Karel Pravec recently shared his thoughts on the possibility of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu joining the Olympic Games…

Making it clear that he believes the sport is better off remaining outside the Olympic system.
Here is what he had to say on the topic:

I am a fan of this as an art.
I hope this never makes it into the Olympics, because I want it to stay in art – because with art and different rule sets, people can express themselves.

A fifth-degree black belt under Renzo Gracie, Pravec argued that one of BJJ’s greatest strengths is the freedom created by having multiple rulesets & approaches to competition:

If they’re sort of such an oddball that nobody believes what they’re doing, nobody’s going to follow them.
But if you sort of have an effective style… They’re going to try to learn that way.

According to Pravec, that environment encourages innovation and experimentation:

So I think I like the different rule sets.
I like the fact that it’s sort of unorganized and I want to stay that way.

I really am a big fan of multiple rule sets because if you have a single rule set, that would be my fear.

He believes that once countries begin investing resources into Olympic success, athletes start focusing on optimizing for medals rather than developing new ideas:

But what happens then, everybody trains according to that rule set. Which starts to really get away from innovation.”

Pravec also pointed to judo as a cautionary example:

You saw what happened with judo where they banned double leg takedowns.
And I think that has the possibility of happening with Jiu-Jitsu too.

This is one of the reasons I wanted to stay in art. I don’t want it to become a unified sport.

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