Zahabi: Gi is BJJ’s Achilles’ Heel
“That’s the Achilles’ heel of today’s jiu-jitsu, because when they do finally get you to the ground and start fighting, they’re not used to the guy trying to get back up.”
The MMA media tends to over focus on triviality, like Ronda Rousey trash talk, or Conor McGregor trash talk. Patrick Wyman working for Sherdog recently spoke with TriStar owner Firas Zahabi in an awesome, must-read, three-part interview. Zahabi goes into great detail about what went wrong with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Every move in BJJ is found in Judo, but what set it apart was a willingness to innovate and a willingness to test it in no rules fights. Zahabi argues coherently that that has been lost in many gyms, and as a consequence, wrestling has come to dominate mixed martial arts.
Patrick Wyman: I noticed that as you were teaching tonight, and it was one of the most striking things I noticed — the way you were integrating wrestling and jiu-jitsu into a seamless whole. So, for example, working scissor sweeps off a single-leg.
Firas Zahabi: We started everything — [all the rolls] — standing today. We all started with a single-leg or body lock. Why? Because jiu-jitsu guys wait for the fight to go to the ground before they start attacking. Me, I’ll throw you with a wrestling technique and guillotine you on the way down. I’m not going to wait. That’s the Achilles’ heel of today’s jiu-jitsu, because when they do finally get you to the ground and start fighting, they’re not used to the guy trying to get back up. So you noticed today when I was rolling with one of my guys, I got back up. You’d better be able to hold me down, because when we go to MMA, the guy’s not trying to play guard, not necessarily; he’s trying to pop back up to his feet. It’s a whole different ballgame when a guy’s trying to get back to his feet instead of play guard.
PW: So do you do that as a straightforward adaptation to MMA rule sets that just do not tend to reward playing off your back?
FZ: The Achilles’ heel of jiu-jitsu is, one, that they insist on the gi. Every attack has to have a counterpart. I always tell my students, let’s play rock-paper-scissors. You’re not going to be allowed to use paper. I have the option of rock, paper and scissors, [and] you have the option of scissors and rock. I’m going to beat you 90 times out of 100. When I do jiu-jitsu with the gi and then I take it off, you’re taking away my paper. I have no counterpart now to my armbar, because when I do the armbar I have no way to pull you in. Without a gi, if I try to pull you down and you pull back, then I get back up [to the feet]. If you try to hold me down, I pull you even deeper, so wherever your energy’s going, I go with it; but in jiu-jitsu with a gi, if you pull back, I can hang on and pull myself forward. Without the gi, I don’t have this option; I can’t pull you in. I have to push you away. If you look at Jose Aldo, he adopted this philosophy. He doesn’t play guard — he gets up — and when guys try to hold him down, then he uses the guard. Sweep, submit or get up; he doesn’t just try to sweep or submit, so he has rock, paper and scissors.
PW: It seems like there has been a real split in the way that jiu-jitsu is practiced and taught, between people who are focused on International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation rule sets and this kind of no-gi, MMA grappling that incorporates things from wrestling and sambo and catch-wrestling, which is much more practically focused. Do you think jiu-jitsu eventually just becomes two entirely different things or do you think there is going to be some kind of meeting in the middle at some point?
FZ: Well, I always tell my students, let’s look at all the jiu-jitsu guys and analyze them one by one. Who’s the most successful jiu-jitsu guy in the world? Well, I’d have to say Demian Maia. He won the world championships in the gi. He did well in MMA, fought for a world title, smoked everyone at welterweight until he ran into Rory and had a close match with Jake Shields. I mean, the guy is unbelievable. Hs jiu-jitsu works in the Octagon, and his jiu-jitsu works on the mat. Why would I copy another man’s style? We’ve had many world champions who go into MMA at a preliminary level and get their ass kicked. Why would I follow that man’s jiu-jitsu when a guy like [Rousimar] Palhares did well in MMA and got second in Abu Dhabi and nearly beat [Andre] Galvao? When Galvao lost against Tyron Woodley, he got knocked out of the ballpark; he wasn’t even in the game. If I have a guy whose jiu-jitsu is effective in both worlds, why would I emulate the guy whose jiu-jitsu is only effective in one world? We have to put things in order. The guy who wins with jiu-jitsu in the Octagon and wins in IBJJF, his jiu-jitsu has to be first because it has more dimensions. If I’m doing these berimbolos — and I like berimbolos, but they’re not tested in MMA — then how can I put someone who’s doing those ahead of someone who is tested in MMA? If everybody in jiu-jitsu