

PGF is the most ambitious promotion in professional grappling and no one can say the PGF doesn’t produce action.

Jett has double under hooks in closed guard.
Crump can’t make anything happen and the shot clock goes off.
They are forced to reset with Jett attacking turtle.
Crump rolls but Jett gets his hooks in.
He slaps a face crank on and wins the match.

The problem plaguing The PGF is the competitors. This most recent season didn’t have a single athlete who’s made it to the highest level of the sport.

It’s extremely difficult to build a professional league with athletes that the fans don’t view as the best of the best. This is partly why no casual MMA fans watch Rizin, KSW, or any other promotion that has stellar talent under their brand.

I love the PGF because they’re actually changing the sport. When I spoke to Brandon I was amazed with the vision and follow through.

You can read that interview here.

Still they have a huge mountain to climb to solidify their place as a true professional sports league.

UFC BJJ:
One More Monopoly

Last year the UFC announced they were going to put more resources into producing grappling events. They filmed a reality show, put Mikey Musumeci on most of their promotional material, and started signing athletes.

That hasn’t materialized into the immediate success they thought it would. Craig Jones himself exposed that the promotion is buying views in this video.

Regardless of individual events’ success, the UFC has the money, and legal team, to sign and retain high quality talent. Plus the events have started to produce bigger and better moments.

Long time IBJJF standout and Texas grappling star Lucas Valente upset champion Carlos Henrique with one of the wildest exchanges in recent memory.

Henrique jumps a triangle arm bar.
Valente locks his legs around Henrqiue’s hips so he can lean back and open the triangle.
Valente collects an ankle and starts cranking his shotgun grip.
Henrique comes up but his heel slips out for the Aoki lock.
Valente wins with the belly down submission.

Friend of my gym and all around cool guy Declan Moody won a performance bonus with this alarmingly quick back take and rear naked choke.

Gaudio is trying to attack a leg.
Moody stands, steps over Gaudio, and opens his legs.
Moody moves toward north south.
Gaudio goes belly down.
Moody blocks the hip and pushes Gaudio’s head down so he has time to put hooks in.
Gaudio tries to remove Moody’s hooks with his hands.
Nothing stops Moody from inserting his arm for a RNC.

Adele Fornarino ripped Alex Enriquez’s leg off to hold onto her title.

Adele inverts and pulls Enriquez’s leg in to attack the backside.
Enriquez sits back for a heel hook.
Adele keeps Enriquez’s legs open so she can pull her primary leg out.
Adele switches to attack Enriquez’s left leg.
Enriquez tries to run away.
Adele pulls Enriquez’s thigh in to finish a knee bar.

Two things stand out about UFC BJJ matches. They are done in a bowl and the 15 minute matches are subdivided 3 5 minute into rounds.

The bowl is great. It forces engagement and keeps the action high. The rounds also keep the action relatively consistent, but rounds can often ruin the work an athlete has put in to get a specific position in grappling. Getting a takedown and guard pass against a high level jiujitsu practitioner in five minutes is just really hard to accomplish.

The UFC is using a round by round format to appeal to casual fans. I’m not so sure that that is actually helping.

Professional grappling really only has hard core fans. MMA fans aren’t going to regularly tune in to watch a BJJ event just because it has the UFC’s logo on it.

Have you ever heard the cliché if everyone is your customer no one is? If the UFC is trying to create a grappling product that appeals to every combat sports fan it won’t appeal to anyone. People will just watch something else.

Being able to watch something else might actually be answer our original question though.

Are We Really In An Arms Race?
One Organization Can’t Support The Sport

It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that the UFC could win professional grappling’s promotional race whenever they wanted. Let’s do some basic math.

FloGrappling is the largest media company in jiujitsu. FloSports is the parent company of FloGrappling.

Last year FloSports announced new fundraising here bringing total investment to $100 million, profitability, and an expected revenue of $200 million next year. Not bad!

For comparison the UFC earned $1.5 billion in revenue. Yes, you read that right. Billion. $851 million was adjusted EBITDA.

To think that any promotion could reasonably compete with the UFC is ludicrous.

But what if I told you no one is actually competing with the UFC? Rather, the sport has enough room for more promotions. Time for some more math.

Last year Dana White announced here that the UFC would be putting on 14 BJJ events. The UFC has produced three events so far in 2026. Those cards had 8, 9, and 8 matches, averaging 8.3 matches with 16.6 athletes per card.

16.6 athletes across 14 cards equates to 232.4 spots for athletes to compete and get paid. There are 104 ADCC athletes split across 5 men’s divisions and 3 women’s divisions. If the UFC signed every ADCC athlete that would mean everyone could get 2 matches a year. But there are more competitors than that in the sport and two matches a year is not enough for these men and women to live off of.

