EBI rules have quickly become one of the most popular rulesets in professional grappling, taking the world by storm when Eddie Bravo created them back in 2014. The ruleset is named after the man himself, as he decided to create a brand new grappling promotion that year called the Eddie Bravo Invitational. The driving force behind the ruleset was the desire to create a version of Jiu-Jitsu competition that was more appealing to spectators and could produce more submission finishes for them.
That’s where the idea for EBI overtime came into existence, and the rules of the overtime period were designed by Eddie Bravo to incentivise submission finishes as much as possible. The tournament quickly became one of the most exciting and well-respected grappling competitions on the planet, regularly attracting elite competitors like Gordon Ryan, Garry Tonon, and Geo Martinez. Of course, Bravo didn’t stop the innovation there either. A few years after EBI had started, Bravo turned his attention to something slightly different and created the concept of Combat Jiu-Jitsu too.
After a few years of driving Combat Jiu-Jitsu, Bravo merged that and EBI together in order to promote women’s Jiu-Jitsu with a female-only promotion; Medusa. For a while Bravo was hard at work promoting the Combat Jiu-Jitsu world championships and his new female-only venture, and EBI took a backseat. Then, in 2022, fans around the world were delighted to hear that the Eddie Bravo Invitational was returning. By that time the EBI ruleset had already established itself as the most popular submission-only ruleset in the sport and it was being used by dozens of different promotions all around the world. Because of that it’s important for competitors everywhere to understand exactly how EBI rules work, and Eddie Bravo is the best man to explain that.
The below video of Eddie Bravo explaining how EBI rules work was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of BJJ Fanatics:
