Firas Zahabi on the Watering Down of BJJ

Because now in jujitsu you have clubs giving away belts with membership. What? Yeah, so if you show up, we count how many times you come to practice, and then you have a stripe every so often. It's all scheduled. We tell you when you're going to get your purple belt. It's already... Wait a minute. What? Yeah, there's clubs now. Who the fuck is doing that? I don't want to say because... You don't have to say, but that's real. So they give you a certain number. So if you train for 50 days, you get a stripe. Yes. Train for another 50 days. Yes. Wow. Yes, it's already started. It happened in karate. Yeah. In the 70s, people don't know this, Masoyama sent three black belt karate experts to Thailand to fight three ties. Two of the karate guys won. Really? Do that today. Today, not all karate schools, but most of them are watered down. Why? They start, okay, karate is popular. Let's take out the sparring. Let's take out all the hard training and guarantee this guy a black belt in four years, three years. Whereas opposed to taking 10 years, the guy down the street is going to go out of business. Why? He's charging a thief to train you hard and it's going to take you 10 years and you're going to have pain and suffering. Whereas this guy, your neighbor, your competitor down the street, he's giving it to you in three years and there's not much pain and suffering involved. Yeah. So you get the prestige of a black belt without the hard training. It's going to happen in jutsu now. You're going to see it's coming. It's already here. It's been here for a while. It seems like one of the rare meritocracies in martial arts. If you don't spar, you don't tap people, you don't get a black belt. I agree. If you don't spar, you don't tap people, you don't make your way through the... Thank God. Thank God. But it's one of the rare ones because in karate, there's a lot of bullshit sparring where they're touching each other. They put all sorts of rules and the sparring now is like... Yeah. So you never get really backed into a corner. That's why it backfires a lot. A lot of those guys who went to those other kind of schools, they end up in other academies. They give up. I've had a purple belt come up to me and say, I want to give back my purple belt. I got a purple belt from a certain school and he went to the basics course in my gym. Basics. He says, I want to start back basics. White belt? No. Yes. He was a purple belt. Right. He went back to white belt. Yeah. But when I roll with him, I was like, who the hell? No, it's not his fault. What do you think he was? Maybe a blue belt? Blue belt. Like a bear? No, a blue belt. The definition of blue belt, according to Elio Gracie, is you can beat a bigger, stronger opponent that's untrained. So blue belt's not a huge like mega step. But purple belt is an advanced belt. You're advanced. Yes. Like it's... You're almost a black belt. You just need to keep training. That's the hardest belt to get, to go from blue to purple is the most painful transition, in my opinion. In my opinion, because most people stop by blue. For me, brown belt was the scariest. Yeah. Because I was like, fuck, I'm almost there. I was like, oh man. I was a brown belt for like eight years though. Good. I was getting injured too though. Yeah. That's okay. Take your time. I always tell guys, I'd rather you be a purple belt that tops out black belts. Yes. Than be a black belt that's getting killed by blue belts. Right, right, right. You harm your student when you give him a belt he can't carry. Yes. You harm them. Why? Because like you said, jiu-jitsu, people walk in from out of town, they jump into your class. Oh yeah. And the blue belt's killing your brown belt. It's embarrassing for him. Yes. Leave him blue. Yeah. At least he's a blue belt getting beat by a blue belt. Right. Yeah. But they want to hook you. Oh, belt seminar. Oh, belt test. Now there's tests. We didn't do tests. I didn't do tests. No. John Denehar if you say, hey John, we're going to do tests, we're going to laugh at you. Right. Yeah, John Jock didn't do any tests either. No, there's no tests. Eddie Bravo didn't do any tests. I think there's also a situation where these people are realizing that, hey, if you have X hundred students and they're paying $150 a month, you can get this amount of money. The mathematics. Yeah, they start doing the thing. They're doing the thing in their head. And they realize, look, I am only making X amount of money. I can make triple that if I just lighten up on people. But you have to sell the jujitsu. You have to change the thing. You didn't learn it like this. Right. You didn't change it like this. Yes. Well