If you’ve landed on this article, then the chances are that your probably got here by searching Google. Naturally, this is quite an interesting match up – as both disciplines have great strengths and weaknesses.
Before continuing, here are a few things to consider: Firstly, in this hypothetical scenario, both men are the same age, weight, height, and strength. Let’s also imagine that the black belt has trained for 5 years, as has the blue belt. They have also trained at legitimate gyms that do full contact sparring. So with all things considered equal, let’s see how they would get on.
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The Karate black belt wins on the feet
This is no surprise to see, that the Karate black belt would beat a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu whilst standing. The reason for this is because this is where the black belt is most comfortable. If they could somehow defend takedowns and stop the fight from going to the ground, then they would comfortably win.
Whilst some people believe that Karate has become soft over the years, it still has some pretty dangerous head kicks, punches and solid footwork. Here, the blue belt would be relatively lost at this point. Sure, they may be able to land a few blows, but would generally struggle and would probably get knocked out at some point.
The BJJ blue belt wins on the floor
Let’s say the blue belt manages to take the Karateka down, this could be done by Judo or Wrestling. From here, in a top position they should have enough to win fairly comfortably. Of course, they may take a few shots getting to this position and it may not be smooth.
However, overall once on top, they should be able to advance the position in their favor and end the fight with submissions or punches. For all the Karate skills on the feet, its weakness is for all to see once on the ground. The kicks suddenly disappear, whilst gravity takes over and the punches also become far less effective.
What if the blue belt gets taken down?
Generally, this would be unlikely to happen as the blue belt should have superior offense and defense when it comes to takedowns. However, let’s imagine that the blue belt doesn’t know takedowns whilst the black belt has a few footsweeps and hits one.
There are three hypothetical situations here:
- The black belt lands in a position like side control and manages to pin the blue belt whilst hitting them with an array of strikes, winning the fight.
- The black belt lands in a position like side control, but can’t cantrol the position and eventually the blue belt escapes and the fight continues.
- The black belt lands in a position like top half guard. From here, there’s a good chance that the blue belt will actually sweep or submit the black belt from their back and win the fight.
What does this all mean?
As seen, the fight is decided on who scores the takedown. If this is done by the blue belt, then it’s practically game over. If they can’t take down the black belt, then it’s practically game over in favor of the Karateka. However, where the blue belt has the edge is if they get taken down. Whilst they’ll still lose the majority of the time with strikes involved, there’s still always the outside chance of pulling something off from a bottom position.
For instance, using closed guard in a street fight isn’t fun, but at least you have some offensive options from your back. With this in mind, the blue belt has a couple of ways to victory that the Karate black belt suffers from. Obviously, that’s not bashing Karate either. It’s a legitimate martial art in its own right. It should also be noted that BJJ notoriously takes longer to get a black belt compared to other martial arts. This doesn’t mean that a Karate black belt is weak either, it’s simply just a different way of comparing time across both systems.
Takedowns are key
This may be unsurprising to hear, but takedowns are vitally important when learning any martial art for self defense. This doesn’t just go for BJJ either, but can also be applied to Karate. In short, if your strength is on the floor, then it’s a massively important skill to be able to take the fight there. Sadly, sometimes you will find very talented BJJ players who lack any takedowns and would suffer in a self defense scenario as a result.
Similarly for the Karate black belt, even if you don’t want to spend time learning takedowns, it wouldn’t hurt to at least learn some basic defenses such as sprawling and learning what to do when someone tries to get you on the floor.
Conclusion
As seen, there are many ways that this scenario could play out and there’s also an element of luck as to what happens. However, above anything else, this situation proves that learning takedowns are key to have success in any street fight scenario.
This can be applied to all martial arts but is crucially important if you train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. With this in mind, if you are wary of your self defense – then cross training something like Judo or Wrestling could help you massively if you ever got into a real fight.
