#juijitsu

NEW: Scott Celebrating 30 Years with Beverly Hills JiuJitsu

Eclipse by @xxtyraxesxxlove

How would real martial artists fare in MMA?

In early UFC days, lots of “traditional” marital artists entered. Karate, taekwondo, Kung-fu, sumo, judo, jiu-jitsu, and of course boxing, kick boxing and wrestling.

Basically wrestlers and jiujitsu practitioners crushed everyone at first.

More well known marital arts did not stand up well to wrestlers who could take them to the ground. The exception was Jiujitsu- which excels on the ground is basically a combat form of wrestling.

Early years of UFC, most winners were either wrestlers or jiujitsu fighters.

Then rules changed a bit (no headbutts to the face of a downed opponent, no stomping a downed opponent, rounds, judges and time limits) and kickboxers with some basic grappling defensive skills started to do well also.

These kickboxers used striking to dominate fights, but also cross trained in early MMA skills- wrestling and submissions, but mostly how to avoid takedowns, escape holds, stand up and return to striking position if they ended up on the ground.

Sometimes they would learn how to stall and avoid damage until a ref would start the fight from the feet again.

Good examples are Maurice Smith and Chuck Liddell. Both awesome strikers who learned to be very effective at defending against superior wrestlers.

Eventually a new form of Martial art (MMA) took shape which combines skills from Wrestling, jiujitsu, kickboxing and boxing. Some karate and taekwondo is also shown in some fighters styles as well.

Well known fighters like Machida, McGregor, Roy Nelson, all have backgrounds in traditional martial arts. But all train for MMA fights.

I do jui jitsu, specifically Brazilian jui jitsu, and in case you didn’t know, martial arts is a male dominated area, and I am a female.

So last night, I took my belt test to move up to my green belt. I passed luckily, (that’s right, I’m a badass that can beat you up, with a green belt to back it up).

And as I was being given my belt, one of the female coaches, we’ll call her Stacy, she walked up to me and offered to put it on for me.

Little background on Coach Stacy. She is like barely 5 foot. She is a short angry gremlin. And she is terrifying. I’ve seen her beat every other coach, most of which are older than her, barring the Sensei that owns the gym I train at. She loves jujitsu and damn is she good at it.

And so as she was tying my belt on, she said, “I’m really proud of you girl. There’s not enough girls in jujitsu, and it’s really awesome that your doing this. Your kicking ass. I can’t wait to see you get your black belt.”

When I tell y’all I was close to crying, there were literally tears in my eyes. She gave me the biggest hug, and walked to join the other coaches. I went to hug one of the few other jui jitsu girls at my gym, who had just gotten her blue belt. (Congrats to her!)