Roberto Pedreira is the publisher of Global Training Report. He has produced a gold mine of interviews and reports from his experiences training all over the world over the years. Most recently  he’s been reviewing and summarizing Reyla Gracie’s (Roger Gracie’s mother) biography of father Grandmaster Carlos Gracie. 

Pedreira believes that focus change from self defense and street fighting to what he calls “hygenic fun sports” is to blame for the direction bjj is taking. And it’s all because of a marketing. He writes:

But the Gracie marketing master plan contained the seeds of disaster. Everyone can learn jiu-jitsu. The focus changed from self-defense and street fighting (tackle, mount, choke, uupha) to hygienic fun sports (Berimbolo, 50-50, Worm Guard, Kaola Guard, Panda Sweeps, Jailbaits, Crackheads, etc.,) for the whole family, mom, sis, uncle Buck, your girlfriend, everyone can train BJJ. That means academies must satisfy customers. To keep prices reasonably affordable, they must maximize the number of students per square foot of mat space. New students are attracted by champions, hence competitions are required. To have champions, there must be winners, hence there must be points. Etcetera, etcetera, everyone knows how this story goes. It leads to TKD. Combat effectiveness goes out the door, as Rener says. In return, we get medals and belts.

This is not good, Rickson believes. Rener, Ryron, and Pedro Sauer agree with him. Gracie Academy revenues are not what they could be. People enroll but then quit after 3-5 months (there are numerous possible reasons for this, but Rener and Ryron think it is because self-defense is not adequately addressed in BJJ schools, their own included, until recently). They admit that they were part of the problem. They taught sports BJJ, or as they put it, they taught BJJ guys to fight with other BJJ guys. And they gave belts to tough guys on that basis. The tough guys didn’t need to know self defense (or that’s what they thought). Thereby, the pool of potential long term paying students consists mostly of tough guys. People who are not athletic, physical, tough people, were neglected and their needs ignored.

But is it really so? After all it was Helio Gracie that was involved in the shaping of sports jiu-jitsu to start with. In the 1960s some important steps were taken towards the consolidation of sport jiu-jitsu. The Jiu-Jitsu federation was created in Rio in 1967 and among the primitive rules were  moves like takedowns, frontal mounts with both knees on the ground and the back-take yielded one point.

What do you think, Is Jiu-Jitsu Drowning because Of Focus Change From Self-defense and Street fighting to Sport?

You can read more of Pedreira’s post here