T.P. Grant
Judo Chop: Alexey Oleynik’s No Gi-Kiel from the bottom of mount
The major story coming out of the UFC Fight Night: Rodriguez vs Penn is the ignoble end to Penn’s storied career. But, on the undercard Russian submission specialist Alexey Oleynik stunned fans, and his opponent, when he finished Viktor Pesta with not only the first Ezekiel choke in UFC history, but from the bottom of […]
Judo Chop: Demian Maia’s Hybrid Grappling Game
Demian Maia has long been known as one of the very best jiu jitsu practitioners in the world, and he has been on a 2-year, 6-fight winning streak that has featured masterful grappling performances. His most recent submission of Carlos Condit on the UFC on Fox 21 card turned heads. Condit is well known for […]
So Meta: The MMA Guard Game
The guard has been a part of MMA since its founding days, and for a long stretches of the sports history it was seen as a potent offensive position. As the sport has progressed the role of the guard has changed a great deal, it is a position practiced by every MMA fighter but used […]
Is sport Jiu Jitsu bad for MMA? Going deeper than bermibolos and guard pulling
The growth of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu parallels the rise of Mixed Martial Arts around the globe. Largely due to the successes of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighters experienced in the varying rule sets early on in the sport’s development. But since those early days, MMA and Jiu Jitsu have grown further and further apart. Still there […]
Bloody Elbow review: Gianni Grippo Dynamic Leg Drags from Digitsu
Traditionally Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructionals tend to be huge, expensive box sets that could be a curriculum at a school, but with the rise of the digital only format has allowed instructionals to become shorter, more focused and cheaper. The Digitsu website has embraced this shift, becoming home to an impressive library of offerings, some of […]
Judo Chop ‘Year of the Guillotine’: Part 3 – MMA Adaptations
This is the final installment of the “Year of the Guillotine” min-series of Judo Chops examining trends that lead to the guillotine becoming a more prominent submission in 2015 than ever before in MMA. Part I explored the increased understanding of how to apply pressure to the choke and how that has lead to the evolution […]
Judo Chop ‘Year of the Guillotine’: Part 2 – The Rise of the ‘Arm-In’ Guillotine
The guillotine choke experienced something of a renaissance in MMA over the last two years. Fightmetric’s numbers demonstrate that while guillotine attempts have declined, the number of guillotines being finished and the success rate of fighters attempting guillotines are at an all-time high. Part I explored the invitations of grips and understanding of how to […]
Judo Chop: ‘Year of the Guillotine’, Part 1 – Understanding Pressure
The guillotine is seemingly one of the simplest chokes in grappling but upon closer inspection it becomes an amazingly detailed and difficult choke to finish consistently. 2015 has been hailed as the return of the guillotine choke to the UFC, but upon closer inspection the “comeback” narrative doesn’t check out. According to Fightmetric from 2006 […]
UFC 194: Aldo vs McGregor Judo Chop – Luke Rockhold’s Opportunistic Grappling
UFC 194 is set to be an absolutely epic fight card, starting at the top with the long awaited main event of UFC Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo taking on the Interim Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor. But, just before that fight goes down, In the co-main event, UFC Middleweight Champion Chris Weidman is set to face challenger Luke Rockhold in […]
UFC 194: Aldo vs McGregor Judo Chop – The Pressure Top Game of Chris Weidman
UFC 194 is set to be an absolutely epic fight card, starting at the top with the long awaited main event of UFC Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo taking on the Interim Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor. But, just before the headliner goes off, In the co-main event, UFC Middleweight Champion Chris Weidman is set to face challenger Luke Rockhold […]
So Meta: Holly Holm uses modern striker tactics to dethrone Ronda Rousey
Holly Holm completed one of the most thrilling upsets in the history of a sport full of thrilling upsets. Holm dismantled Ronda Rousey to decisively take the UFC Women’s Bantamweight title with a resounding head kick knockout. It left fans with one simple question: how did this happen? In MMA short’s history there have emerged […]
Know It All Purple Belt: ‘That’s Not Jiu Jitsu’
In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu one of the negative connotations that can attached to purple belts is that they can occasionally think they already know it all. I’ve only done a few pieces where I have injected my own views on grappling and I always try to use materials from other, more knowledgeable grapplers in my […]
The Know-It-All Purple Belt
entry-content__stream “> T.P. Grant gets a little reflective
So Meta: The Four MMA Grappling Archetypes
