Was reflecting back to when I made the decision to no longer compete in Judo and fully devote my time to JiuJitsu competition in the Gi which then got me to the Submission Grappling niche that's gaining traction.
Rewind to 6 1/2 years ago and I had been out of competition for the better part of a year due to ACL/meniscus injury and subsequent surgery. While I was gone, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) rule change banning leg grabs had come into effect. By the time I returned to Judo competition, to even briefly tough or grab the leg with your arm/elbow/hand as seen by a referee in he chaos of a high-paced match could bring about an automatic Disqualification or "hansokumake." It's tough to travel to compete, make weight, pay money (to say nothing of the opportunity cost of missing work et cetera to travel/be gone), and to have a referee rule you DQ'd immediately because you errantly touched or grazed the leg with your arm whilst in a match that can be as chaotic and high paced as Judo. I had fought 5 MMA fights up until this point. I won the state championships in both North and South Carolina in Judo. I was a new-ish purple belt in JiuJitsu. I was a devoted competitor arranging my personal life, work, most things if not everything around competing in whatever sport I was currently pursuing.
At any rate, I had returned to competing (both in Judo and JiuJitsu with increasing frequency), but the new restrictions in Judo had changed the pace and feel of a match and also had taken a good number of combinations and attacks out of the game as well. I didn't particularly mind the new style change overall, as my tokuiwaza (pet technique/specialty throw et cetera as it translates roughly), Tai Otoshi benefits/is easier to set up from a more upright style of play anyway, but the matches felt a bit less unpredictable, a bit more truncated, and just presented a narrower range of throwing techniques. I had always liked facing the myriad of grappling styles that Judo allowed up until that point.
Beyond this change in the feel of the game/matches, a Judo tournament director reached out to me and asked me to come referee at a tournament. I was being asked to commute several hours, spend the day reffing (miss work at my 2nd job), and do it out of the goodness of my heart. That same day, I was offered a job reffing a JiuJitsu tournament, where I'd be able to compete for free (couldn't compete because I was recovering but you get the point), and be paid to referee on top of that.
Let me clarify what made the choice for me, beyond the simple pros and cons/situation outlined above. The Judo tournament director, by his wording, made it clear that out of some sense of obligation and selflessness, that I "should" offer my time and energy et cetera to come pay back the sport of Judo. There was this sense of entitlement to my time, energy, and purpose that rang hollow to me. Pay back? Pay back? I was coming back from an ACL resonstruction surgery ($5,000 after insurance to say nothing of costs in PT/loss of work et cetera), to say nothing of the countless other injuries along the way. I was always paying Judo back. Missing work. Paying to compete. Paying to travel. Paying to train. Paying for surgery. Paying. Paying. Paying. Is it wrong to expect to be compensated for your time and expertise? It is wrong to expect to be treated like someone who is paid for their time and expertise? The reffing at Judo tournaments was always iffy at best with old time referees imposing their interpretation of the rules from a bygone era to career referees who do not train live at all and barely understand what they are watching. I'd lost more matches on bad calls than I cared to count and compensated with a hyper aggressive attacking style that I only expected to win if I could throw, pin, or submit within regulation.
I politely informed him that I'd be reffing at a JiuJitsu tournament that day and left it at that. He replied with some condescending remarks about my lack of commitment to the sport and selflessness (also probably entwined in a disdain for JiuJitsu as I'd put up with a fair amount of resistance/smart remarks/outright disdain/condescension for my involvement in JiuJitsu from some old school Judo instructors and even training partners ever since I began crosstraining while I was rehabbing, you guessed it, a knee injury). One might could write this interaction off as simply a differing of minds, but I had long tried to broach this topic of closed minded-ness for JiuJitsu as a sport and misguided altruism in Judo of selflessly teaching and investment previously with others in the Judo community. It was largely ignored by the entrenched Judo beliefs that still plague the sport (I can speak specifically of American Judo from personal experience at the regional level). You can only expect so much and so long from your competitors....and when another opportunity looms on the horizon that treats you much more like a professional and doesn't lay claim to your time and energy out of expectation, the choice sometimes doesn't seem very difficult for those of us without parents or programs funding our training and competition expenses. The selfless long-time martyr casting aspersions on the younger competitor, what a cliche. Over the course of my involvement in Judo it went from there being 3 skill divisions: white belt, green-brown, and black belt. By the end, there was one division at a lot of tournaments: open skill, meaning you'd have white belts and everyone along the way to black belt. Talk about the likelihood for injury...
