Jiu-jitsu has gotten a bad rap in MMA. After Royce Gracie’s display at UFC 1, the jiu-jitsu black belt was MMA’s gamebreaker, “This man can choke me unconscious and snap my limbs? And all he has to do is sit down and pull me on top of him?!”

Today the need for jiu-jitsu is starting to get brushed aside, “Yes you need to be aware of submission grappling, but really you need to focus on prevention”. The idea is that if you get good at stopping takedowns and standing-up, you won’t ever need to worry about submissions. Also, you don’t need to worry about someone pulling you on top of them - ground and pound and submission defense will thwart guard pullers’ efforts.

In jiu-jitsu certain submissions are seen as more effective than others. This submission hierarchy is more pronounced in MMA where the consequences for ineffective techniques are much more severe. Rear naked chokes are seen as more valuable than wrist locks because getting behind someone and strangling them is more likely to end the fight than breaking their wrist is.

Leg locking has been demonized in mixed martial arts. The argument goes something like, “The submissions put you on bottom so you’ll get finished by ground and pound”.

While that argument has merits, it ignores the value of being beneath someone with your legs controlling their base. Truth be told, I remember hearing this same argument refuted more than 10 years ago when I was a white belt.

Gil’s background was in wrestling. Gil favored being on top, but when asked about half guard and deep half guard his opinion was, “Everyone does it wrong. You have to keep moving to keep them moving so they can’t hit you.” This same logic applies to leg locking and pulling guard in MMA.

While being beneath someone in MMA is inherently risky, it affords you the distinct ability to disrupt their base. Without a stable base you can not effectively strike, let alone ground and pound. Couple that with an ability to end the fight and you have a legitimate strategy to win a fight:

We’ve actually seen this strategy work twice in ONE FC recently:

This isn’t to say this strategy is fool proof. If it was there wouldn’t be an argument and I wouldn’t be writing this shit.

In the gifs above, Buchecha and Tonon both kept moving until they had a legitimate submission threat that forced their opponent to concede position and tap. This strategy falls apart when your movement does not off balance your opponent, or you stay underneath someone hunting submissions. Ironically we saw exactly that from Tonon in his title fight against Than Le.

What went wrong? Tonon did not appropriately use his Single Leg X elevation to come on top. Watch Lachlan Giles demonstrate a different option from the same position.

The game of jiu-jitsu is about control. You want to control your opponent until they quit, sweep them so you can get on top and have a better chance of making them quit, or stand-up so you can wrestle for a new position and a better chance at controlling them. When Tonon fought Le, he did not have a clean look at a submission, he ignored his sweep and stand-up opportunities, and he paid for it. Tonon seemed to be committed to staying beneath Le. That is a strategic error, not a technical one. If you want an overview on the difference check out this article.

Let’s think about another sport, boxing. In boxing, common practice is to keep your hands high by your face to prevent getting hit cleanly. Does that mean that is the only way to hold your hands and create a guard? Of course not.

Only if you consider Olympic gold medals and heavyweight world titles success.

The point is, leg locking, guard pulling, and jiu-jitsu on bottom is misused. No one is saying it’s easy to play guard or leg lock someone in MMA, but it is simpler than it is made out to be. If you can’t submit your opponent, sweep them. If you can’t sweep them, stand-up. The best time to score a submission, sweep, or stand-up is in transition between positions - Tonon and Buchecha showed that by locking on a leg lock in the transition between feet and floor. The worst time to score a submission, sweep, or stand-up is when you’re spending too much time in any one position. That’s one of the reasons why guard work has been demonized in MMA. The longer you stay in one position, the less likely you are to find a submission to end the fight.

Unorthodox techniques will come in and out of fashion. The next time you see odd techniques fail in MMA ask yourself, was the technique incorrect? Or, were the tactics behind using the technique incorrectly implemented?