If I had to pick....Jujitsu - Large range of technique covering all ranges - a lifetime of work just there. I love Kyokushin and would have to pick that as well but I have always wanted to study a decent FMA or HEMA system. Theres a few decent HEMA groups in drivable distance to me, as soon as money/time allows me a opportunity its something I want to explore, had a small group session with Terry Brown years ago but it was to far to be viable at the time.
Well to be fair I sort of cheated because those arts cover every conceivable range in unarmed combat.
TKD and BJJ. Love TKD and couldn't give it up so for me it has to stay. BJJ because i am very comfortable on the ground. MY PE teacher when i was at school ran a Judo club and was determined to have me join, he often commented on my ability but i never took up the offer. Baza
Catch Wrestling was an Olympic sport alongside Greco-Roman for a long time. Freestyle kind of came into the picture around the time Catch was coming out of it. Catch is basically wrestling plus the submissions that always existed in wrestling. Freestyle does excellent things for your ground game but a great deal of the moves are centered on scoring points in the Freestyle system that would literally have little to no effect on a person you were trying to deal with in a fight. (Anytime someone's back is exposed in Freestyle you score two points. Even if you do so in a way that is not in any way harmful. I can throw a gut wrench, gator roll, or leg lace on you all day and it would not hurt you in the slightest, but I would rack up a lot of points.) This is not to say that there is not good stuff for SD in Freestyle. If you shoot at my legs and I bodylock throw you in a street fight most people would have a very bad day when they landed. The problem with wrestling (and with Judo, more recently) is that things were done to make the sport more visually appealing to audiences because they don't want them taken out of the olympics. Catch Wrestling is wrestling in it's purest self defense combat arts form. Was it effective? Just ask Sakuraba, the man who beat every Gracie they put in front of him. This article does a GREAT job of explaining how it went down. http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2012/8/13/3238285/martial-chronicles-olympics-history-catch-wrestling
My Judo Sensei who also happens to be very familiar with BJJ would say the reason they feel like the same thing is because they ARE the same thing. Pretty much every technique in BJJ exists in Judo. Because BJJ is basically Judo with an approach of focus primarily on Newaza. (Ground fighting.) The reason that they seem so distinct now is that again the rules for competitions seriously impacted how they are practiced. Judo rules say if I throw you straight on your back I win, and the match is over. You can win by submission in Judo but referees will stand you up very quickly if they see no action on the ground so you have very little time for Newaza. What evolved out of this is Judokas who practice to try and take you out with a perfect throw, and in many cases go to a turtle defensive position waiting to be stood back up rather then risking getting submitted or pinned in Newaza. The rules for competitive BJJ are constantly changing and are different in every federation. But there is an emphasis on scoring points for positions, and being able to submit. You can score points for a good throw in most BJJ competitions but it will never end the match. So you end up with people just pulling guard and going for submissions. Something Rickson would justifiably like to see change: http://www.bjjee.com/bjj-news/rickson-gracies-new-jiu-jitsu-federation-to-penalize-guard-pulling/ (Freestyle wrestling has the same kind of rule and for that reason can create some of the same problems. I had to coach both of my kids out of that mentality of just flattening out when they were in trouble on the ground. For multiple reasons, 1. if you do that in SD you are going to get your skull smashed in. 2. In folkstyle wrestling nobody is going to stand you up. You are just going to lose.)
As to the OP, I am kind of conflicted. Part of the problem is my answer would be different if I were younger. If I were say 25 and in decent shape I would say FREESTYLE Judo with a good instructor, and then I will cheat and say the JKD curriculum. (Which typically includes Jun Fan, Thai, Savate, Boxing, and Silat.)
It's almost as if a throw might really damage someone in a self defense competition, or even like you wouldn't want to spend that much time on the ground! If you can pull guard, control someone and execute a submission on someone, that's a valuable skill for hand to hand combat. The emphasis on position makes sense - the ability to achieve a dominant position to execute strikes or submissions is, again, a valuable skill for hand to hand combat. I can't find any information on Rickson's new rules besides doing away with advantages, -1 for guard pulling and encouraging attacking. If that's the revolution, I doubt it will be televised. Personally, strikes me as the Gracies saying "I'mma start my own league. With blackjack. And hookers!" The quibbling about the rules strikes me as equally productive as complaining that there's no clinch in boxing. The sports have their emphases and their reasons for doing things, but experienced practitioners of the arts can kick some serious booty and that won't be done away with or enhanced exponentially by a few rule changes.
