#87: Are we all doing Judo? Check out this interview

[@jiujitsuismyoutlet]

Thank you very much for the shout out :) I appreciate it!

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

My pleasure brother!

[@PlacidTanuki]

Ferguson is the man! Very few people have his breadth of experience: MMA Fighter, D1 Wrestler, Judo Olympian, ADCC Competitor, and a PhD.

[@andrefludd]

If anyone is skeptical, you will for sure enjoy the interview. I listened to it for the first time in 2023 and found myself going back a couple of times. There's a great discussion about why being on top is the most important thing for any form of grappling. It's really an amazing insight and a great reminder to not spend all your training time in the guard.

[@DipThapa]

History regarding martial arts is always interesting cause it rarely tends to be how people within the art try to sell it as. Looking forward to checking it out though!

[@justin8865]

Can't wait to watch it about 6 months ago I went down the judo rabbit hole. Man Jigoro Kano is the man Everyone should read his collection of writings called "mind over muslce" Btw Jigoro Kano is a very talented and witty writer. The man was so far ahead of his time. He even wanted eventually to include strikes into judo but couldn't see a way to safely practice them at force (this is pre ww2 before modern gloves) so in a sense he was thinking about mma before mma. Once you see why he designed judo and chose the teqniques he chose. You'll want to put him over the gracies in your gym.

[@Soulful_Oatmilk]

hows the knee Joe? Missing the demonstrations 🙏

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

It’s ok. Still a lot I can’t do on my feet. Yeah, I have been trying to get back. Working for free on KZbin isn’t necessarily high on my list of priorities. I get like maybe $18 a month on KZbin with almost 90 videos. Lol! A lot of sicknesses going through the family too as it is warming up. My goal is to essentially make enough videos for people to be able to teach themselves how to wrestle well and then stop all together. It’s not worth it really.

[@Soulful_Oatmilk]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 I understand, I'm between jobs and after a year of recurring staph, I decided to take an indefinite break to save on the medical bills. My joints feel better and I haven't had staph since but I miss the grind. We all have to do some risk analysis sometimes and do what's best for our family. Best of luck to you brother.

[@stassenchr]

I watched the interview. Have to say, if you watch this interview and similar, or read the judo reddit, or other forums, I can't help but find that many judo ppl spend an awful lot of time on saying how BJJ is just judo and that they already had all the techniques etc2, whereas ppl in BJJ very rarely bother. That says something, imo (to me, that judo ppl are a bit insecure about the growth of BJJ, but others might see that as BJJ ppl being ignorant) Also I'm not a fan of the argument that judo ppl use about how more ppl do judo. Firstly z the stats on it are a bit weak, but nonetheless, it's not just the number of ppl doing it that matters, but also the "intensity" of the ppl doing it. Among 10 ppl who live and die a sport you're more likely to find a champion than among 100 casuals. Why dk I say that? Because outside of a few places, judo just isn't trained as intensely as wrestling is in for example the US. I've been to the top judo Universities in Japan, amd while they train hars, it's not ike NCAA

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

Yeah, from what I can see online, in general, BJJ lives rent free in Judokas minds whereas wrestling lives rent free in BJJ people’s minds. But I think a lot of the people talking shit online don’t even train man. People don’t talk crap really in a training environment. The amount of shit I read about which is better, wrestling, judo, or BJJ is dumb. You put a skilled BJJ person against a skilled wrestling in a wrestling rule set, the wrestler wins-the opposite is true for the same competitors under BJJ rules-the wrestler might do well for not understanding BJJ in noGi, but in the Gi they eventually get submitted. And then the same thing goes for Judo. Take a skilled judoka against a skilled BJJ player, and if the rules are Judo, it lasts 20s. If it’s BJJ rules and they have to engage in the guard, the BJJ player pulls guard and then it’s in his/her favor. Then you have the online MMA casual fans who just respond to my instructional promotional videos with “dis ith gonna get you punched in da facth.” Ok it’s wrestling for BJJ, not wrestling for MMA you turd burglar. I paid more attention to his discussion on how we are not doing a martial art per se, but all of us are doing a sport. And that really is true. It is the Ju do “gentle way” of the original combat art used for war

[@stassenchr]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 yes the sport aspect is very important. The ruleset makes the art. One can have a view on what's best for MMA or real life, but that's rarely the point. Also I like how he started from the art of war, saying it's all just special cases thereof haha.