Maybe we are in a race to see which jiujitsu promotion will be the sports premier organization. But a race implies that there will be other finishers. And us audience members need to do what we can to support the rest of the race’s competitors.

Vote with your eyes as well as your dollars. Watch PGF, watch WNO, and give attention to the leagues that don’t have billions of dollars of backing so they can continue to pay athletes. And don’t forget to buy a ticket to an event when it’s in your area.

Help Desk Updates:
ADCC Rookie Report

Gustavo Batista is an ATOS Jiujitsu standout. After being awarded his black belt by Leandro Lo he switched teams and went on to win the IBJJF World Championships three times as well as the Pan American Championships four times. He did all of this before turning 30.

You might be wondering why we’re covering this guy. How is a gi specialist that relies on restricting movement standing out in such a dynamic wrestling heavy tournament like ADCC?

Batista dominated the second South American ADCC Trials by attacking turtle, quad pod, and back control. Batista got behind all of his opponents and slowly squeezed the life out of them. Along the way he showed some simple and unorthodox ways to use his hooks to maintain back control.

Batista pulls out of Negromonte’s inversion.
Negromonte tries to wrestle up.
Batista stops it with a cradle.
Batista pressures in.
Negromonte tries to play half guard so Batista pushes his high leg back.
Negromonte scoops Batista’s leg before Batista drives his cross knee in toward dope mount.
Negromonte turtles.
Batista puts his hooks in and shoots his left leg through to hook Negromonte’s far leg.

If you want to study the next wave of ADCC standouts click here to upgrade your subscription and access the the Help Desk.

The Help Desk is the easiest way to learn how grappling actually works. The Help Desk comes with:

• A technique library with specific explanations

• Analysis of classic fights with high level grappling

• Regularly updated articles on techniques, athletes, and principles of fighting

The Help Desk is the best way to support this newsletter so I can keep writing regular articles. It only costs $5 per month and you can cancel whenever you want. This is what it looks like.

After you sign up you can read the about Batista and the rest of the 2026 ADCC rookies here.

Scouting For UFC Fighters
How I Helped Charles Johnson Beat Bruno Silva

I’ve trained, coached, and competed in martial arts for most of my adult life. If I found an interesting combat sports problem pursue to pursue, I did until I no longer found any interest or ability to help. That means I’ve ended up in the corner for jiujitsu matches, MMA fights, boxing, and more.

A significant amount of my interest and energy was directed at writing about those sports for roughly the past 3 years. I decided to take it seriously after tearing my ACL.

I was laid up on the couch recovering from surgery. I needed an outlet for my fighting fixation to hold onto whatever sanity I still had.

I saw writing about fighting as a way to get better at studying the sports so I could be a better coach when I returned to the gym from physical therapy.

Now I can add another combat sports credential. Professional MMA fighter’s scout.

I’ve worked through other coaches, analysts, and scouts in the past. But recently I was contacted directly by Charles Johnson for help scouting opponents. And he was able to win his last fight! Here I want to go through my process to explain what I saw and how it played into the performance we turned in.

You should start with whatever high level stats you have at your disposal available. Johnson’s most recent opponent, Bruno Silva, had a few things stand out from his Tapology record.

1. Silva was stopped by strikes twice in the third round and dropped two decisions

2. SIlva’s UFC finishes come from right hands and rear naked chokes

3. Silva has not won a decision in the UFC

These findings are helpful for guiding an overarching strategy. Take the fight late and stay away from Silva’s right hand. To actualize on that strategy, we needed specific techniques and tactics to look for.

I) Stopping Silva’s Takedowns

Silva doesn’t really shoot like a good traditional wrestler would. He bends over at the waist, runs forward, and tries to grab a double. This means you can stop Silva’s takedown attempts by disrupting his posture and getting an under hook like Hyun Sung Park did.

Below Park reads the double leg and gets a right under hook while pushing Silva’s face inside with his left hand.
Silva lets go of the leg and eats a knee in the process.
Silva backs off.
Park lands about seven punches as he chases Silva.
Silva gets away by throwing a front kick and running.

Johnson was able to use similar techniques against Silva to stay upright along the fence.

Johnson throws a left kick at Silva’s body before trying to run off of the cage.
Silva cuts him off to shoot a double.
Johnson cross faces Silva and lifts him up with a right under hook.
They end up in an over under clinch.
Johnson gets a cross wrist grip with his left hand to make space for a knee.

Johnson left the fight without giving up a single takedown.