I felt like Atlas Shrugged and watching all the signs piling up that the sport was languishing and the very stewards of the sport at the grass roots level where I was not only ignoring the problem, but exacerbating it. Before JiuJitsu, Judo could blame lots of theories and ideas as to why Judo was lagging behind other sports: culture of sport in America, video games, ideology/home environment, et cetera...yet JiuJitsu came along and went from not existing as a sport in America to parents shelling out $100 for their kids to win swords and belts. All along the way, Judo's response for quite awhile was to double down on it's attitudes and beliefs, with even some Judo organizations banning it's funded athletes from cross competition and MMA and while this ensnares the top cared for and funded athletes, it forces a hard line decision for those who are not.
At some point, I had to accept that to continue to tolerate the treatment/expectation of the athletes was to not only enable, but further deepen the problem. I can't tolerate the behavior, allow it to continue, perpetuate the cycle, and then complain for years on end.
That would be naive at best and disingenuous at worst. I reffed for several years for US Grappling who always treated me fairly, paid me to referee, let me compete for free, paid me expenses toward travelling over a certain distance and in doing so gave me the opportunity to grow my game immeasurably.
They also run one of the best tournaments I've attended (as a competitor). It's a tournament that truly is By Grapplers, For Grapplers. I owe that company an immeasurable debt toward my development as far as understanding and nerding out on the rules and competing month after month at purple belt until I moved to NYC.
One of the best things a grappler can do for the sport is both BEHAVE LIKE A PROFESSIONAL and then EXPECT to be treated like one. It's an old adage but true, people will rise to the bar you set for them.
On the flipside, in JiuJitsu, I see a lot of entitlement from "athletes" who treat grappling like this mommy/daddy/bank/welfare program. They expect events to pay them for their mid level grappling skills but don't promote the event, barely sell tickets, and want to just show up and have visibility provided to them. They expect at blue or purple belt for some promoter to pay for them to travel to an event, pay their way, when they've barely invested anything in the sport while living on the Bank of Mom/Dad, smoking weed, and playing video games. It's a joke. Training twice a day when you're 21, playing video games, and smoking weed isn't an athlete. That's a kid with no job who trains JiuJitsu twice a day and isn't even filling his free time going to college or working to offset his living expenses.
The sport is full of guys with their hand out, wanting free sh*t. They want to compete for free, travel for free, get paid to teach, but don't know how to build a program, retain members, and have barely invested 4-5 years in the sport both financially and literally in terms of time and days on the mat.
They want to drop in to a gym, pay no mat fee and benefit from what's been built there in terms of the physical space/lights/HVAC/toilet paper/whatever and own an Iphone and Beats headphones but don't want to slap down $20 to train for an hour. M*therfucker, you paid $3 for that Starbucks.
They put on boring ass matches, indistinguishable from any other random wrestling background/mma fighter/mid level JiuJitsu "athlete" then want to "make a living doing what I love." GTFO. You don't mean JiuJitsu Lifestyle, you mean Handout Lifestyle. "Everyday porrada?" You mean "Everyday handout."
Famous names from MMA and yesteryear in grappling get paid to put on the laughably boring superfights that are borderline works for how little each guy is trying. Ishii vs Mir? Cyborg vs Schaub? Vagner vs Canuto and it's 7 minutes of collar ties and circling to the boundary. Chantre vs Cummings with its 10 minutes of pattycake and the standing competitor refusing to touch more than a second or 2 at a time then disengaging. If you came to a Submission Only match, and refuse to touch your competitor for more than 1 second at a time, you're a scam artist.
