This article shall address the issue of when BJJ is used in a street fight, and whether it works. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been around since the 1920s and has been consistently proven throughout the highest levels of MMA. The question still gets asked, is BJJ good for street fighting and does it work?
Firstly, we should look at the overwhelming evidence from various street fighting videos. This can be found all over the internet, with sites such as Youtube providing mountains of content.
For instance, the channel Gracie Breakdown often features a comprehensive analysis of jiu jitsu techniques that are successfully applied on the streets. There are literally hundreds of videos showing the effectiveness in real life situations.
Table of Contents
Most Fights End Up On The Ground
A well-known fact for those who are interested in MMA or fighting in general. Most fights do end up on the ground. Even though a lot of modern day UFC is striking-focused with defensive wrestling, these fights still end up on the floor. Often the buzzer will go to end a round after only a minute or so of ground fighting, but in a street fight there is no buzzer.
Due to this fact, BJJ is a great fighting style to learn. There are not really any other martial arts that put a primary focus on ground fighting. Judo and wrestling are great supplemental styles to add with BJJ, but neither of them offers a comprehensive ground system as BJJ does. Whilst wrestling and judo offer a great way to put your opponent on the ground, they don’t offer a whole lot for when you get taken (or knocked down) onto your back.
If a fight does end up on the ground, the difference between a BJJ fighter and an untrained fighter (or even a guy who has trained striking only) is gigantic. You will never know just how bad you are on the ground until you have gone to your first BJJ class and been dominated by a smaller, weaker opponent.
“That only works in the gym, BJJ wouldn’t work on the streets”
There are still many people on forums, bars and social media claiming ‘That wouldn’t work on the streets’. It’s not really understood what some of these people mean. Why is a street so much different to a gym? There are not shards of glass and a pit of lava in the middle of New York. It the techniques work inside an MMA gym, why would they not work outside too?
The evidence is plentiful that BJJ actually does work on the street for the vast majority of the time. A decent BJJ practitioner will defeat an untrained opponent via the application of techniques learnt in the gym. Further evidence of BJJ can be seen in promotions such as the UFC where the highest skilled fighters in the world often use the art. The likes of Nate Diaz being a classic example of using it against highly trained opponents. Whilst there are no videos of Diaz in street altercations, he has referenced many times he has used BJJ in his life.
Of course, that is not to say BJJ is invincible on the street. There will be situations where a takedown goes wrong, the opponent throws a knockout punch etc, and the fight is instantly lost. Having said this, an instant loss can happen to anyone and there is always a degree of luck in any fighting environment.
Beating an otherwise larger and more skilled opponent
Before Royce Gracie won UFC 1, not many people on the planet had seen or even heard of BJJ. If you asked someone who is the best fighter in the world? They would most likely respond with either a kickboxer or a boxer.
As an example if you were to have a street fight against a prime Mike Tyson. In a straight fist fight or any type or striking match, your chance of winning is somewhere around 0%. However, if you add grappling and submission attacks, your chance becomes significantly higher.
Even if you are considerably smaller than your opponent, by learning BJJ your chances of winning a street fight drastically increase. If we took Ryan Hall as an example and made him fight Mike Tyson, he still may get knocked out and lose 80% of the time, but without BJJ his chance of winning would be 0.
Legendary MMA fighter Bas Rutten was primarily a kickboxer during his career until he got tapped 3 times. Once he learnt how to fight on the ground, he used submissions for his own game and never lost a fight again, finishing his career at 28-4.
Modern Day Sport Jiu Jitsu Is Not For Self Defense – When BJJ is used in a street fight wrongly
This phrase is mentioned a lot and is really quite true. Whilst there are black belts who win sport IBJJF titles through 50/50 and various other stalling positions. At their elite level, they also have a very rounded game, but specialise in this particular area.
However, if you are to take a blue or purple belt IBJJF champion. At this stage, they may just have a specialist area such as berimbolo from de la riva guard, 50/50 with lapel wraps or some kind of lapel based worm guard. These positions are not 100% useless, but offer a very limited skillset in a street fight. Possibly to the point of them being almost never seen.
Being fit and conditioned would help you, but other than this. A lot of sport BJJ would be very ineffective on the streets. This is because the idea of modern sport BJJ is to score points. Whilst BJJ does award points for takedowns, sweeps and passing guard in to a more advanced position. The system can still be gamed by pulling guard and then scoring advantages.
Even if you had a fantastic closed guard with a variety of sweeps and submissions. Unless you have trained MMA with headstrikes in the guard, it’s not proven that your guard would be very effective if the opponent was able to posture up and strike you in the face repeatedly.
Training in the gi vs nogi
As the name suggests, there’s a big difference between training BJJ in the gi and nogi. In short, the gi allows you to grip the clothing of the opponent. This isn’t the case in nogi. The result is that each situation has different options and outcomes.
For instance, if you fought someone wearing a large, winter coat then gi attacks are possible. This could mean opting for Judo takedowns by grabbing the material on their coat. It could also mean choking the opponent by using their collar. Especially from behind, this could almost act like a bow and arrow choke.
In nogi, these possibilities literally don’t exist. Because of this, you will need to rely on clinches, overhooks and underhooks more often. For instance, you can’t grip someones clothes who is shirtless. Instead, you would have to try and grab their wrist and go from there.
The outcome of these examples is to train for what is most realistic. Whilst training nogi will get you competent in both areas, training in the gi is also effective too. For instance, grabbing clothes is a legitimate attack from bottom or top positions. In summary, training nogi will have you covered for all occasions as it crosses over to clothing and is still useful.
Nonetheless, it won’t hurt to compliment your training with the gi either. This can be seen with a high number of pro MMA fighters who train in the gi. Whilst this sounds odd, to begin with, training in the gi will improve your escapes from the bottom, due to making it harder as you have to rely on technique to overcome the friction of the gi.
BJJ Vs Multiple Attackers
Multiple attackers is the main weakness of BJJ, but then again, this is the main weakness of any martial art. Especially martial arts which do not have stand up striking.
The problem with BJJ in a street fight, is if you were in a 2 on 1 situation. If you end up in a guard, you will have 2 people punching or kicking you from a top position. If you were to take down 1 opponent and end up in a dominant position such as mount or side control. You could still very easily be kicked in the head or simply pulled off the top position by the other person.
Even when securing a great position or destroying one of the opponents, you leave yourself very vunerable to the other.
Boxing or kickboxing is still bad against multiple attackers, but you do slightly increase your chance of being able to fend them off. If you are able to quickly knock out one of your opponents, you will be in a 1v1 situation. With pure BJJ, this is not possible.
Conclusion
Overall, it is safe to say that BJJ does work in street fights, providing the practitioner has trained and has a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Generally, if trained then BJJ is used in a street fight to change the dynamics in the favor of the Jiu Jiteiro.
It should also be noted that the combination of wrestling for stand up and striking in the form of boxing or muay thai would also be the perfect complement to any BJJ student’s game. We are not suggesting that you would instantly pull guard in a street fight and hope to submit an opponent from there, but to use a sensible top game that minimizes your risk of being on the ground.