The podcast Heavy Hands has been doing a great job of using archetypes to help classify MMA fighter’s striking games. Creating archetypes and then sorting fighters is a useful analytical tool because it forces a deeper level of though over an athlete’s approach to fighting than just “he is a wrestler”. I’ve attempted to do something […]
Know-It-All Purple Belt: The Role of Aggression in Learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu one of the negative connotations that can attached to purple belts is that they can occasionally think they already know it all. I’ve only done a few pieces where I have injected my own views on grappling and I always try to use materials from other, more knowledgeable grapplers in my […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Mackenzie Dern
This August, the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place – the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs,” it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Romulo Barral
This August, the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place – the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs,” it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Garry Tonon
This August, the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs,” it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open in […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Michelle Nicolini
This August, the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs”, it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open in […]
Palhares breaks the etiquette of the tap
Checkmate. One word captures the elegance of chess, where the goal of the game is to take the opponent’s King but the final move is never played. Rather, players maneuver their enemy into a position from which there is no escape and accept their surrender. In submission grappling the tap fills that role and gives […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Joao Miyao
This August the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs”, it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open in […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Keenan Cornelius
This August the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs”, it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open in […]
Gods of War: Tadahiro Nomura
Tadahiro Nomura was born December 10, 1974 to a Judo family in Koryo, Japan. Nomura’s grandfather ran a local Judo school, his father had coached 1984 Olympic gold medalist Shinji Hosokawa, and his uncle Toyokazu Nomura won gold at the 1972 Olympics. Needless to say, Judo was apart of Tadahiro’s Nomura’s life from the very beginning, and […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles
entry-content__stream “> T.P. Grant profiles the biggest names going to ADCCs this year.
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Rubens Charles ‘Cobrinha’
This August the most prestigious no-gi submission grappling tournament will take place, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand has the “ADCCs”, it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open in […]
ADCC 2015 Profiles: Braulio Estima
This August, the most prestigious no gi submission grappling tournament will take place: the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) Submission Wrestling World Championships. Known in shorthand as the “ADCCs,” it is a professional grappling tournament held every two years that attracts the top grappling talent from all across the world. The rule set is extremely open […]
Don’t Fear the Reaper: Learn More About the Dreaded “Knee Reap”
In the jiu jitsu community no two words can strike fear into a room quite like “knee reaping”. The simple placement of one leg in a position of leg entanglement has been declared worthy of an immediate disqualification in many jiu jitsu competitions. The rationale is simple enough, that it puts dangerous pressure on the […]
So Meta: Cain Velasquez’s MMA Wrestling Blueprint
The mix of skills, strategy, and training have changed an astonishing amount since the grappling/vale tudo/jiu-jitsu dominated 1990s. Wrestlers have been some of the biggest driving forces in this progressive change of how MMA fighters fight. When most MMA fans hear the word ‘wrestling’ they think of takedowns, but wreslters have contributed greatly to the […]
BJJ Crossroads: Jiu Jitsu is outgrowing the IBJJF
The IBJJF World Championships are underway this week and seems to be set in the larger context of an approaching cross roads. The International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation (IBJJF) is the dominant force in the jiu jitsu competition scene is, and hosts the largest and most historic gi competitions in the jiu jitsu world, including […]
Watch the full Eddie Bravo Invitational 3 Event
The Eddie Bravo Invitational, or EBI, is one of the many new professional Submission Only events that are very much in vogue right now in the jiu jitsu world. The EBI has a fun counter culture feel to it both in the context of grappler and larger society. This grappling event draws on a much […]