ACB and it's deadly 50/50 sweep battles for 25 minutes that could put you to sleep if you had pounded Red Bull and snort cocaine at the start of each round? The ACB event literally folded because Gi competitors would literally rather not lose than open up the game and try to win and the guy bankrolling the event told them to kick rocks. Great job guys, now no one gets paid to do JiuJitsu by that organization. Spyder BJJ has put on 2 of the most boring events in Gi JiuJitsu I have EVER SEEN with multiple matches where both guys are awarded 2-3 penalties for stalling in -7 minutes. Are you serious? Grappling is better than this. Promoters are the ones with the purse strings. When they flex their nuts and stop bringing guys back or enforcing stalling, the matches will change.
I'd rather watch Finishers Sub Only than ANY of the matches I watched from the last Spyder BJJ event. #facts
It's entitlement to think that you should be paid like a professional to collar tie, handfight, circle, disengage, reset, and shoot one or two takedowns in 10 minutes of grappling. I'd rather go reff blue belt matches than watch that. Your resume & your achievements don't entitle you to a different standard of performance than anyone else in the sport, man. See the quote about: "Success isn't owned, it's leased, and rent is due." Not every performance can be match of the year, century or even month. But let's not kid ourselves and defend matches where it's 5 minutes with one guy in half-guard bottom, and another guy on both knees on top with neither passing and neither sweeping or throwing up some submissions. Let's not kid ourselves and defend 2 "athletes" in 50/50 for 5 minutes and seesaw sweep battling the last 30 seconds of the match as though it's the pinnacle of the sport and deserves the term "superfight". Lets's not kid ourselves and defend athletes striking other opponents with collar ties and stalling and disengaging and rationalize it because of who they claim to be and past accomplishments. Let's not kid ourselves when athletes tagging Jesus and prayer emojis are roided out and cheating. Let's not kid ourselves that anyone is above reproach or criticism after signing up to compete in a public forum and expecting to be paid.
Rewind to 6 1/2 years ago and I had been out of competition for the better part of a year due to ACL/meniscus injury and subsequent surgery. While I was gone, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) rule change banning leg grabs had come into effect. By the time I returned to Judo competition, to even briefly tough or grab the leg with your arm/elbow/hand as seen by a referee in he chaos of a high-paced match could bring about an automatic Disqualification or "hansokumake." It's tough to travel to compete, make weight, pay money (to say nothing of the opportunity cost of missing work et cetera to travel/be gone), and to have a referee rule you DQ'd immediately because you errantly touched or grazed the leg with your arm whilst in a match that can be as chaotic and high paced as Judo. I had fought 5 MMA fights up until this point. I won the state championships in both North and South Carolina in Judo. I was a new-ish purple belt in JiuJitsu. I was a devoted competitor arranging my personal life, work, most things if not everything around competing in whatever sport I was currently pursuing.
At any rate, I had returned to competing (both in Judo and JiuJitsu with increasing frequency), but the new restrictions in Judo had changed the pace and feel of a match and also had taken a good number of combinations and attacks out of the game as well. I didn't particularly mind the new style change overall, as my tokuiwaza (pet technique/specialty throw et cetera as it translates roughly), Tai Otoshi benefits/is easier to set up from a more upright style of play anyway, but the matches felt a bit less unpredictable, a bit more truncated, and just presented a narrower range of throwing techniques. I had always liked facing the myriad of grappling styles that Judo allowed up until that point.
Beyond this change in the feel of the game/matches, a Judo tournament director reached out to me and asked me to come referee at a tournament. I was being asked to commute several hours, spend the day reffing (miss work at my 2nd job), and do it out of the goodness of my heart. That same day, I was offered a job reffing a JiuJitsu tournament, where I'd be able to compete for free (couldn't compete because I was recovering but you get the point), and be paid to referee on top of that.
