What’s your favorite submission? Sure, you may have a ton of submissions that you like to go for, but if you had to pick just one… Which one would it be?
Well, for Ricardo Almeida – Renzo Gracie’s first ever BJJ black belt and an owner of the successful Ricardo Almeida BJJ Academy – it’s the Arm-In Guillotine. He explained why that’s the case in an interview for BJJ Eastern Europe:
For one, the Arm-In Guillotine is a choke – and the chokes are incontestable. With the armbars, for example, their arm will hurt or break if they don’t want to tap. But, with the choke they go unconscious… There’s a finality to a choke that I don’t think exists with joint locks.
I mean, yeah, of course, you can heel hook someone and they will not be able to walk. But, sometimes they escape, sometimes they would „eat it“, but with the choke, once you get it – that is a checkmate.
He explains that the Guillotine can be used in almost all grappling scenarios:
To me, there’s definitely no clearer checkmate in grappling than the choke. And the reason that I love the guillotine is that it is the only submission that can be used in all of the phases of fighting.
You could be standing and use the guillotine, you could be on the ground and use the guillotine… It can be used in the transition from the feet to the floor. It can be used during the „get up“, when you transition from being on the floor back to your feet. On the ground, you can use it from the bottom and from the top. From the side…
He also emphasizes the reason behind the “arm-in” part being his favorite:
The high elbow guillotine you can also use, of course, but I favor the arm in guillotine because the arm control is the best control. And I think that the only weakness of the arm in guillotine is that it is typically very hard to use in the gi.
But, since I don’t do gi competitions, I don’t worry too much about it. (Laughs)
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Don’t miss out on our full interview with Ricardo Almeida on the following link.
