Josh Barnett is one of the world’s biggest proponents of catch wrestling and he recently shared why he thinks that approach to grappling is actually superior to BJJ for MMA. Catch wrestling as a martial art or combat sport has a much smaller following than Jiu-Jitsu in the modern era, but historically it was incredibly popular at one point in time. It actually developed into the most widely-practiced combat sport in the United States, folkstyle wrestling. At the same time, some catch wrestlers took a slightly different path and participated in fixed matches that were the precursor to modern professional wrestling like the WWE.
Barnett is the most successful self-described catch wrestler to try his hand at MMA and he has a UFC title to prove it, but there have been many successful BJJ black belts in the sport. He explained why he believes that modern MMA grappling is more similar to catch wrestling than BJJ:
“To be perfectly honest, in my opinion the catch wrestling approach is superior to BJJ in terms of your typical or your standard approaches to MMA. Whether they know it or not, everyone in Mixed Martial Arts now does not play guard and they all wrestle like a catch wrestler. Trying to constantly get back to their feet, wrestling up, giving up their back; which used to be a cardinal sin supposedly.”
That whole concept of giving up your back in order to stand up isn’t really a focus in BJJ, because returning to standing doesn’t really provide a lot of benefit under most rulesets. Particularly if a takedown has already been scored or the bottom-player pulled guard, there’s no real incentive to stand up unless their strongest area is standing grappling and they believe that’s their best chance to score. That’s why many traditional BJJ academies will preach against giving up your back, and Barnett explained his experience with that mindset:
“I’ve heard so many guys from the BJJ side of things literally complain about some of my (competitors); ‘oh they did really well but your guys, they can’t give their back up’. Yes they can, you don’t wrestle. You’ve never wrestled folkstyle so for you, it’s an area that you don’t really play in. You either get your back taken and try to get out of it, or you try to take someone else’s back, or you know they get tired, maybe you’re punching them, they turn, and fine. But with us it’s like no, we’ll give our back because if you think you’re gonna get it like, good luck. We’re already in motion and we know how to wrestle from this position, that’s our defensive position.”
Over the years, MMA developed from being fighters of distinctly different styles against one another into the much more well-rounded fighters of today. As that happened, Barnett has seen firsthand that BJJ black belts generally don’t rely on their guard in MMA any more and instead grapple more like someone would under catch wrestling rules:
“Then you saw as MMA, the game of MMA specifically within the UFC, has been evolving and people have been building these gameplans; the BJJ-base fighters are giving up their back, going up the wall. (It’s) because it’s the game that determines the approach and the training. It’s just that BJJ in a standard way had been successful enough and with the IBJJF on top of it, and even ADCC, it’s like ‘oh, I can just lay on my back all day.’ It’s like no, you can’t any more. Unless there’s a significant deficit in the skill game, you ain’t subbing anyone on your back dude. Unless they’re hurt, beat up, just stupid, or there’s like I said a significant gap in that skill; you’re not getting them. Sorry, it’s not happening. You’re not armbarring them in five minutes, you’re not choking them, you’re not doing any of these things. You have to work on those things for those moments when they present themselves, at least to create the threat, but it’s changed a lot.”
The full interview with Josh Barnett where he explains why he thinks catch wrestling is superior to BJJ in MMA is now available to watch on the official JitsMagazine YouTube channel, click here to subscribe for more or check out the interview below:
