We all know about Royce Gracie and his implementation of BJJ in the MMA. However, not many people know who Chad Rowan is. Rowan is a Haiwaiian Sumo wrestler who was 6 ft 8 inches tall and weighed 230kg at his peak.
During his PRIDE fight against Royce Grace, Rowan had lost 25kg from his peak which meant that the fighters weighed in at 205kg & 86kg respectively.
Whilst Rowan did not have a particularly successful MMA or Kickboxing career (not surprising). he did reach Yokozuna rank in Sumo and was the top division champion multiple times, going 76-14 in his best season.
In the fight video above, Royce Gracie perhaps unadvisedly pulls guard on his opponent (and obviously cannot close it). He then transitions to a half guard dogfight but Rowan manages to stand up to a neutral position.
Royce pulls guard again and manages to get his opponents arm isolated, in a sort of williams guard or omoplata position. If his opponent knew BJJ he would easily be able to pass the guard, however this was a Sumo wrestler from 2004, so that didn’t happen. He then fully transitions to a full omoplata position and finishes Rowan with a shoulder lock and a wrist lock, it’s not really clear which made him tap, perhaps a combination of the two.
Summary
Despite the huge weight difference, it’s not really too surpising to see a massive sumo wrestler lose to Royce Gracie. Whilst he was approximately 120kg heavier than his opponent he was extremely unathletic with no BJJ knowledge. He also did not really attempt to strike Royce in the closed guard, most likely because it was too much energy to posture up with such a heavy body.
If we were to take a massive athletic guy with a few years of BJJ experience such as Nick Rodriguez in 2018, it would most likely be a very different story. It seems the extra weight and lack of conditioning was a massive disadvantage.
So overall BJJ vs Sumo is really quite an unfavoured match up with MMA rules. There isn’t really any area that the sumo excels in other than stand up with very specific rules. It would be interesting to see how sumos would compete in ADCC, although if they were too slow to sprawl, they may just get picked apart by a good athletic wrestler.