Let me clarify what made the choice for me, beyond the simple pros and cons/situation outlined above. The Judo tournament director, by his wording, made it clear that out of some sense of obligation and selflessness, that I "should" offer my time and energy et cetera to come pay back the sport of Judo. There was this sense of entitlement to my time, energy, and purpose that rang hollow to me. Pay back? Pay back? I was coming back from an ACL resonstruction surgery ($5,000 after insurance to say nothing of costs in PT/loss of work et cetera), to say nothing of the countless other injuries along the way. I was always paying Judo back. Missing work. Paying to compete. Paying to travel. Paying to train. Paying for surgery. Paying. Paying. Paying. Is it wrong to expect to be compensated for your time and expertise? It is wrong to expect to be treated like someone who is paid for their time and expertise? The reffing at Judo tournaments was always iffy at best with old time referees imposing their interpretation of the rules from a bygone era to career referees who do not train live at all and barely understand what they are watching. I'd lost more matches on bad calls than I cared to count and compensated with a hyper aggressive attacking style that I only expected to win if I could throw, pin, or submit within regulation.
I politely informed him that I'd be reffing at a JiuJitsu tournament that day and left it at that. He replied with some condescending remarks about my lack of commitment to the sport and selflessness (also probably entwined in a disdain for JiuJitsu as I'd put up with a fair amount of resistance/smart remarks/outright disdain/condescension for my involvement in JiuJitsu from some old school Judo instructors and even training partners ever since I began crosstraining while I was rehabbing, you guessed it, a knee injury). One might could write this interaction off as simply a differing of minds, but I had long tried to broach this topic of closed minded-ness for JiuJitsu as a sport and misguided altruism in Judo of selflessly teaching and investment previously with others in the Judo community. It was largely ignored by the entrenched Judo beliefs that still plague the sport (I can speak specifically of American Judo from personal experience at the regional level). You can only expect so much and so long from your competitors....and when another opportunity looms on the horizon that treats you much more like a professional and doesn't lay claim to your time and energy out of expectation, the choice sometimes doesn't seem very difficult for those of us without parents or programs funding our training and competition expenses. The selfless long-time martyr casting aspersions on the younger competitor, what a cliche. Over the course of my involvement in Judo it went from there being 3 skill divisions: white belt, green-brown, and black belt. By the end, there was one division at a lot of tournaments: open skill, meaning you'd have white belts and everyone along the way to black belt. Talk about the likelihood for injury...
I felt like Atlas Shrugged and watching all the signs piling up that the sport was languishing and the very stewards of the sport at the grass roots level where I was not only ignoring the problem, but exacerbating it. Before JiuJitsu, Judo could blame lots of theories and ideas as to why Judo was lagging behind other sports: culture of sport in America, video games, ideology/home environment, et cetera...yet JiuJitsu came along and went from not existing as a sport in America to parents shelling out $100 for their kids to win swords and belts. All along the way, Judo's response for quite awhile was to double down on it's attitudes and beliefs, with even some Judo organizations banning it's funded athletes from cross competition and MMA and while this ensnares the top cared for and funded athletes, it forces a hard line decision for those who are not.
At some point, I had to accept that to continue to tolerate the treatment/expectation of the athletes was to not only enable, but further deepen the problem. I can't tolerate the behavior, allow it to continue, perpetuate the cycle, and then complain for years on end.
That would be naive at best and disingenuous at worst. I reffed for several years for US Grappling who always treated me fairly, paid me to referee, let me compete for free, paid me expenses toward travelling over a certain distance and in doing so gave me the opportunity to grow my game immeasurably.
They also run one of the best tournaments I've attended (as a competitor). It's a tournament that truly is By Grapplers, For Grapplers. I owe that company an immeasurable debt toward my development as far as understanding and nerding out on the rules and competing month after month at purple belt until I moved to NYC.
One of the best things a grappler can do for the sport is both BEHAVE LIKE A PROFESSIONAL and then EXPECT to be treated like one. It's an old adage but true, people will rise to the bar you set for them.
