My thoughts on the Olympics- rules/potential new rules etc

[@mantalksatfridge6811]

I’m very new to judo, but I do have some thoughts: My immediate impression watching the olympics was that sacrifice techniques are the meta at the moment, so I really agree with that. Though towards the end it seemed like more people were losing when their sutemi waza were countered (yoko otoshi being rolled over, sumi gaeshi being “jumped” over for a mount holddown), so having seen this competition the meta may change as athletes will know they need to be able to counter sutemi waza. But even good attempts there were defended a lot too - deguchi, tsunoda and keldiyorova all seemed to have a lot of drop techniques defended before executing them successfully later. I think the heavier weight classes skew the memory of the shidos a bit as well. In the “+” classes it looks like the athletes have gone from fairly trim and athletic the class below to just being very heavy, which seems to even make it much harder for them to throw each other. Watching the teams events, it seemed to me that the heavyweights were the least likely to score with a successful throw. Unless there are upper weight limits that could be hard to change, but may just be something that needs to be accepted for people who are that big. The changes to scoring would help a lot imo. A lot of people say ippons should be harder to score (more force, no rolling into it, etc). I don’t mind either way, but I think if it goes back to that then you also need the lower scores reintroduced, or it’ll just be even harder for people to end a match early. All round I disagree a lot with people saying it was unwatchable. Put on any boxing or mma card and you’ll see as many stinkers as good fights, and there were still plenty of good fights in the judo.

[@sthenos9715]

Great commentary! Completely agree with most of these. Half-arsed drop throws + hooks in back mount. We'd see so many less half-arsed drop throws if the threat of back mount was present

[@lz7ification]

Longer matches would actually be good, but the IJF will never change the length of the matches as it means they would have to shelve the mixed team event. As for me, I would bring back yukos and allow for more ne waza. I'm partial but I would bring leg grabs back, as young judokas are growing up without practicing or even seeing an integral part of judo.

[@JCBPARISPARIS]

Interesting. Just will be interested to know which randori you preferred during these Olympics.

[@jaimeezquerra2219]

Great thoughts. I would take out most of the modern rules and more like old judo with coca, yuko, wazari, ippon and leg grabs, and more time ground work allowed

[@PicaPauDiablo1]

Excellent analysis

[@BeyondGrappling]

Thanks

[@ForzaTerra89]

Agree with pretty much everything. Though I can’t tell you how happy I was at the men’s under 100kg final when the Georgian got DQ’d. Because it was deserved. He had stalled and not engaged and even got some freebies before dropped in the last 10 seconds and rightly getting DQ’d Any rule set that steers away from what he did I’m all for. Longer matches, more ground work and I actually like the shido’s because as you mentioned no one was tired. If the shido’s weren’t being called as quickly as they were he would have won gold in the worst way possible

[@LeightonsLibrary]

Hey Matt, I always appreciate your insight as someone with experience in multiple grappling arts, and as someone who has fought in judo at an extremely high level. There is a lot of discourse online about the rules of the sport, but many of the loudest voices come from people who don't train, don't compete and don't watch judo. I think everyone who watched this Olympics came to the same conclusion: the drop spam meta is terrible! Seoinage and sumigaeshi offer far too much safety in the current environment. The current rules around gripping and stalling encourage both players to attack first (which I think is a good thing!), but players are rushing to the grips and attacking with no setup, just to prevent the opponent from attacking. If they score, great; if they don't, the opponent will fall behind on attacks and get shido. I'm not sure that this is the dominant strategy of the sport at the moment - most of the players who won gold did not fight in this way - but it is a disturbing trend. I'm not sure that extending the match time would fix this. If we extended the match time to five or six minutes and extended the passivity window, I think the same strategy would still be effective. If you are trying to get grips, take good position and produce a quality throw in one minute, but your opponent wants to enter for a bad throw in ten seconds, you only have ten seconds to work, regardless of what the rules say. It would just take five or six unanswered bad throws to force a shido instead of three or four. Maybe we could have refs go after false attacks more aggressively, but it's not like the "shido judo" players are just using drop attacks to escapr a top grip. They're attacking right off the grip, which can make it hard to distinguish between an aggressive attack and fake volume. A pickle indeed. I think we need to reintroduce risk to drop moves somehow. I've been watching greco recently, and I think I like the idea of a 10 second window where grounded opponents are considered throwable via a pickup daki wakare (as a counter to seoinage), daki age (as a counter to sumi/tomoe), etc. We could also make that time guaranteed newaza time, giving the top man enough time to work his grip for a turnover/pass or the bottom man time to set up his own attack. After that, the regular rules requiring continuous progress would apply. I don't think the readdition of yuko would change anything about the sport, for the simple reason that most modern waza-aris ARE yukos, and yet one "waza-ari" (yuko) is almost always enough to decide the match. I didn't watch any elimination matches, only semis or later, but I think I only saw a scoreboard of 1-1 once. A yuko lead is plenty to stall on. Why do you want to prevent matches from going to golden score? I've been watching wrestling as well, and I find the "most recent score" criteria pretty unsatisfying. I would much rather see a match end with a clear score advantage and find the golden score system works well.