II) Neutralizing Silva’s Right Hand

Johnson’s fight with Silva wasn’t all positives.

We identified that Silva does his best work with his right hand. He uses his left hand almost exclusively to line up his right hand.

If you do nothing, Silva will launch an over hand right. If you cover up or duck Silva, will beats both of those defensive maneuvers with overhand rights or right upper cuts.

Silva jabs.
Durden ducks into the right uppercut Silva was setting up.
Durden falls to his butt.
Durden can’t control Silva’s posture nor kick him away.
Silva pounds on Durden for about 10 seconds before the referee calls it off.

And here Park has some mixed success against Silva.

Silva snaps his left out a few times.
Park covers up.
Silva splits Park’s hands with a right uppercut.
Park lands a short left hook and gets back in front of Silva.
Silva switches his stance to sneak a left straight in.
Park throws over Silva’s left to hit the top of his head.
Silva begins feinting again.
Park covers up.
Silva splits his guard with another uppercut.

See? When Park met Silva with Punches he was at least able to smack him. Even if it wasn’t clean. When Park covered up he just ate more punches.

Exchanges like the one above as well as Silva’s fights with Van and Kape taught us that movement and extending combinations could keep Silva from bullying his opponent. Unfortunately Johnson found himself on the fence too often in this fight.

Johnson lands a right over Silva’s left.
He slaps another right hook in to move toward the center of the cage.
Both men trade punches that don’t land until Silva fakes a level change.
Johnson covers up.
Silva fakes again, Johnson covers, and then an uppercut splits Johnson’s guard.
Johnson pulls Silva away from him to get off the cage.
He seals the sequence by kicking Silva’s stomach.

The end of this exchange brings me to one of the most important parts of the plan.

III) Work The Body

Silva does not tolerate body shots well. He lost to the current champion by getting the wind pushed out of him with punches.

Van slips inside for a body hook and a front kick to the body.
Silva falls over himself throwing a left cross.
Van slides away for a two punch combo.
Silva is out on his feet so Van pounces to put him away.

Kape danced around Silva for the better part of two rounds.
Then he put some punches behind a stabbing left front kick to end Silva’s night.

Kape throws a left front kick under Bruno’s jab.
Bruno folds over.
Kape is already chasing with more punches.
Silva can hardly manage to cover up along the cage while Kape flurries to put him out of his misery.

This is particularly important for Johnson.
He is excellent at stabbing his opponent’s belly.
It’s a big reason why Johnson was able to slow Flyweight fan favorite Lone’er Kavanagh down to a second round finish.

Johnson’s hands are twitching, holding Kavanagh’s attention. Then he sneaks a left front kick into Kavanagh’s gut. Johnson bounces out and in again to score with the same kick.

Johnson went to the body early in his fight with Silva.

Both men are trades feints, committed to not committing.
Johnson throws a straight left behind a left body kick.
Neither land. Silva tries to encroach on Johnson and eats a right front kick to the breadbasket.

Strikes like these prevent Silva from leaping into the hard right hands he likes to throw and slow Silva down to make a late victory that much more likely.

Johnson’s overall strategy started to yield results in the end of his fight with Silva. Johnson folded him over a few times with big body punches.

Johnson falls into a clinch after landing a left straight.
He shoots a right punch and left knee to Silva’s body.
The clinch breaks.
Johnson lands a left round kick.
They clinch again.
Johnson knees Silva and puts a round kick behind it after their clinch breaks.
They start leaning on each other and Johnson folds Silva with hard body punches.

Seeing this happen in real time reminded me of why I love coaching martial arts so much. You get to play a small role in helping people express the truest version of their gifts.

Any experienced practitioner can prescribe specific movement patterns to a willing audience. You just need to explain step-by-step instructions for solving common problems.

Good coaches recognize individuals’ gifts and interests and recommend specific tools to accentuate their strengths.

Great coaches help their athletes see when which specific tools work well against the unique problems specific opponents present.

What makes coaching an infinite game is figuring out how to help athletes do this without you.

Click here if you want to see what the full report looks like.

And if you’re interested in scouting services or virtual coaching don’t hesitate to reach out.

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The Jiujitsu Gym Operations Manual
My Book Is (Almost) Here!

Remember that ACL tear I touched on a few minutes ago? Shortly after I finished physical therapy to repair it I left the gym that gave me my black belt to take the next step in my professional career. Throwing away my day job to open a jiujitsu gym in Austin, Texas.

Many people thought we were insane, stupid, at least, because of how saturated the scene is there. I’m not going to claim it wasn’t risky. But it turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Thus far we’ve kicked an endless amount of ass.