[@kristianOLS]

Rhadi is interesting for sure. He’s too involved with llyod irving for my taste tho He really loves his phd title

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

IDK who that is. Everyone refers to him as Dr. I always tell people to call me Joe if they call me Dr Breza. It’s just my personal preference. My graduate and postdoctoral mentor were the same way. In fact, in my field everyone goes by their first names. It’s whatever though I don’t care

[@kristianOLS]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 google Lloyd Irving scandal and you’ll see

[@hawaiijim]

I just got an email from BJJ Fanatics. John Danaher is about to release a new instructional about stand-up wrestling and takedowns called The Fastest Way: To Becoming Effective In Standing Position. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it after it's released.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

Who cares, lol I’m not going to pay to watch someone bastardize good wrestling technique, and tell people to skip across the mat on their knees. Lol. I have made my point about this many times over. You want to learn how to wrestle, then learn from someone who actually wrestled. You want to learn Judo, learn it from legit judokas. You can’t watch kung fu and then be a kung fu expert any more than you can watch wrestling or judo and be an expert in wrestling or judo. This isn’t the matrix, lol. I only did the one review because people were saying how he is like a college wrestling coach and that he claimed to have invented an entirely new system of wrestling, which he calls scrimmage wrestling. I reviewed it because one, he is basically a low level highschool wrestling coach and two, it wasn’t an entirely new system, it was folkstyle wrestling-stole the entire thing. He is just going to recycle old material at this point. Look, if his guys were absolutely slick on their feet then I wouldn’t have said anything. But his guys train 2x a day 7 days a week and aren’t as skilled as sophomore highschool varsity wrestlers who train once a day 5 days a week and only for like 5 months out of the year. It’s because everything John knows about wrestling is from watching other people do it. I love watching concert pianists. That doesn’t mean I can play like one now. Now contrast that with how good his guys are on the ground and tell me I am wrong. They are slick on the ground because John actually trained with those entries and shit for years. There are now several great collegiate wrestlers who do BJJ now that you can learn from. Michael Trasso, Brandon Reed, and John Marsh are excellent technicians who understand wrestling, because like me they competed at a collegiate level. If you like Judo then watch JFlo. Watching John teaching judo is even worse than watching him teach wrestling. You need to be precise as hell for Judo to work. You can’t have all bent ass knees on a de ashi hari. JFlo talks about this and shows why. John has like a 40 degree knee bend when he does foot sweeps.

[@hawaiijim]

I wasn't endorsing his instructional. I mentioned it because I value your criticism of his technique. I'm curious to know if he modified any of his technique in response to your public criticism. It is a bit misleading to say he "stole" techniques, though, unless someone actually owns those techniques as intellectual property. You can't steal stuff that's legally in the public domain.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

@hawaiijim I get it, and I appreciate that you like my content but if I do another review of his wrestling, then I will have to deal with 50 people sending me Reddit posts of people talking shit about me online. I have a friend who is buying it-maybe I will look, but I don’t think I will do a review because it won’t solve anything. I would be better off just showing every fucking thing he does wrong. If did that with S2G, I would be making videos for years. I didn’t do it, because why. I will just show what to do correctly and not bring him into it. Here’s something I don’t get…if you wanted to learn piano to be a concert pianist, would you learn it from a person who has direct knowledge from doing it and playing in concert or someone who has just watched concert pianists?? Seriously man. So why do BJJ people care about what someone who never wrestled says about wrestling? He makes a lot of fundamental mistakes man. His mechanics aren’t getting any better with age either. His ground Jiu Jitsu is the best in NoGi, so he ought to just stick with that because all he has done is expose his ignorance about how these techniques and systems really work against resisting opponents. So yeah, nobody owns techniques, but he took Eddie Cummings’ leg lock system, preventing him from making instructionals (I have on good authority this is true from people who trained with him) and made a lot of $. It’s the lying I have a problem with…he promoted S2G instructionals as being better than wrestling and Judo, but all he did was teach American folkstyle wrestling-albeit kinda like shit. This system he is teaching isn’t his system, like he claims in the promotional video I saw. And his guys aren’t doing any of it. They are doing 10mins of collar ties until someone gets tired. They aren’t actually wrestling like he is teaching at all. They are tough as shit, and that goes a long way, but technically not even highschool district champion level