[@DiogoSilva-ld7we]

I think they do this is in wrestling but I think a great solution would be to make lower level penalties (like grip violations, false attacks, passivity and the like) award points to the opponent (the yuko coming back would come in handy for this). That way, someone who has scored a point couldn't just spam penalties to stall out the match, since they might put the opponent up on points. Also, less matches decided by DQ, which would also be nice. Attack well and properly, otherwise your opponent is getting points

[@ulysses-pact]

I could be deadly wrong, but I think this existed before. It was called chui, or ckmsething like that, where your opponent is awarded an yuko.

[@robertprice2793]

I think go back to 5 shido. Here in the UK most kids comps stick with the old shido decides the result (this includes in GS). So we see less GS's in kids comps. Personally, I'm not a fan of this. But it does prevent crazy long matches. I definitely don't like last score wins as I feel it would encourage someone dogging the fight until the last few secs. Kind of the reverse of what you're trying to prevent in the first place. Some interesting points though, I do agree that some of the rules need adjusting. I like sport judo and I think we need to market that side of things more. I think we can always add a self defence class in.

[@Birdsnestboy]

Interesting point about groundwork! Ne waza is virtually non-existent. There doesn't even seem to be an attempt of the basics.

[@JudoP_slinging]

Some good suggestions there. Personally I think the more complicated the rules/restrictions the more exploits and loopholes atheletes will find. Rules have to be simple and effective. Right now the way of tiebreaking is effectively penalising defensive 'negative' judo, they need to find a better way as this leads to all kinds of nonsense gaming like the crappy drop seio approach. I totally support yuko coming back and possibly adding scores for other strong newaza positions. Maybe even koka for taking an opponent down onto their knees/front and maintaining control.

[@iugoeswest]

Dropping is the worst. I got so many texts from previous atudents about it.

[@Dynamic6000]

Like in mma give the Referee the ability to deliver verbal warnings before shido. Ie “blue corner you’re being too defensive” “white corner you keep dropping like that and it will be a shido” This would put athlete at attention to understand the referees mind set. Unless an official review no shidos should be coming from the video referees. They should only have power when the on mat ref asks for that review. At golden score I’d like to see an actual break of 30 seconds to a minute like most fighting sports. This would allow athletes a momentary reset to talk to their “corner” and receive some coaching strategy. In this time Ref is able to again warn of the seriousness of any improper fighting.

[@thomasmcgee7990]

There is actually a rule that if the attack is not genuine they get a penalty. Sounds like you are describing bad referee judgement.

[@RGTomoenage11]

Is not judo, it’s jushiddo

[@BeyondGrappling]

:(

[@l3onerdo]

But the IJF is designing the rules to be a spectator sport for years now. They want to see the big throws, because newaza is boring for the untrained viewer. But as always don't hate the player, hate the game.

[@alanrussette2819]

I understand that athletes will play to the rules as closely as possible, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone would be satisfied with winning via penalties. It's pretty anti-climactic for everyone involved to have a gold medal (or even a world championship) decided by penalties. That being said, I'm fully in favour of penalizing for trying to bait shidos. That feels like it's against the spirit of judo. Bringing back leg grabs is vital for the long term health of the art. As it stands now, judokas will get less and less comfortable defending those kinds of attacks because they're not a part of the existing rule set. I'd be surprised if many (or any) high level judokas from that era were still competing at the international level. Why waste time training something that won't be seen in competition? Part of the rationale for banning them, if memory serves, is that it made for ugly judo that wasn't TV friendly. Are leg grabs truly less entertaining to watch than seeing someone win by penalties? I'd rather see athletes compete, personally.

[@Clayjar444]

I'm sorry, but while I mostly agree on the rules, I completely disagree on the mentality and I think this is the biggest problem: I believe the purpose of a judoka shouldn't be to "win", but to throw Ippon.

[@Antropeda1]

Yes, thats ideal, but even japanese couldn't do ippon judo any more, because winning is more important. Maybe in IJF should give prices for most beautifull ippons and judo, not only for wins?