jujitsu is one of the rare martial arts where you go full blast. And you can tap. If you get caught in an arm bar, even though the guy's not yanking on it past the point where it's going to snap, they're showing some control. They catch you in that arm bar and they know they have it. You have to tap. You just go again. I mean, you can go right again. Yeah, but infinity of amount of lives. If you wheel kick someone in the head, they're not going again for a long time. Especially if you actually do it the way you would do it in a fight. It's just like that difference of striking training versus grappling training is one of the things that really separates jujitsu from the other martial arts is that you can learn in a real situation. So like if you're in a street fight with jujitsu and you grab a hold of a guy, it's so normal. The guy's going full blast. Fuckin' everybody goes full blast. Everybody goes full blast. But if you're in a street fight with someone, you've only been point sparring and someone's swinging haymakers out, you're like, yikes. You're scared because you're not accustomed to that because the actual consequences of getting hit like that in training are so high that you don't do that. It's very different. It's very, very, very different. There's a lot of people that have black belts in karate that would get fucked up in a street fight by a guy who's quick, who can hit hard, who just knows how to just hit you, a mean person that's been in a lot of street fights and knows how to punch you in the face. There's also real karate instructors out there. They have real good karate students. Oh yeah. But the vast majority of them are sold out because if they train the people for real, they'll lose their customer too. I think it's the opposite in jujitsu. I think most jujitsu is legit. Oh yeah. Most karate is not legit. It's not susceptible as much jujitsu because you have to roll. You couldn't have gone to per-bout without rolling, but they have their ways. They have their ways. If they have a kid who they know he's going to compete, they'll hold them back. If they have a guy who's a lawyer, they'll boost them up faster. I understand that. It's not the same thing. A young kid who's competing and a guy who's older, and I get that, but there has to be still a purity to the game. I hope they don't try to water it out because I think it's going to backfire in the end because it has so many guys come from other schools to my gym and they're like, oh, I don't want to tell you what belt I am. I'm like, really? They're embarrassed to tell me what belt they are. So is that a Canada thing or is that happening all across the world? I think it's happening around the world. Fuck. That's so disappointing to hear because when I started in 96, it was grimy, man. No one was doing it. It was rough. And when you did it, you were getting, and it was a bunch of people that had seen the UFC and were like, holy shit. It was me. It was like, I realized that I was so vulnerable because I had these ideas. Well, I know how to kick box. I have no tight window. You know, I know how to handle myself. And then I do jujitsu and just get mauled. I mean, just just man by people my size, just man handling me. I got killed my first day and I loved it though. Because you realize like, wow, so much to learn. What is that movie did? What is this thing? I was so enthusiastic about like, you're going to get, I'm going to get to see. Am I going to get to try? And they would show me what they did. And I was like, mind blow, my total mind blow. Yeah. It's interesting how vulnerable you really are. Like when you, when you first learn when your first few days of classes, it's different than almost anything else. Cause you feel like there's nothing you could do to get out of it. You know what I mean? Like I felt like sparring when I spar, when I kickbox spar with people that were better than me. I'm like, at least I can move. At least I could avoid this guy and you know, maybe survive a few rounds. If I fight defensively, don't extend myself, you know, don't leave anything hanging out there. Just play tight to my chest to keep, keep fight spar smart. I know this person is better than me, but I can get through this round. I would do jujitsu against guys who are black belts when I was a white belt or a blue belt. I'd be like, there's nothing, there's not a thing I can do. This is a hundred percent positive he's going to tap me. It's about what he's practicing on me. It's fun though. The guy on top of you is not being an asshole. Yeah. If he's cool. Yes. Because you could teach somebody jujitsu in a nice way. It could be a gentle, it is a gentle art. It can be, yeah. It can be, yeah.