On the flipside, in JiuJitsu, I see a lot of entitlement from "athletes" who treat grappling like this mommy/daddy/bank/welfare program. They expect events to pay them for their mid level grappling skills but don't promote the event, barely sell tickets, and want to just show up and have visibility provided to them. They expect at blue or purple belt for some promoter to pay for them to travel to an event, pay their way, when they've barely invested anything in the sport while living on the Bank of Mom/Dad, smoking weed, and playing video games. It's a joke. Training twice a day when you're 21, playing video games, and smoking weed isn't an athlete. That's a kid with no job who trains JiuJitsu twice a day and isn't even filling his free time going to college or working to offset his living expenses.
The sport is full of guys with their hand out, wanting free sh*t. They want to compete for free, travel for free, get paid to teach, but don't know how to build a program, retain members, and have barely invested 4-5 years in the sport both financially and literally in terms of time and days on the mat.
They want to drop in to a gym, pay no mat fee and benefit from what's been built there in terms of the physical space/lights/HVAC/toilet paper/whatever and own an Iphone and Beats headphones but don't want to slap down $20 to train for an hour. M*therfucker, you paid $3 for that Starbucks.
They put on boring ass matches, indistinguishable from any other random wrestling background/mma fighter/mid level JiuJitsu "athlete" then want to "make a living doing what I love." GTFO. You don't mean JiuJitsu Lifestyle, you mean Handout Lifestyle. "Everyday porrada?" You mean "Everyday handout."
Famous names from MMA and yesteryear in grappling get paid to put on the laughably boring superfights that are borderline works for how little each guy is trying. Ishii vs Mir? Cyborg vs Schaub? Vagner vs Canuto and it's 7 minutes of collar ties and circling to the boundary. Chantre vs Cummings with its 10 minutes of pattycake and the standing competitor refusing to touch more than a second or 2 at a time then disengaging. If you came to a Submission Only match, and refuse to touch your competitor for more than 1 second at a time, you're a scam artist.
ACB and it's deadly 50/50 sweep battles for 25 minutes that could put you to sleep if you had pounded Red Bull and snort cocaine at the start of each round? The ACB event literally folded because Gi competitors would literally rather not lose than open up the game and try to win and the guy bankrolling the event told them to kick rocks. Great job guys, now no one gets paid to do JiuJitsu by that organization. Spyder BJJ has put on 2 of the most boring events in Gi JiuJitsu I have EVER SEEN with multiple matches where both guys are awarded 2-3 penalties for stalling in -7 minutes. Are you serious? Grappling is better than this. Promoters are the ones with the purse strings. When they flex their nuts and stop bringing guys back or enforcing stalling, the matches will change.
I'd rather watch Finishers Sub Only than ANY of the matches I watched from the last Spyder BJJ event. #facts
It's entitlement to think that you should be paid like a professional to collar tie, handfight, circle, disengage, reset, and shoot one or two takedowns in 10 minutes of grappling. I'd rather go reff blue belt matches than watch that. Your resume & your achievements don't entitle you to a different standard of performance than anyone else in the sport, man. See the quote about: "Success isn't owned, it's leased, and rent is due." Not every performance can be match of the year, century or even month. But let's not kid ourselves and defend matches where it's 5 minutes with one guy in half-guard bottom, and another guy on both knees on top with neither passing and neither sweeping or throwing up some submissions. Let's not kid ourselves and defend 2 "athletes" in 50/50 for 5 minutes and seesaw sweep battling the last 30 seconds of the match as though it's the pinnacle of the sport and deserves the term "superfight". Lets's not kid ourselves and defend athletes striking other opponents with collar ties and stalling and disengaging and rationalize it because of who they claim to be and past accomplishments. Let's not kid ourselves when athletes tagging Jesus and prayer emojis are roided out and cheating. Let's not kid ourselves that anyone is above reproach or criticism after signing up to compete in a public forum and expecting to be paid.
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