Submission grappling is becoming increasingly popular… But what stands in its way to even bigger growth and popularity?
Well, Chael Sonnen believes that one of the obstacles is that the rules are different for every event.
He shared his opinion in a recent “El Segundo” podcast episode:
It’s very hard in grappling, when every event has its own rules. Every single event…
Every time someone sits down and decides they want to start a promotion, they come up with their own rule set!In any basketball match in the world – you put it in the bucket, you get two points. You go to the free throw line, you get an x amount of shots…
It’s the same thing: boys, girls, junior high, NBA.
That is to say, Chael would like to see a same ruleset applied across every submission grappling event:
And how are you supposed to have a ranking system? It’s weird, man, come up with the same rules.
I wish that everyone would’ve gone with EBI [rule set].My point is that everyone should have the same rules, so that everyone would know what we’re looking at.
With that said, he also believes that it’s ludicrous that athletes can tell the promoters to change the ruleset:
So, the promoter calls the athletes and says: “Hey guys, do you wanna do this?” And then the athlete says: “I’ll do it if you change the rules.”
And the promoter says: “Okay.”And when I see the athlete push around the promoter, I lose respect for the promoter.
