First off, let’s start with a disclaimer, there are many types of wrestling and many types of rulesets, so this is quite a complicated question. We will not include things like WWE wrestling for obvious reasons and will show historical examples as well as modern-day fights to show the distinct differences between the two.
When it comes to the sport of grappling the lines can often be blurred between what is BJJ and what is wrestling. An example of this would be an ADCC ruleset event where stand-up is favored and guard pulling is penalized. This is in stark contrast to IBJJF Gi events, in which reversals score no points and the BJJ player can immediately sit on the floor.
Table of Contents
Catch Wrestling vs BJJ
Catch wrestling is a very powerful and explosive style of wrestling in which the sport is very anti-guard. You are penalized for being on your back and it is not encouraged. Originally from the north of England, catch wrestling became more popular during the mid 20th century although these days it is more fragmented and not as organized.
Despite their differences, BJJ has a lot of similarities with catch wrestling. There are a lot of submission holds such as the double wristlock (Kimura), neck cranks, toeholds and guillotines which are used in both. Sakuraba defeated 3 members of the Gracie family by using catch wrestling techniques he learned from legend Billy Robinson. I am sure there are various back and forth examples of catch wrestling defeating BJJ and the opposite. These days however, because of it’s fragmentation, lack of money, interest and competitors in the sport, there are very few catch wrestling athletes.
MMA vs BJJ
Here we see a lot of fighters who specialize in striking and wrestling, or sometimes a fighter who has a stronger ground game. MMA is heavily favored towards strikers given its 5 minute time limit per round. When the rounds were longer (shown when PRIDE was popular in the early 2000s), BJJ was a lot more effective because if you stalled for 3 minutes in bottom half guard you were still looking at another 10 minutes remaining in the fight.
These days we will often see wrestlers such as Khabib Nurmagomedov grind opponents down and sit on top of them every round or a tactical fighter who will punch and stuff takedowns for 5 minute rounds. There are still BJJ submission specialists in the UFC such as Ryan Hall, however there are not too many casual fans who do not like this style and the 5 minute rounds are sometimes not quick enough to finish the opponent.
Freestyle Wrestling vs BJJ
Very popular in the USA college system and various countries throughout Asia, wrestling is still not practiced very much in Western Europe. Submission holds are not allowed in the ruleset and points are scored by throwing your opponent to the floor and then continuing to dominate them. Due to the lack of submissions, when switching to a discipline like MMA or BJJ, we often see wrestlers getting guillotined non-stop when they are beginners since what was a good technique in wrestling is now bad technique as you can easily be choked.
Wrestling vs BJJ Overall
Striking Rulesets
When strikes are involved we have very varied results, perhaps it is not even fair to compare the two when strikes are involved, since the better striker will win a lot of the matches and grappling might not be involved at all.
A couple of notable examples of BJJ specialists beating successful wrestlers are Demian Maia staying on Jon Fitch’s back for 3 rounds whilst trying to choke him and Frank Mir getting a surprise kneebar on Brock Lesnar.
Examples of wrestlers beating BJJ specialists include Colby Covington taking down Demian Maia non-stop whilst defending takedowns on himself and as mentioned earlier, Sakuraba beating 3 members of the Gracie Family.
So, when strikes are involved the jury is still out.
ADCC & ADCC Rules Superfights
ADCC is an event that happens every 2 years, it is a grappling tournament with competitors from across the globe. The rules include points and submissions. Guard pulling will lose you points and takedowns will gain you points (depending on the time of the clock). This is not a perfect ruleset but has both wrestling and BJJ specialists.
ADCC has largely been won by BJJ specialists throughout its many years, although the most notable wrestler to do well was Nick Rodriguez. Rodriguez did not win or score any points on his opponents but did upset some veteran ADCC grapplers such as Cyborg when they were not able to take Rodriguez to the ground during the matches.
Also worth noting is that in superfights between a BJJ specialist and a wrestling specialist, the BJJ player will often submit the wrestler with a leglock. This is because the wrestler has a very basic, or non-existant knowledge of this area in comparison to the BJJ fighter.
Street Fights
We don’t have any examples here since street fights are not recorded, neither are the participants asked what their specialist martial arts are. For the most part, people who can defend themselves will not start fights with random members of the public either.
With this being said, in my opinion this is where wrestling would beat BJJ. If the BJJ player cannot take the wrestler to the ground then he will not beat him. Pulling guard is generally a very bad idea in a street fight since you expose yourself to a greater risk of strikes and head kicks. From my experience in the gym, the wrestler could simply takedown the BJJ player and then get up and walk away. Unless he got trapped in a guard and swept, or put himself in a bad submission position, there would not be much chance of him losing in a street fight.
Overall Summary
There are simply too many rulesets to say one grappling art is better than the other. Both are hugely effective martial arts and there is a lot of crossover between the two. Not only this but as far as I am concerned, there is not really a rivalry between these two martial arts and they compliment one another. It seems from the evidence presented above that wrestling would be best in a street fight whereas BJJ is better for submission-based grappling tournaments.
Gone are the days of unknown martial arts and dojo storming videos. These days in MMA, you will often get fighters who have 10 years experience of both BJJ and wrestling, they understand that both are required in the cage and can be used effectively in various situations. There will be some purists left who defend their way as the best way, but most reasonable people will accept their martial art will have both advantages and flaws against other ways of fighting.