When people mention this they seem to forget that the likes of takada meada etc who also studied catch over in japan got their rear ends handed to them by said Brazilian family So we either believe sak was the only guy to really get the real catch OR| we accept he was simply a great fighter who could make anything work, and that catch is no better than the arts you mentioned, and because it went down the professional wrestling route it lost a lot of its effectiveness because their was no real competition and thus growth for a long time
According to Billy Sak had a genuine talent for it, and was late riser to prominence due to the Japanese hierachy. Don't forget Takada was basically the "Hulk Hogan" of Japan, so although he had profile he was certainly not the best. Personally I would have loved to have seen Fujiwara in his prime in a shoot match, because his submisson knowledge is insane It is also worth mentioning tha Catch is a MODERN system of wrestling (well, relatively) and is not in any sense an "original" or "pure" form - if anything it represents a synthesis of the older systems. Ad Santel used to regularly beat Judoka, and Karl Gotch was a bit of a terror in Japan too by all accounts. However, most of them also lost to the Kushti wrestlers - especially Gama who cut a swathe through pretty much everyone
Couldn't the same be said in reverse of the Gracies and their BJJ? That either they're so talented that they could make anything work, or that they happened to "get" BJJ really well? I don't actually know anything about Catch wrestling and the like here, so I'm genuinely curious.
Some lovely "Old School" Catch [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVsoQuxD0Ac#t=452"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVsoQuxD0Ac#t=452[/ame]
Apart from Rickson and maybe Rolyer I have a hard time seeing the rest of the Gracie’s as athletic gods who could make anything work lol The difference is in a modern context BJJ has been shown to work for the vast majority who try it, ADCC weight classes are regularly won by BJJ blackbelts, UFC titles held by guys whose ground game is entirely BJJ so on and so on whereas the poster boys for catch are Sak and Barnett and…well who else? Anjoh was considered the top fighter in the old UWFI and the one they sent to challenge Rickson in place of takada, and rickson mopped the floor with him, literally as well as banging his head so hard into the wall he dented it lol BJJ has been shown to hold its own in both Gi no Gi grappling and MMA against many styles and to be an effective system in many peoples hands not just the gracies, as much as I like catch the same cant be said for it The problem with catch is because so much of it was worked, and because there have been so few open catch competitions it never evolved and in a lot of cases it devolved It’s a shame but it really is to all purposes a dead and dying art
loved watching Sak in his prime, a match with rickson would have been awesome shame it never happened And the way Pride handled Sak was a disgrace
I don't think it is dying so much as reviving at a grassroots level. It will never reach it's heyday again, mainly due to lack of competitors still around, but it will always continue to live on. Thankfully the advent of DVD has allowed many older guys to record their knowledge Paulson is arguably producing a next gen of CACC wrestlers with CSW, and there is my coach Harry who took gold at NAGA (but to be fair is more concerned with Puroseau than MMA). Many of the rising MMA guys have a Catch flavor, but one thing I do notice - and notice a LOT - is that Catch tends to be an ingredient rather than a focus in that arena. This is probably where Catch will survive. The submission marker offers outlets too, but there is little to no exposure in these
I think this is in part because everyone is competing in the same environment (MMA). Therefore the top Catch trainers in MMA such as Paulson, Nakai, and Melanson also do BJJ because that's the nature of the game. Then the question becomes whether what they're doing is a hybrid or if it's catch with BJJ guardwork added? (you could make a case for either).
BJJ has actually been falling out of prominence so far as champions for some time. Wrestling based grapplers are taking the titles. (I say based, not pure as nobody does that anymore.) There was a time when "BJJ Blackbelt" = "I win" and while it is still important BJJ black belts lose all the time to people with only passable BJJ. Eddie Bravo pointed out recently that submissions in general are on the decline in MMA statistically and as someone who watches entirely too much MMA I tend to agree with him. It will always be important to understand submissions and submission defense but the days of BJJ being a silver bullet are over.