[@hawaiijim]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 I didn't realize you have a lot of people talking shit about you online. I was coming from the perspective that the only reason I know about your KZbin channel is because KZbin recommended your critique of Danaher's Standing2Ground a year or so ago. Whenever I see BJJ guys on Reddit asking about Standing2Ground I always warn them against it, but that usually falls on deaf ears. Lots of BJJ guys seem to think that Danaher is the Albert Einstein of BJJ. (And, hell, even Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics.) Personally, I have eight takedown instructionals (all purchased before you and Jordan released yours). Four are by former high-level college or Olympic wrestlers, two are by former UFC title contenders with a college wrestling background, and two are by former BJJ world champions (Buchecha and Andre Galvao). Buchecha's instructional is mostly about making wrestling takedowns work against gi grips. I've also bought two defensive wrestling instructionals by John Smith and Kyle Dake that teach takedown defense.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

@hawaiijim yeah, unfortunately when you put yourself out there anyone can say whatever they want. I don’t suppress any responses on KZbin or Instagram. I don’t like when people delete comments to make their channels appear more favorable. But yeah there are definitely Reddit posts hating on my from when I first started the channel and people freaked out when I said the side bodylock is how you get uchi mata’ed or headlocked. But they talked it out and now people are getting it. I think Danaher is a fantastic BJJ coach. When it comes to newaza in the gi and nogi, he is incredible. I literally started my channel because I was seeing people teach bad wrestling and then would just say “oh it’s not wrestling it’s Jiu Jitsu” whenever they received negative feedback. The thing is they are trying to teach classic wrestling, and I truly believe the reason wrestling in BJJ is so far behind is due to nonwrestlers trying to teach wrestling. You don’t see wrestlers teaching BJJ so why the opposite is ok is odd. But there’s a certain type of cult following where people think a coach knows everything about all grappling arts-even when they never did those sports. If John Smith came out with a Jiu Jitsu instructional, I would be skeptical. But he is the GOAT of wrestling. No question. He was so dominant over international competition. And he is also a phenomenal wrestling coach. So that is a good purchase. I am sure that something in Danaher’s instructional is of value. Some of his conceptual understanding is very nice. Unfortunately, he actually makes quite a bit of mistakes when it comes to wrestling hand fighting. Like really basic shit. I just see me doing a review of his instructional as advertisement and I am not gonna do that. Lol

[@Beefshoulder]

Rhadi is a legend and had a systemic way to whoop judokas who were so advanced mans a genius

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

I need to watch his matches. He was huge!

[@CHEWYCHEWYQQ]

I must first admit that I have not seen the interview in question yet. My reason why however, is that in the past I've found Rhadi Ferguson's interviews to be really hard to sit through for much the same reason I find Danaher's content hard to sit through. Clearly they are both very knowledgeable about what they do. I'm commenting to ask if the interview adds anything new to the discussion. There's tons of posts online about how BJJ is not real and is just Judo, thus creating the derisive backronym "Basically Just Judo." My issue with this is that online Judo posters love to take credit for BJJ's successes, but also love to pile on footage of BJJ guys butt-scooting. If BJJ is just Judo, then butt-scooting is also just Judo. Also, if BJJ is just Judo, then is Judo just Japanese Jiu Jitsu? At what point is ok to say that one art is different than another while acknowledging its linage? It all just reeks of more tribalistic nonsense that I don't want to take part in. Oddly enough, all the Judoka's I've met in person (not a lot) either have never heard of BJJ, or have no issue treating it as a separate art. Again, if the interview has new information besides the history of BJJ, or statements like "Kosen Judo really invented X guard!", then I guess I might have to listen.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

Yeah, you probably shouldn’t watch it. Lol

[@CHEWYCHEWYQQ]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 Tanks for the heads up.