In my gym’s first year of operations we:

• Won The Austin Chronicle’s annual award “Best Gym in Austin”

• Were featured in FloGrappling’s new docuseries “Local Spots”

• Had positive cash flow from day one

• Spent zero dollars on advertising

• Signed hundreds of members

The community took note. Wannabe martial arts coaches started reaching out for help running their jiujitsu gyms. These inquiries ranged from, “How should I organize my website?” to “Should I buy my coach’s gym, rebrand it, and run it as my own?”

Answering these questions has been both rewarding and fun so I decided to write what I know and create an actionable guide to opening, operating, and exceeding expectations for running a jiujitsu gym, even if you have zero business knowledge.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would listen to a guy who’s only run one gym? Because that doesn’t describe my experience.

After college I took a part time job at a health & wellness studio. That part-time job turned into working as a business coach for franchisees as we opened 165 locations across the country in seven years.

I got paid to study what consistently worked in every zip code, what didn’t work anywhere, and what happened after things succeeded or failed. I learned from others’ mistakes without spending my own money. Then I got a job helping small businesses raise money to grow.

The combination of those two positions gave me invaluable lessons that I’ve applied to running my gym. The book takes those lessons and distills them down into easy to implement advice so you can turn your hobby into a dream career and live life on your terms.

I just got the first draft of the cover back today and I couldn’t be more excited about how it looks.

The cover (and the book) will be finalized in the coming weeks. If you or someone you know wants to run a jiujitsu gym but doesn’t know where to start you have to read this book.

I’ll share it with you as soon as it’s ready.

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Francis Ngannou has a new home. Again.

MMA’s most imposing heavyweight recently announced he will fight on Netflix for Jake Paul’s first MMA event. This is after he signed a revolutionary contract with the PFL that included:

• A “high 7-figure” purse for each fight

• A split of the events net profits

• A signing bonus or salary to serve as a brand ambassador for PFL

• The right to have his own sponsors in the cage

• Non-exclusive with regards to boxing

• No champions clause or other extensions

• A minimum salary (possibly as high as $1 million) for his opponent.

That deal was lucrative. A one of its kind agreement that allowed Ngannou to take part in the generational wealth he helps create.

And watching Ngannou is turning into an ethical responsibility for all mixed martial arts fans.

Ngannou’s UFC defiance has the potential to be a defining moment in mixed martial arts history. It also has the potential to turn this Netflix MMA card into another Affliction. A bankrupt, bygone promotion whose own heavyweight bets never fully paid out.

Time will tell if the Ngannou gamble actually pays off. I’m not going to speculate on that either way. Today we are going to look at the facts surrounding this surreal situation, what they mean for the business of mixed martial arts, and us, its consumers.

It’s Just (Hurt) Business

Mark Kriegel once wrote

The business of boxing is business. But what goes down behind closed doors is far colder than what goes on in the ring. Remember that fighters are typically owned in “pieces,” as if investors can buy the piece of their choosing: heart or hands or balls. Remember that the next time a promoter runs over the body of his own broken boxer to crown the Kid on whom he now has options.

I saw this firsthand when I started training mixed martial arts near the end of high school. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the fighting culture hotbed of the San Francisco Bay Area.

San Francisco hosted the legendary Muay Thai brand Fairtex, San Jose was home to the dominant MMA gym American Kickboxing Academy, and Cesar Gracie’s fighters, before they were known as the Skrap Pack, were sprinkled all over the region. I ended up training with one of Gracie’s original talents, two time UFC title challenger Gil Castillo, at a small gym called Combat Fitness.

While Castillo hardly knew me at the time, he ended up giving me some of the best advice I’ve ever received, “If you’re not a world champion, you’re just a paycheck.”

Obviously that’s not literal. Combat sports can’t function without challengers, prospects, and journeymen across the sport. But Castillo gave me this advice while a wannabe champion turned retired journeyman turned trainer was lived a few feet away in what was a little bigger than a closet at our gym.

More than a decade later MMA is still hardly a career path.

If you’re not going to be one of the best, you’re not going anywhere financially. And to wake up at 35 with limited transferable skills and more traumatic brain injuries than digits in your savings account is close to a death sentence for many people living in the US.

Combat sports are a powerful, poetic, and painful microcosm of life. We quite literally watch people lift themselves out of poverty through grit and aggression.

It can be brutal.
It borders on exploitative.
It’s one of the most powerful displays of human will that you’ll ever see.

Some people exit this industry with outsized returns. More often than not it isn’t the men and women actually creating the product.