emulated Palhares, we’d have a lot more jiu-jitsu champions [in MMA]. Jose Aldo was world champion on the mat, and he’s world champion in the Octagon. His jiu-jitsu, I would say, is number one, because he’s used jiu-jitsu in his fights. He uses jiu-jitsu in reverse. Why don’t more jiu-jitsu guys do that? Why is it that only wrestlers are smart enough to use their skill in reverse? I’ll give you my answer to that question, because I’ve thought about it intensively. One, BJJ guys are s— athletes. No offense to the BJJ world. I love BJJ; I’m a BJJ fanatic. I just think that their counterparts — the wrestlers — have outdone them in the physical realm. Two, the wrestlers are better strategists. Why? When you wrestle, you have three rounds, so you start thinking about strategy as importance. In jiu-jitsu, it’s one round. When the wrestler starts in MMA, he’s thinking, I’ve got to win two out of the three, minimum. That’s the minimum for victory. It’s not what I’m looking for, but it’s the minimum. A jiu-jitsu guy will do something crazy at the end of a round he was winning. Maybe he goes from top position to the bottom looking for a fancy armbar and gives up the round or gives up the position. They make more strategic mistakes than the wrestlers. Wrestlers use their wrestling in reverse; jiu-jitsu guys, no. Third, jiu-jitsu guys, when they roll, when they train, it’s too far from the reality of what happens in the cage, whereas if you look at the training at Tristar, we have to sweep, submit or get up. If we get up, it’s my turn to wrestle you, and we wrestle. Wrestlers are learning jiu-jitsu, and jiu-jitsu guys aren’t so open-minded to the wrestling. They don’t understand that wrestling is as technical as jiu-jitsu. It’s jiu-jitsu standing up, why are you not in love with it? Why doesn’t it fascinate you?
PW: What’s the average time it takes to take a fighter down? On average, with a seasoned opponent, maybe a minute and a half to two minutes.
FZ: Right. It takes time to get a takedown. OK, so now I take you down [and] I have three minutes left. How much better does my jiu-jitsu have to be to tap you out in three minutes? How many times do you see a guy get tapped in three minutes in IBJJF? It happens, but not all the time. That’s not a lot of time. So now you have three minutes. If we stand back up at the end of the round, I have to take you down all over again [in round two], and now it’s harder. I might not get you down the whole round. Round three: I might get you down in the last minute, so we’ve had a total of four minutes of jiu-jitsu. It’s not easy to tap a guy in four minutes. So what I’m saying is that jiu-jitsu developed at a time when, if I took you down, it doesn’t matter how much time I need to tap you. So jiu-jitsu has to become time-sensitive. We have to reorganize ourselves according to the clock. Wrestling is time-sensitive: You have two minutes to score a point. Jiu-jitsu has to remodel itself. You want to score a double? You need to do it in two minutes, or else it’s a break. Wrestling evolved in an environment that’s more similar to MMA than jiu-jitsu. Could you imagine if wrestling was, we put on the gi, so it looks like judo, and there’s no time limits? You’d never get a takedown in MMA; it’d take forever. It would be very relaxed. They would pummel very gently, because it might last for hours. That’s how jiu-jitsu was developed. Jiu-jitsu, in my opinion, in 10 or 15 years, will be dominant in MMA because they’re going to figure it out. There are brilliant minds behind jiu-jitsu. In 10, 15, 20 years, it will all come full circle. It’ll look like the early UFCs, where the jiu-jitsu guy grabs you and takes you down in ways you’ve never seen in wrestling. It’s going to look like [Shinya] Aoki or Palhares looking for leg locks [and] twisting and turning. The youth are going to grow up and see, Hey, Palhares was getting takedowns with the leg locks, taking down guys more seasoned than him, pulling guard in a unique manner. Paul Sass, et cetera. These [guys] were doing things that … why don’t we copy them? I learned wrestling, but I use jiu-jitsu also. I’ll use Palhares’ technique; remember, it’s my counterpart. If I shoot a double and you sprawl on me [and] you’re a better wrestler than me, I’ll pull my leg lock. If you’re a grappler and you’re better than me and I can’t pull my leg lock, I’m going to double-leg you. I have to be better than you somewhere. If we’re even everywhere, then I’m going to beat you with my physicality. I don’t believe in just conditioning programs. I don’t believe in lifting weights and this and that. I have a particular way that I condition my fighters; I believe in my system really profoundly. We do specific days of conditioning, but we also use the art to condition ourselves. You look at guys like Frank Shamrock in the golden days, and they were better at jiu-jitsu than guys today, because they had a blend of wrestling and jiu-jitsu and physicality. Now you see these IBJJF champions who get in there and get steamrolled on the ground.