[@christopherjames3027]

I always thought it was kind of a "no duh" statement to say that BJJ is just Judo.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

I like how he explains how none of us are really doing a martial art. We are doing a “ju do” or “gentle way” of it through sport. We aren’t throwing someone and holding them in kesa getame so that we can get the knife out of our belt and finish the fight with a fatal puncture. And this is important since so many BJJ instructors teach self defense. We aren’t really doing self defense but Ju do or the gamified version of Japanese Jiu Jitsu

[@christopherjames3027]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 100% on point. I listened to this podcast a few months ago. It's an interesting point of view.

[@SkepticalAaron]

I love how triggered Brazilians get now that people are starting to say "American Jiu Jitsu", as though they didn't just learn judo and slapped Brazilian in front of it.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

Lol! Triggered

[@Alex-xg5gc]

Wrestling existed long before judo though. So really judo is just wrestling with a particular focus on using grips on those japanese jackets.

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

My current coaches say “it’s all wrestling.” Last night I was working on some grip fighting stuff from a seated guard and said to my coach, “you really do approach all of this stuff just like wrestling with handfighting and throws.” And he said, “it’s all wrestling, just different rules and uniforms.”

[@Alex-xg5gc]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 oh yeah I've always done BJJ like it's a different style of wrestling. Kind of like switching between folk, free, and Greco can be a little jarring to how you play the game, but it's still all wrestling. It's fighting for position and holds a lot of skills are transferrable. I was always better on the ground in wrestling so BJJ was a easy transition for me. It's funny because I tell ppl I'm a wrestler then they get really confused when I play guard. But the trad BJJ types don't appreciate my style because I work in a fair amount of wrestling technique that works well but doesn't follow the strict how tos passed down by the traditionalists

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

@Alex-xg5gc when I got into BJJ, my coach told me to play guard for a few years because the wrestling would always be there. So if someone got close to passing on a knee cut, I would turn it into an outside single, shelf the leg, and smash the legs together and take the back. My current coaches are experts in sambo, Jiu Jitsu, and judo. They want me to get the fuck out of guard and stand up or sweep to get on top. They view guard as a disadvantage and something you should work to get out of. It is an interesting concept, because of course they understand submissions from guard, sweeps, etc. They just don’t like you being there. After playing guard at my old school for a few years, I developed really good guard retention and sweeps. But once I got to Catpaw, Alec footlocked the shit out of me every time I tried to play open guard. So now, I am more cautious about where I put my feet and don’t do it unless I have good sleeve grips. Because that fucker has ridiculously good footlocks and control from there

[@Alex-xg5gc]

@@josephbreza-grappling9459 Guard can be a pretty great place to start wrestling from. If I can get a grip on an ankle I can finish a low single or low double. You really have to invest a lot of time in leg locks to learn to shut them down. There are some entries against bottom player but they're much easier to shut down than the ludicrous amount of leg lock entries available to the bottom player who's highly specialized in leg locks. Immediately clear any grips they get on your ankle, pull your knees to your chest to clear the knee line, pummel feet inside so they can't isolate one leg. My coach is smaller than me and absolutely wrecks me with heel hooks whenever he's trying. Much harder for him to get access while I'm playing guard though.

[@rodrigoprietoperuyera4367]

BJJ... basicly just judo...

[@josephbreza-grappling9459]

In Judo practice, we do Newaza under BJJ rules so that we can keep moving for 5min rounds. The only differences are that they might go to turtle or if they pin you, they won’t try to submit. It makes me laugh sometimes when my Judo coach will be like “Joe and his fucking open guard. That shit is the fantasy of BJJ.” What he means is that in judo if I go to an open guard the top person just has to stand up and it is stopped. But, a closed guard in sambo can get you pinned. They are all experts in judo, Jiu Jitsu, and sambo, so they play to particular rule sets. But if we are doing newaza under BJJ rules, then I am going to play a nice smooth game. Not trying to go 25mins at a judo pace and then do stand up afterwards for 30mins. Not at this age, lmfao