The UFC’s parent company (TKO) released their 2025 Full Year Financial Report a few weeks before Ngannou announced he was leaving the PFL. Here are some highlights:

• The UFC added just under $100M in revenue

• The biggest change was a $65M increase in “Partnerships & marketing” revenue

• Adjusted EBITDA is up $50M

To top it of, the UFC was able to offset Fourth Quarter costs by “a decrease in athlete costs compared to the prior year period”.

TKO’s stock doubled the S&P 500’s 12 month return and the only thing their galaxy brain spreadsheet monkeys can think to do to grow the company is keep paying their talent less and less.

The fighters’ share of the revenue generated by the UFC is at a historic low. UFC fighters have taken home roughly 20% of the revenue over the past several years. The drop that we’re now seeing is directly in line with the UFC’s stated plans to keep fighter pay under 20% of revenue. This gets more dismal when you compare it to other sports like the NBA where players and owners both take nearly 50%.

Finding information about fighter pay has been made to be tedious. The UFC is not required to disclose pay in many states that they operate in, like Nevada where they are headquartered and do the majority of their business.

When the UFC recently last traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, and was required to disclose pay the entire fight card’s combined wages were less than $2 million spread across 22 people, and five people took home less than $30,000. For comparison again, NBA’s rookie minimum salary is right around $1 million per year.

It’s common sense that the NBA generates more revenue than the UFC. That should, and does, entail higher salaries across the board. Moreover, businesses need to make money to survive, scale, and pay off debts. The UFC is no different.

What borders on indefensible is arguing in favor of an organization shrinking the percent of pay that their contractors are afforded, while actively enforcing policies that limit those contractors’ ability to generate additional income so they can even make it to their contracted obligation in the first place.

In any other industry a company that is making it harder for their employees to afford their living expenses will have a challenging time attracting premier talent to work for them so they can continue making high quality products. Mixed martial arts is different.

It would be disingenuous to say that the UFC pays worse than other mixed martial arts organizations outright. The minimum pay for athletes in organizations like The PFL and Rizin is lower than in the UFC.

MMA fighters are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Incentives & Long Term Investing

Let’s go back to the past in the Bay Area and listen to a speaker tell his side of the story so we can partially understand why fighter pay is where it is today. The video is timestamped to the appropriate section.

Fighters are essentially mercenaries. They get paid half of their money to show up, and the other half of their money to win, regardless of whoever is in front of them or how long the fight is. Fighters lack benefits that full time employees receive and trendy compensation packages with things like equity grants, mental health stipends, and other ancillary bonuses are out of the question.

Fighter pay is a brutal reality that adds an extra layer to the idea of “hungry fighters”.

For what it’s worth, every UFC fight card now gives out bonuses for fighters that finish their fights early. This and other performance bonuses have been touted as incentivizing fighters to be more exciting.

Let’s cut the bullshit. Fighters don’t show up to lose and get beat up. Splitting pay between show money and win money does nothing but cut costs.

Getting back to Ngannou’s contract and how it relates to the video, White’s rudimentary point is correct, financial incentives motivate action. Unfortunately for White, the UFC’s solution has proven to be overly myopic.

Conscious Capitalism & Ethical Enjoyment

This article is not written to bash the UFC. As a Brazilian jiu-jitsu coach, I am indebted to White and the UFC for popularizing mixed martial arts so more people want to pay me to teach them a facet of the sport. I also genuinely enjoy the product they built.

You can think that while also wanting fighters to have more ways to monetize their name and likeness, the option to pursue more lucrative contracts, and a higher percent of the profits derived from the product they create.

The point of this article is not to argue for or against the UFC profiting, or capitalism in general. I literally used to work in small business lending. I understand the values of capitalism and I’d like to think I understand the shortfalls as well.

The competition inherent in capitalism is valuable because it makes people and organizations try harder to capture more revenue. That’s exactly why Francis Ngannou’s struggle is so important.

I lived through the UFC competing and winning against Pride, Elite XC, Strikeforce, and countless other promotions across the world. The UFC used to regularly try new and interesting experiments to stay top of mind with MMA fans all over the world. I remember Dana White sending Chuck Liddell to Japan to represent the UFC in Pride, bringing Royce Gracie back to fight Matt Hughes, and signing Brock Lesnar to shake up the UFC. Those activities didn’t all yield the results the UFC intended, but, they all promoted the UFC’s brand to a wider audience, thereby capturing more customers and revenue. Contrast that to the recent string of completely forgettable UFC cards we’ve been getting and it’s starting to look like the UFC is a content creation company more than a fight promotion machine these days.

The UFC can pay fighters what it does because there are no external pressures forcing them to change. That is, the government has not cracked down on the UFC, nor has any other promotion been able to capture enough revenue to force the UFC to adapt. Which of those can you impact?

Voting with your dollar is one of the last objective democratic process we have left. You have the opportunity to stand up and vote for better fighter contracts, or at least UFC alternatives, by watching non UFC content and purchasing their pay-per-views cards.

Ethically, I feel incentivized to write this piece. More people need to know that we can support fighters directly by participating in the Ngannou experiment. I also know that the UFC is where it is today because it is led by freakishly competitive people with access to an incredible amount of resources. The only thing that has changed is they’ve accumulated more resources as their competition has dropped off. If new competitors come on the board I have to imagine the UFC will start competing for our attention again.

Watching Ngnannou’s pay per views, Rizin, and other interesting promotions popping up across Europe while ignoring the UFC should lead to the UFC working to create more favorable fighter contracts so they can continue to entice better talent to sign with them, make interesting fights, and capture our attention and money.

The history of combat sports is impossible without poor, marginalized people fighting for their livelihood and rights. They represent the communities they come from and push their rights forward by putting their struggles into the limelight. The Ngannou story is no different.

While Ngannou is quite literally bringing the sport and economic activity to Cameroon and other places in Africa he also represents another community; workers and fighters alike that are toiling away trying to break through their own barriers of economic oppression.

Ngannou is a main character in the latest chapter of fighting for the freedom to secure a better life. I hope you’re not too blind to read it.

Dan Hooker and Benoit Saint-Denis (BSD) gave us 10 electric minutes of violence this weekend. The fight had everything you could want.

Crisp striking to a variety of targets, a touch of sloppy brawling, and a clear shift in the momentum thanks to surprising toughness.

The first quarter of the fight was scary for the French contender. Hooker had clever counters that made BSD think twice about his overzealous offense.The first round started as a perfect representation of Hooker’s plan. He used the threat of a guillotine that earned him the nickname “The Hangman” to counter BSD’s takedown attempts.

The guillotine served two purposes for Hooker. It legitimately threatened to end the fight and it disrupted BSD’s posture. Watch how Hooker uses the guillotine to pick BSD up before reaching for under hooks to get BSD off of his hips.

Below BSD catches Hooker’s body kick for a takedown attempt. Hooker threatens another guillotine. He uses it to pull BSD off his hips. Hooker lifts BSD’s chin with his left while his right opens BSD’s left hand. Hooker escapes to the center of. Hooker feints with his left before a hard straight right and another body kick.

After watching this sequence you might be confused.

What happened? How did Hooker let this fight slip away?

Click here to read the full study on my website.

I try to avoid using the labels “good” and “bad” when I’m talking about fighting because the whole sport is one big grey area and that’s exactly why it’s so cool. Anyone can develop a unique game based around their unique attributes.

Who cares what the punches look like if they hurt people?

Contrast that with sprinting.

If you’re not fast, it doesn’t matter what running technique you use. You ain’t gonna be a sprinter.

Against my better judgement I still need to use the word to say I’m not sure Paddy is a good fighter. Yes, he is in the UFC fighting for the Interim Lightweight Title. “Good enough to fight for a UFC title” generally qualifies someone as “good”.

But can we really say Paddy deserves a title fight when he hasn’t beaten someone under 35 in 3 years and none of the fighters he has beaten are ranked in the top 10 anymore?

I guess that’s part of the intrigue. We get to see if Paddy’s success is more matchmaker or mettle.

The other part of the intrigue is exactly why Paddy is the perfect fighter to headline this card.

Casual fans think Paddy is funny. Everything about him is kind of funny.

He has a funny head of hair, his accent is funny to American audiences, and he can cut a funny promo with funny insults.

Sausage. Helmet. Mushroom. No two syllable word is safe from being turned into a label to describe Paddy’s opponent as phallic.

Paddy’s jokes, look, and finishes were enough to earn him a 7 figure deal with Barstool Sports and more than a million Youtube subscribers. He’s making more money than the majority of MMA fighters and we still don’t even know if he is good.

We covered Jake Paul’s hustle exploiting combat sports here. He is the archetype of a new generation of fighters. Men and women who are more influencer than athlete, looking to use their time in the limelight to push brand deals and sell commoditized products like body wash, beer, and other consumables you shrug at before begrudgingly buying at Target. Or Walmart. Or wherever you do your random shopping for the stuff you forgot to buy.

Paddy Pimblett is several steps above what Jake Paul is and probably will ever be but they’re merging into similar types of stars. With his Youtube channel and Barstool based following, Paddy Pimblett is the perfect person to premier the UFC’s partnership with Paramount+.

