JUDO in MMA

Hello again everybody!!! I'm back to business, sorry for my absence during these weeks but I was pretty busy and I didn't have much time to pay attention to this blog.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to watch “WARRIOR” and I must be honest I’m still vibing!!! I loved it and I really really had a good time with it. If you are MMA or whatever fighting sport fan you are going to enjoy it for sure, it’s exciting, the fights are incredible, it has very emotional moments, in addition, you will able to see very good performances. I really recommend it, honestly. I’m not going tell you what the plot is, even though if you want to have a look, here you have the trailer.

The thing is that… after watching this film I felt like writing about a classical question that every fighter or even everyone has ever asked himself: Which martial art is the best? I mean, in my case, what can I take from Judo to be the best fighter, to be unbeatable? Typical questions, aren’t they?

I practice Judo, and since I was a child I have always had to deal with the sames comments: "ohhh ok!, Judo is fine, but you can't punch or kick, so you can't fight in real fight.Iin a street fight you wouldn’t know what to do..." or "hey!!! do you do Judo? Oohhh so I don't want to have trouble with you, dude... :DDD" and so on and so forth.

So classic!  People who do Judo know what I'm talking about. 

First of all, I do Judo and Judo is a fighting sport, perfect, but that doesn't mean neither I like beating up everyone that I can find in the street nor I would like to be all day in a "real fight". What a stupid thing!!! Judo is another sport like football, rugby, basketball, athletics, etc. Watch out! I'm not telling you they are the same thing, obviously they aren't, but all of them are sports, and if all of them are sports will you ask their practitioners the same question???
It would be funny seeing a javelin thrower using his lance to self-defense or imagine a fencer with his sword, in the street, looking for a "real fight" or even better, Can you picture an Olympic archer and shooter contest? Who would be the winner? It would be fascinating wouldn't it? (Irony).
In addition, one thing you can learn in our sport is that it’s always better avoiding those kind of fights, they’ll take you nowhere and you really could get in trouble for nothing, even if you "win"! You should think you could really hurt someone and you would have to pay for it. Consequently, be smart and avoid them, it's not worthy.

Second thing, front my point of view, what those people really wanted to know was my opinion about Judo compared to the rest of martial arts, the typical question I mentioned at the start of the post.

This question, this kind of thinking, made Vale Tudo came on the scene in Brazil around the 90’s. It was created to show the superiority of the Jiu-Jitsu over the rest of fighting styles. Fighters from different martial arts could fight to check what the best was. Soon, this kind of events were becoming more and more popular and today we can speak about a new sport, MMA (Mix Martial Arts).

Nowadays, every good fighter knows how to throw his opponent, apply an armbar or make a choke (Judo and Jiu-Jitsu techniques) but at the beginning things were very different. Fighters were specialized in their own martial art and they barely knew how to do something from another fighting style. And can you guess what the result was? Doubtless, players that were used to throwing and looking for the submission were the most successful. These days, fighters usually have a dominant style but as I said before they are more complete and they try to balance their weaknesses in every area of the sport.

After this explanation, it is obvious what my opinion is about what Judo can give you if you have to fight in a different situation, with different rules, in a different place, against different opponents… In conclusion, if you wanted to fight in MMA, would Judo be useful? My answer is “OF COURSE, YES, IT WOULD!”

As you know I always like giving examples about I’m talking about, so here you have a list of videos that makes even stronger my arguments.

The first one it’s a compilation with Judo throws in MMA, totally amazing!

The next ones are videos of the one that is considered the Best MMA Fighter Ever: FEDOR EMELIANENKO (He used to practice Judo and Sambo before his MMA career). He’s explaining how to release the arm when you are trying to get the armbar called JUJI GATAME. After this, you can see the Japanese Judo version of the same thing by Katsuito Kashiwazaki, Judo World Champion, and specialist in Ne Waza (Judo work on the floor).

Finally, one quote. One of my Judo teachers, Bernardo Romay (he teaches Jiu-Jitsu as well),alays like to say "Sometimes judokas don't really know the great power we have in our hands". For sure, I think is true. Judo techniques are amazingly powerful and we could use them for more things than Judo, but you have to know how to use them properly. So think about it and enjoy JUDO :D