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Ryron Gracie’s Escapes from Galvao’s Hell

Ryron

Dan Faggella is a BJJ Academy Owner, No Gi Pan Am Champion at 130 pounds, and recognized expert in the area of light weight jiu jitsu. Dan writes or Jiu Jitsu Magazine, Jiu Jitsu Style, MMA Sports Mag, and more – you get his brand new 7 escapes book completely FREE right here.  

Ryron Gracie isn’t known for his impressive competitive track record, or even for his awesome guard game. No, Ryron is mainly famous for other stuff. He is a Gracie first of all, he is also known for his his “Gracie Breakdowns”, where he breaks down bjj fights or the jiu jitsu aspects of important mma fights. Recently he also became known for something else though: his controversial “ draw” vs. Andre Galvao.

Some may feel as if Ryron wasn’t really attacking in the aforementioned match others might say he was barely doing anything more than surviving.  None, however, question the fact that his escapes are, at the very least, at an elite level black belt level.

WATCH THE FULL MATCH RYRON GRACIE VS ANDRE GALVAO IN HD HERE

We don’t really care about the politics behind this match so we aren’t really going to discuss them, we will however address the thing that gave the incredible Andre Galvao such a hard time: Ryron’s defense and how it affected the dynamics of the match.

WHY SHOULD I WORK ON MY ESCAPES WHEN I COULD JUST DRILL BERIMBOLO’S?

Why would you want to have impenetrable defense and snakelike escapes? After all if you have got a good offense you can always force your opponent to defend and your ability to attack should allow you to always stay ahead right?

While I am a strong proponent (as mentioned in the following article: http://scienceofskill.com/marcelo-garcia-vs-cobrinha-the-breakdown/) of favoring offense above defense, I don’t believe that “the best defense is a good offense” covers all there is to it.

1)      The most obvious benefit of a good defense is of course avoiding being on the receiving end of a submission. Being submitted, as you know, always means that you lose, independently of the rules you fight under. Not losing by submission is taking away the only 100% certain way of victory against you. If you can avoid being submitted in a submission only match indefinitely you are bound to find an opening for a submission of your own at some point.

2)      There are a lot of strategical advantages of having a good defense and in a submission only match it can totally change the dynamics. In this article we want to focus on that aspect of having a good defense and awesome escapes.

3)      It offers several mental and moral benefits too.  Blocking all of your opponents best attacks can demoralize and frustrate your opponent and a frustrated and demoralized opponent is more prone to make mistakes he wouldn’t make with clear mind.

PLAYING TOP MAKES ME SLEEPY

Some would say that Ryron wasn’t on the offensive much in his match with Galvao, while I might agree that he wasn’t pushing from the beginning, saying that he wasn’t attacking is just not true. He did try to attack but he waited until Galvao was tired. But wait a minute why was Galvao tired? He is a world class elite level black belt who is especially known for his awesome strength and conditioning.

This brings us to our first strategical advantage of being a master of escapes. Let’s face it, passing the guard, maintaining side control and trying to submit your opponent is tiring as hell. Agreed, trying to escape with everything you have got is workout from hell too.

But that isn’t what Ryron was doing, not at all. He was so confident that he wouldn’t be submitted that he didn’t feel like doing anything except avoiding the submission, only trying to escape when the opportunity presented itself to do so in an energy efficient way. Just defending isn’t that tiring if you are relaxed and not trying to force an escape. This allowed Ryron to stay fresh until the last minutes of the fight Andre, however, was clearly exhausted by then.

Granted Ryron’s offense wasn’t strong enough to submit Galvao during the last moments of the fight he was still able to survive until then and could even try to attack Galvao while still as fresh as if it was still the first minute of the fight.

HEED HIM WHO CAN REGUARD A THOUSAND TIMES

Even though Ryron wasn’t trying to actively attack or even escape during the majority of the fight, he did escape Galvao’s side control a couple of times when the opportunity presented his self. An accomplishment not to be taken lightly, Galvao is well known for having a crushing top game and just from seeing a lot of his matches I can tell you that his side control is a very dangerous place to be.

(If you want to know just how dangerous his side control is you can always check out the following article by bishopbjj: http://bishopbjj.com/2012/08/14/it-science-andre-galvao/)

Now, almost every time Ryron escaped he was able to reguard. This allowed him play a lot of guard, even though his guard was obviously not Galvao proof (who can blame him). Being able to play guard again and again even against someone who is better at passing your guard than you are at defending your guard is highly beneficial from a strategical standpoint.

Let me elaborate, every time you have someone in your guard there are five possible outcomes:

1)      You submit your opponent, the best possible outcome, though statistically not the most common.

2)      You sweep your opponent, statistically the most common outcome of a guard play. Not in this match though because Galvao’s base is just to god damn strong to sweep consistently. Also there are no points in this fight and playing top is exhausting.

3)      You take his back, plausible option even though taking the back from a pass is more common.

4)      He passes your guard and/or takes your back, pretty realistic outcome of you are fighting Galvao.

5)      He submits you from your own guard, this goes against common bjj spirit but it is a possibility.

Imagine you are fighting someone who is way better than you, let’s say that he is able to pass your guard four times of out of five and you are able to sweep/submit/take his back one time out of five.  In this scenario it would seem that the passer has a very large advantage over you and he does but having great escapes could be the great equalizer in this scenario.

Imagine you would be able to reguard five times in a row, this would allow you to play guard five times.  If you are successful from your guard once every five times you play it then having good escapes allows you to have the odds in your favor despite the fact that you are more often unsuccesfull from your guard than not. Keep in mind that the five options you have are there every time you find yourself in the guard.

Now this logic doesn’t hold in a points match though, because sweeping someone one time after being passed four times would leave you way behind on the scoreboard.  In a submission only match, however,  it dramatically increases the odds of you successfully advancing your position or even getting a submission with your guard techniques.

-Dan Faggella