Paddy is an entertainer. Win or lose, he’ll cut a few lines that are perfect for short form video. That means the UFC will quickly slot him into the next card in England, win or lose.

The UFC has gone Hollywood and Paddy Pimblett is leading the charge.

If you’re interested in the technical side of mixed martial arts and you want to see the x’s and o’s in Paddy Pimblett’s match-up against Justin Gaethje click here.

Why Craig Jones Is Coordinating A Man Hunt Across Australia

A scandal has taken over jiujitsu. Izaak Michell, this year’s ADCC Oceania Trials Winner at -77KG, is evading police after allegedly sexual assaulting several women.

The public isn’t privilege to many details yet. We do know a handful of women have publicly come forward to say Izaak violated them. One was his former teammate’s sister who is a jiujitsu competitor herself.

Horrifying isn’t the half of it.

I live in the same city that many of the alleged crimes took place. And I happen to know several members of Austin’s police force. I can say that I’m hearing Izaak is closer to a life in prison than he is to ever competing in jiujitsu again.

Izaak’s countrymate and former coach, Craig Jones, is doing his part to aid in Izaak’s capture by posting Instagram stories of his whereabouts. Izaak last competed about a month ago in Thailand. Then he never came back to America. Originally it seemed like he was enjoying a break back home in Australia. Today it looks like this was a calculated move to evade American law enforcement.

What happened? Why would a professional athlete throw their life away by disregarding the humanity of their fellow practitioners as soon as they entered their prime?

I thought jiujitsu made us better people?

What (some) Science Says About Martial Arts As Therapy

I’m not a scientist. I don’t play one on TV. I used to have to spend days upon weeks reading scientific literature to talk to them for my job, so indulge me as we review some literature related to this topic.

I was curious so I spent a bit of this weekend trying to find papers on how exercise impacts mental health and how martial arts specifically might help.

In 2023 The British Journal of Sports Medicine conducted a review of systematic reviews to synthesize evidence on the effects physical activity has on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in adults. Some important findings were:

• Physical activity is effective for managing symptoms of depression and anxiety across numerous populations, including the general population, people with mental illnesses and various other clinical populations

• All physical activity modes are effective, and higher intensity is associated with greater benefit

• Different modes of physical activity stimulate different physiological and psychosocial effects; resistance exercise had the largest effects on depression, while Yoga and other mind–body exercises were most effective for reducing anxiety

This review of reviews did not explicitly touch on martial arts. I would argue that between “yoga” and “all physical activity types” martial arts should generally be accepted as physical activity that can improve mental health. Still, it’s important to look at what other research says about martial arts specifically.

This review concludes “there is support for martial arts training as an efficacious sports-based mental health intervention for improving wellbeing”. I couldn’t find the full text so I pressed on.

Funny enough, this short paper surveyed 420 BJJ athletes to find black belts are more likely to present “higher mental strength, resilience, grit, self-efficacy, self-control, life satisfaction, and better mental health than white belts, with no differences in aggression”. But of the 420 athletes surveyed, there was hardly any controls done for the age, number, and gender of these athletes. I’m not sure what you could hope to do with this information.

Then I was able to come across some larger reviews of martial arts more generally.

This master’s thesis reviews many papers about martial arts. The author notes that most studies performed on martial arts are hard to parse through because they look at different styles, populations, and a whole host of other variables. But the general takeaway is most studies demonstrate positive outcomes on mental health and wellbeing. Each martial art has a unique style and philosophy, but they all seem to share a common objective rooted in mental, philosophical, and historical pieces that make training helpful for mental health and well-being beyond just learning how to fight.

It’s kind of en vogue for jiujitsu people to remind others that the martial art is not therapy. It’s a hobby. Some consider it a sport, but almost no one should invest their life into fighting friends on the floor to develop their sense of wellbeing.

But then you look at what the (limited) research says and it argues the opposite.

So, what gives? Why isn’t jiujitsu building better minds? Why is everyone so quick to dismiss jiujitsu as a legitimate therapeutic intervention?

Are Modern Martial Arts The Problem?

I was at open mat this past Saturday. Midway through the session I found myself sitting beside a woman who trains at my gym. She’s a black belt that has been training for more than a decade in gyms all over the world. She has a good grasp on jiujitsu culture and the competitive scene.

Can I ask you something?

Sure.

Do you feel safe here?

What?

As a woman training here, do you feel safe?

Yeah. Yes. Of course. What the fuck are even you talking about?

We proceeded to go back and forth about Izaak, jiujitsu culture, and gym safety generally. I don’t remember everything she said but one thing stood out.

