Footage recently went viral of a woman who’s been training in BJJ, who managed to submit an entire boxing gym in friendly grappling matches. It’s an interesting watch because it reconfirms a lot of the main selling points of Jiu-Jitsu for women in the first place. It’s a martial art that allows smaller people to overcome larger opponents if they have enough of a skill advantage over them. That’s what a lot of people took as the primary lesson from Royce Gracie and his dominant performance back at UFC 1, and it’s a lesson that has been on full display time and time again.
In the video, the woman takes on five boxers in a row and she makes pretty short work of all of them. The BJJ skill gap between the woman and the men at the boxing gym is easily apparent right from the start and she manages to submit each of them with a guillotine choke. While many women who start attending a Jiu-Jitsu gym may not experience the same level of success against their fellow students, it’s worth remembering that she’s a good enough grappler to overcome the size and strength advantage that the boxers have. Any woman with a reasonable amount of training could definitely replicate the same results against untrained opponents.
This isn’t any indictment of the success of boxing of course, as these were all friendly grappling matches without any strikes allowed. The world of modern MMA is littered with cautionary tales of elite BJJ competitors who have attempted to get by on their incredible grappling, only to be knocked out by skilled strikers. Being good enough at grappling to avoid it altogether is often enough to win fights against people who might be capable of submitting you 10 times out of 10 in grappling matches. For anyone looking to compete in MMA, it’s absolutely vital to be at least competent in all areas of the sport.
The footage of the woman who’s trained in BJJ managing to submit an entire boxing gym was originally uploaded to the official Instagram account of Smittywit:
