Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt Robby Malof is 25 years old. His biggest claim to infamy in the community came when he won the 2017 Spatola Wrestling Classic in Cincinnati, OH. Robby competed against 3 high level wrestlers. One being a Kentucky state champion, Ohio state placer and a D1 Wrestler from OU.
Malof stated:
Spatola Classic 2017 174lb Champion!! (3-0)
First off for the few people that hated on my BJJ vs Wrestling post, I just got to say we had two D1 wrestlers in our division, a state champion and a couple army guys. I applied atleast 6 pure bjj moves to counter numerous shots. I was hitting a bunch of Kimura traps off of the single legs. I scored a couple good double legs and a few singles too.
High level BJJ can compete against high level wrestling. No dispute, I proved it today. I will have videos to post in the days to come. In the meantime please share this post if you believe BJJ is the most dominate martial art.
But since then Malof has been seen training wrestling to prep for bjj! Malof states he wrestled in middle school but discovered it wasn’t his thing.
“The pace is way different. If you have a wrestling base you’re gonna come into it way easier… It’s a lot more based on leverage vs wrestling is just more brutal a bit more pressure, more in your face. Jiu jitsu can be like that too but at the highest level. I don’t want to say (bjj) is more technical but it’s a lot more moves and so many differences between gi and nogi.”
Malof was seen working on his wrestling to get better for bjj:
“I came here to do this after one of the tournaments. I really enjoyed it and wanted to try something new for myself and I haven’t done it in 13 years. I won matches recently at black belt level – wrestling saved me at the very end I scored 2 points. “
