Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink: BJJ, Striking, and Street Defense

I think there's as much of a difference between like a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu and what would be considered an equivalent, you know, world champion in Muay Thai. Oh yeah. There's a big difference. Step in the ring and see how that works out for you. Jiu-Jitsu guys sometimes get cocky about that. I had a buddy of mine who was taking an MMA fight and he wasn't doing any striking. He was doing very little striking and he was a really good ground fighter. And I said, do you know how you can toy with a guy on the ground and they really have no chance? He goes, yeah, I go, people could do that to you standing. You have to understand that the fight starts standing. It's not like you start like it's not EBI rules where you start on the guy's back and you know, you have a really good chance of submitting him if you got a great rear naked choke. This is not that. This is you start 20 feet away from the guy and you're standing and you know, you have to close that distance. You're not a great wrestler either. Yeah. Well, that's the key component, right? Yes, it's a giant factor. Because if you if at least if you wrestle, you can go, well, at least I know I have a decent chance of taking him down. Yes, a decent chance. And even that's no guarantee anymore. Well, I go back to Mark Schultz when he fought in the UFC, you know, when Mark Schultz fought in the UFC, you only find one UFC fight. But that's what we got to see, like a world champion, Olympic gold medalist, top of the food chain wrestler. You're only on your feet if he wants you to be like you. Good luck throwing that punch or kick because you have no chance he's going to close the distance and drag you to the ground unless you have really good takedown defense. Back then, when he fought Big Daddy, Good Rich, people didn't really have it unless they were wrestlers. They didn't really have good takedown defense. It hadn't really been established as like a part of the whole skill set of MMA yet. You basically had what you came in there with your karate guy. That's what you had your Muay Thai guy. That's what you got. You got to hope you land that elbow before that guy clinches with you. And there is there is a overall strategic advantage to grappling. Yeah, because you can close the distance. And if you're going to punch me, you have to get close enough to you have to make contact with me, which means I can grab a hold of you and get you down. That's why that's why the early UFC was like, oh, you're going to have to get close enough to either punch or kick me. And when you do that, I grab a hold of you and get you to the ground. Also, the chaos factor, especially in a street fight, the chaos factor is like bodies are flying. There's bad timing. The clinches have it's not like every, you know, you'll you'll watch the occasional street fight where a guy tees off on some drunk guy and, you know, it lands the perfect punch and knocks him out cold. That does happen. But you know what also happens? Melee wild shit misses and then someone clinches. And then the worst thing in the world is the fight a grappler who's good at takedowns when you're on the concrete. That is the absolute worst thing in the world. You get suplexed on your head on the concrete. I mean, one of the worst things that could ever happen. You're basically getting hit in the head by the world. Yeah. Well, this is why I when I talk about people say, well, what kind of self defense? You always say jujitsu for self defense, but you know, you shouldn't let a street fight go to the ground. Here's here's how it works out. If you come to me and you want to fight me and you like square off like in a boxing stance, I can run away from you. Right. I can just run away. I can just run away. I'm going to get away from you. I don't want to fight you. If you want to kick me, I can run away from you. Like there's my primary self defense is I'm just going to run away from you. When you grab a hold of me, now everything's different. I can't run away anymore. Now I have to actually know how to handle myself in a grappling situation. So that's why I start with jujitsu and look, absolutely learn boxing, learn more time, learn wrestling. Absolutely. No doubt about it. But the very first thing you need to learn is because if you want to fight me, I can run away. If you square off and you know, you put your dukes up and say, come on, or you push me. Good. I'm running away. That's fine. I'll take that. But when soon as you grab a hold of me, now I got a problem because I can't run away. The real problem is the ego where people don't know how to fight and someone puts their dukes up and they decide to see what they can do. They decide in that moment to either fake it or just like see if they can possibly hit the guy and then they get so many T's off on them. Yeah, I think that's I think the whole thing with CTE right now. That's why I think the popularity of jujitsu is going to continue because it's a large part of fighting. Same with wrestling. Grappling in general, I think is going to continue to get more and more popular because because of CTE. Because, you know, as a parent, you're not looking, hey, I really want my kid to be sparring a lot when they're 13. Right. No, there's not too many parents that are saying that right now. It's not a good idea. So I think but you still want your kids know how to fight. Right. So how are we going to do that? Well, we're going to see some jujitsu in wrestling and let them have that base. And then if they get older, hey, should they know how to throw punches? Absolutely. Should they get in the boxing ring sometimes and do some boy time matches? Absolutely. You should absolutely do that as a human. But, you know, you can do that when you're 17, maybe 16. You can start getting that stuff in. But the kids jujitsu, I don't think there's anything else better for them. I completely agree. And I think with martial arts, with striking, it's good to know just to know distance, just to understand where you're safe and where you're not safe and understand tells, understand what's happening when someone does this, when someone does this and then this is coming. When they do this, this is coming. Like you should know that. Some people don't know that you should know how to protect yourself, how to keep your hands up, how to duck under things. You should know that it should. You should understand the timing. You should understand distance and timing. Those are important things. But it's fucking swinging knuckles with some guy in the street is so goddamn dangerous because first of all, you don't know what he knows. And you're everyone's vulnerable. Everyone, every person gets punched in the face is vulnerable. And if you just want to have like some sort of a cake boxing match with some man on the concrete, like I don't advise that. I advise clinch and trip. Yeah, I advise get out of there. Yeah, get out of there. Yeah, definitely. If someone wants to start some shit with you, you're absolutely better off just swallowing your ego and getting the fuck out of dodge. I that's the whole your kid books. Teach those kids, hey, there's going to be problems. There's going to be bullies. If you can, you don't need to fight them. Yeah. And what's all I have somebody hit me up, you know, because I'm always telling people change it to change it to have somebody hit me up. You know, I've tried it, but I don't I want to try to try it a couple of times, but I don't like to fight. And I'm like, hey, if you don't like the fight to fight you more than anyone else should learn to get to because if you know, just you probably your chances of having to fight will go down a lot just by the way you carry yourself just away by by the way you present yourself. The chance of you having to fight go down a lot. Also with you, you're involved in real life struggles. The thing about like karate sparring and a lot of point like light sparring is it's not the real chaos that comes with an actual fight. Whereas jujitsu is full blast. Someone's trying to get you. It's so you get used to full blast. You get you get accustomed to it. You know what to expect as someone swings for you and you clench with them. You know what it's like to resist with a 100 percent noncompliant body. You know, someone's like, fuck, I'm really trying to get away from you. Really? It's not like play sparring. Yes. You can go full out.