Boxing, Judo, Taekwondo & Wrestling are all Olympic sports, yet BJJ is not. There are a few simple reasons and a few complicated reasons why this is. Firstly BJJ has not been established anywhere near as long as the aforementioned combat sports, secondly there is only a set number of places for sports at the Olympics, so if one sport enters, it will take the place of another (whilst the Olympics will expand, in numbers it is at a very slow pace).
As for the complicated reasons, firstly the entire process is quite boring and bureaucratic, it is outlined here. In summary, firstly the sport must be played by at least 75 countries on 4 continents (for men). This is obviously not a problem so far for BJJ.
Secondly, the entire sport must be governed by an international and non-governmental body. Those of you familiar with sport BJJ will already know the problems the IBJJF can cause. Now imagine the IBJJF was even bigger and had to pay bribes, fines, and other administrative expenses. It could be disastrous for competitors and I will explain in further detail why.
In addition to this, the sport must have an anti-doping code, whilst the details on this are unclear, we already know that testing is very time-consuming and expensive. Not to say this is a bad thing, but it is certainly impractical and of course, can and will be circumvented time and time again.
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What are the positives of BJJ in the Olympics?
I will keep this section short as I really do not see too many positives, perhaps I am too cynical. The main benefit I could see would be that the sport becomes more marketable and more people join BJJ. I think this doesn’t need to happen as BJJ is already growing at a rapid pace, but it certainly would speed things up.
In the short term this could bring more money in to the sport, especially for struggling academies, who should see a rise in memberships from people who think that they would like to try it.
The only other reason I could see is that you would have one undisputed champion rather than an IBJJF no gi Worlds winner and an ADCC winner. There would now be one overall champion rather than two champions who have won under similar rulesets.
Criticisms of BJJ in the Olympics
Firstly competitors would suffer massively financially – especially at the lower levels. The top-level competitors such as Gordon Ryan would be OK, since they could still do deals through their Instagram and sell instructional videos. However, for people who are 5/6th best in the world in a lighter weight class, would no longer be able to advertise on their gi or wear a sponsored rashguard. IBJJF already has some archaic rules when it comes to paying membership fees and even where the patches should be placed on a gi. This would clearly only become worse with more corporate governance.
It would perhaps be even worse for competitors from Brazil, as if you were the 30th best fighter in the world, this could be your profession in the current world. However, if the rules changed and Brazil was only allowed to take 5 fighters to the Olympics, you may be the 12th best Brazilian. Yet an Austrian competitor who is 114th best in the world would get a lot of fame and worldwide exposure, despite being considerably less skilled.
Another criticism would be the rulesets. The points and rules systems in BJJ are already a little bit strained, with a lot of gi fights now becoming 50/50 lapel battles, the winner is the one who can get the most advantages. Whilst the Olympics might put a stop to this, they may take it one or two steps too far with some crazy rules which are very bad, but the casual fans still enjoy it. Personally I am not a fan of EBI rules, I could see the Olympics adding a rule like this to fuel entertainment.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, you could read this large wikipedia article about the list of Olympic scandals and corruption. This alone should be enough to show that large organisations will always have bad apples in them. These people will abuse the massive power they have and take payoffs for results. I am not claiming that the way BJJ now is perfect, as perfect does not exist. Right now though, it is a lot better than what it could be.
Summary
In conclusion, let’s hope BJJ does not become an Olympic sport. The variety of competitions such as EBI, ADCC, IBJJF (both gi and no gi) and UAEJJF tournaments offer a good variety of rulesets and structures. There is not really a need for BJJ to be added to the Olympics as everyone is pretty much in agreement that the best world Gi tournament is IBJJF and the best world no gi tournament is ADCC. Adding another tournament to this would be unnecessary and may damage the reputation of the 2 best tournaments already, along with ruining the others.
If we add in the corruption that bureaucracy brings I would prefer to see BJJ remain as it is. BJJ is already quite expensive for competitors to travel and actually pay for competitions, with the added pressures of membership fees, insurance for anti-doping and other miscellaneous costs, this could put Olympic BJJ out of reach for a lot of athletes, especially those from poorer countries.
