If you are reading this, you have at least heard of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And, we are going to assume that you are a fan of Mixed Martial Arts as well. In the MMA universe, there is one company that is king. The UFC is the premier MMA organization and puts out the most fights. As you know, there are three ways to win a fight in the UFC; you can win via a knockout, a technical knockout (stoppage), or a submission. Actually, you can also win through judges’ decision too, but nobody wants to win that way, right? All of us, competitors, want to win our contests in a very decisive and deliberate manner. Being a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu martial artist, I am primarily concerned with being able to win a fight through submission. That is what I believe in, and I am definitely not alone in thinking that. In fact, in the history of the UFC: the first 4 one night tournaments were mostly won by a weak, unathletic, and smaller individual using BJJ, the overwhelming majority of all UFC mma champions have been trained by Brazilian Jiu Jitsu masters, and, lastly, the number one pound for pound undisputed best mma fighter (Anderson Silva) is also a BJJ black belt and won his hardest fight and most talked about fights in mma with a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu choke.
It’s fair to say that most people know about Royce Gracie dominating the UFC’s first tournament using BJJ. But, most people don’t know a lot of the details. Most people aren’t aware that Royce Gracie was always the smaller man in each of his mma fights. Most people don’t know that Royce Gracie was the least athletic of the mma fighters in the tournament. And, most people don’t know that Royce Gracie was actually one of the least skilled bjj fighters from the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu royal family the Gracies. The fact that he wasn’t the best bjj practitioner is exactly why he was chosen to represent bjj in mma. Because, it would go to show how ridiculously effective bjj is in mma fights. He went undefeated in the first 5 UFC mma tournaments (a total of 12 fights most of which had no time limit); he was the champion of UFC 1, 2, and 4 mma tournaments (only dropping out of UFC 3 due to an injury after winning his first fight). Does that convince you that BJJ is an effective tool in MMA? It definitely convinced all other fighters. It was during that period that all professional mma fighters decided it was time to learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Since then, all of the champions of the UFC have been trained in BJJ by Brazilian Jiu Jitsu masters. And, the majority of them have attained high level skills in BJJ. You can look for yourself here. The fighters who haven’t been taught the art of BJJ is a very elusive minority. Now, although the trend is getting away from submission victories in the UFC (largely due to the pressures of producing exciting knockouts for bigger pay checks), that does not mean the art isn’t being learned by all of the fighters. Take it from the pound for pound number one mma fighter in the world, bjj is vital.
Now then, if BJJ is good enough for a small man to win mma tournaments against all other martial arts, for UFC MMA fighters to win championship belts, and for the best fighter in the world to win the hardest fight of his life, the question is, is it good enough for you? Are you convinced? Is that enough evidence? For me it is more than enough evidence. If you are interested in being an mma fighter, come check out my Sacramento BJJ Academy.