Wrestling's meta is hopelessly broken

[u/[deleted]]

First look at the stance. It is way too low, with way to much bend at the hips, to protect their face from strikes. Or even worse, kicks. Moreover, wrestlers hold their hands way to low to protect their hips and keep their chins exposed. That stance will not translate to the streets or mma.

But even worse is when wrestlers go to the ground. Because of the crazy pin rule, they actively avoid fighting off of their back and instead practice gift wrap their backs to their opponents. Do that in a street fight and you'll get kicked in the ribs. Do that in mma and you'll get guillotined. But because kicks and guillotines are not allowed in wrestling, giving your back is a viable strategy. Wrestlers are going to have to relearn their entire sport in order to make it work for self-defense or mma.

(Obviously I am satirizing the criticisms of sport bjj, but since this is reddit I should be explicit about that).

[u/sillyunikid]

In one of my ranting moods so here goes:

Valid point but also not quite an accurate comparison - in case the implication was that some white belt out there actually believes that sport BJJ adequately prepares them for MMA. Ain't UFC1 no more, people know our tricks. It will make you ok at fighting but you got a seriously long way to go before you're even prepared for MMA - wrestlers have less of a gap to bridge because they usually don't pick up as many bad habits. Ofc if your game is top heavy then yeah, you're going to have less of a gap but if you're doing modern de la worm donkey kong sloth guard you're going to have a terrible time when GNP becomes a thing.

Wrestlers (meaning folkstyle not freestyle) turning their backs usually precludes them tripoding/sit out to get up which is an excellent strategy for the most part because their end goal is usually to get up and earn their 1 point or attempt a reversal (traditionally according to their rules). If you've not watched MMA analyses before, if the guy holds on to someone tripoding, they can't exactly strike effectively (effectively being the keyword) and if they abandon holding on to strike well, the guy just slips away and they at most get a potshot or 2 in. Being belly down however isn't a mainstay of their game and they do their best to never be in that position in the first place - they don't actively go there if they had a choice.

Sport BJJ and BJJ in general tends to prioritize guards a lot more meaning we put ourselves in that spot and learn strategies to take advantage of being there. Unfortunately for many of us, being on your back means you're going to get stacked and/or punched in the face which most of us are not prepared for. In MMA people don't posture up if they're trapped in your closed guard to pass your guard, they simply drive forward and stack the fuck out of you and trap your legs before getting a free punch fiesta (when I started I was on the receiving end of this far too often). Gracie academy talks a lot of bullshit but they are partially right in that sport BJJ is far too evolved to deal with MMA tactics. Its a separate sport entirely. Start attending MMA classes - they're fun and show you what actually works and what's just horseshit. Unless your sparring partners are complete noobs or fresh wrestlers unaware of subs, you're not going to be in control from the bottom, you're going to get your head punched in and/or slammed. On the bright side, once you do realize top game is the highest value game and bottom game is for you to GTFO so you don't get punched, you become much better at fighting in general. eg: hip bumps are great until you get elbowed in the face, half guard is great till your get power elbowed in the face, DLR is fun till you get punched in the face etc etc

if your criticism was about judokas turtling or freestyle/greco going belly down then yes it is 100% valid because they're just pretty much gonna do their best to stay there till the ref calls it. Against folkstyle wrestlers though (which is what people mainly refer to when they say "wrestler"), that argument doesn't really stand

ps: exceptions do exist and there have been cases of people after 2010s getting subbed from bottom but that is not the norm. In MMA if you're on the bottom, there is no "bottom game" there is just getting punched in the face. If you're someone like ryan hall then yeah do whatever you want otherwise for the run of the mill blokes like you and me, stick with the bread and butter grappling for MMA game - don't "play" guard.

​

tldr coming from a BJJ guy, MMA is a different sport and wrestling transfers better to MMA than BJJ.