I think the current no gi culture is ruining jiujitsu. I know this sounds stupid or whatever, but everyone who is getting into jiujitsu now skips the gi and skips the steps that actually make you learn the culture.

The more I think about it, the more I think she’s right. I don’t think you necessarily need to train in the gi. But the theme of her argument is dead on.

In 1985 a short study was conducted on tae kwon do students. The authors, Trulson and Kim, found that as students became more experienced they showed lower anxiety, sense of responsibility, a decrease in risk taking willingness, were less radical, had increased self esteem, and were generally more socially intelligent. These trends were especially pronounced in the black belt levels. The authors went on to say aggressiveness often comes from low self-esteem and that martial arts may reduce aggressiveness through this mechanism.

One of the authors, Trulson, conducted a related study on males under 18 scoring highly on psychopathic deviation, schizophrenia, and hypomania. These subjects also scored low on measures of interest in the opposite sex, suggesting a predominately masculine type of response. This group was labeled “juvenile delinquents”.

These juvenile delinquents were given training in “traditional” tae kwon do, “modern” tae kwon do and in physical activities, all with the same instructor. The “traditional” training included meditation, general and specific tae kwon do exercises including kata, lectures on philosophy stressing respect, confidence, self-esteem, fitness, patience, perseverance and honor. Personal responsibility was stressed in these lectures. The “modern” training contained only free-sparring and self-defence techniques as well as other physical exercises. The control group participated in various physical activities and was intended to control for maturation and contact with the instructor.

At the end of 6 months the control group showed no changes in aggressiveness but some increase in social adroitness and self-esteem.

The “modern” training group showed a greater tendency toward delinquency than before the training and a very large increase in aggressiveness. The “traditional” training group uncovered the opposite.

The “traditional” group displayed a normal psychological profile, with no delinquent traits after 6 months of training. They displayed an aggressiveness below the average, as well as lowered anxiety, increased self-esteem, social adroitness, and orthodoxy.

Trulson attributes the effects of the “traditional” training to four things:

1. The instructor acts as an authority figure to the students

2. The instructor acts as a positive role model

3. The physical conditioning is intense and the student uses much of the excess energy possessed at this age

4. The practice sessions incorporate philosophical/psychological conditioning.

In a follow-up study of these subjects the ‘traditional” students remained non-delinquent while “modern” and control group students exhibited delinquent traits.

The author notes the effects on aggressiveness in the “modern” group with extreme concern as there are many martial arts schools now teaching youths which may be using this type of training and which may be producing more aggressive students.

The Art Is As Supportive As The Space Is

After 15 years of practicing, teaching, and working in martial arts I can confidently say they can be therapeutic. If you disagree it’s probably your gym’s fault.

My senior year of high school began with my dad going to rehab and the police changing the locks on our door. I became homeless.

My best friend let me sleep at his place so at least I had shelter. And I had a job at the time, so I could feed myself and buy gas to get to get to school. But the gym I was training at stopped asking me for membership dues. They never said why, but I have to think it’s because they wanted to make it easy for me to train so I’d have a positive place to go after school and work.

That community saved me from spiraling to depression, drug addiction, and probably an early grave. Now I can’t imagine doing anything other than paying it forward.

When I hear stories like Izaak’s I get sick to stomach. He violated the trust of training partners in a sacred space that should facilitate character development. He was so focused on conquering a sport that most people don’t know exists, let alone care about, that he turned into a hyper aggressive monster. And the people around him seemingly let it happen. At the very least, they didn’t create a room that stops that bullshit.

If you are reading this and you teach martial arts it’s your responsibility to build a better room. You need to prevent inconsiderate, hyper aggressive behavior before it becomes a piece of people’s character.

Creating a gym that is helpful for more than hard rounds is walking a fine line. You need to be a place where men and women that need to work on themselves can, while actively correcting students’ misbehavior and removing those that repeatedly violate your code of conduct.

You have to expect people will mess up, let them, and then help them right their wrongs.

Of course you can teach your students to want to dominate exchanges and win matches. You should. But if you emphasize winning at all costs, don’t be surprised when your students treat their training partners like tools instead of people.

Jiujitsu is not therapy. That doesn’t mean it can’t be therapeutic. To the contrary, it seems like martial arts have a greater capacity to impact mental health than many other forms of movement medicine.

If that is true and you do teach martial arts it’s your responsibility to control your training room to stop the next Izaak from walking whatever path made that boy into the monster he is today.

Hey y’all - a few weeks ago I tried out a new platform that works much better for my personal taste. To find my current work go to:

https://www.opennotegrappling.com/

I’ve moved all subscribers over there so this post will serve to let people know we’re not done, we’ve just moved.