Aaah, Boston Legal has Gracie Jane, which is obviously... how should I put it... an homage to Nancy Grace. I thought in typical Boston Legal style it was over the top...

It's not!!!

These 2 guys are pretty good as well:

http://www.videosift.com/video/A-River-Runs-Through-It-Final-Scene


In reply to this comment by RhesusMonk:
My skin is icy. Sorkin is a god. "Feckless thug." Gorgeous. Too bad amrty said "gracis tibi ago" instead of "gratias." If this sifts, I'll do some work on a full translation of the rest. =)

My skin is icy. Sorkin is a god. "Feckless thug." Gorgeous. Too bad amrty said "gracis tibi ago" instead of "gratias." If this sifts, I'll do some work on a full translation of the rest. =)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'martial art, fight, jiu jitsu, grapling, gracie, arm bar, technique, skill' to 'martial art, brazilian jiu jitsu, grappling, gracie, arm bar, submission' - edited by rembar

Tags for this video have been changed from 'BJJ, Brazilian, Gracie, Jiu Jitsu' to 'BJJ, Brazilian, Gracie, Jiu Jitsu, 50s' - edited by swampgirl

i think gracie fanbois are rather geeky, so thats why i put it there

Hah, true 'nuff, though these days we get less of Gracie nutriders stumbling onto the mats as we do TUF noobs. When will they ever learn that there's no such thing as submission by association???

i think gracie fanbois are rather geeky, so thats why i put it there but it probably doesnt fit the videosift geek tag
but still fun for the vintage martial art'ness of it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'BJJ, Gracie, Jiu Jitsu' to 'BJJ, Brazilian, Gracie, Jiu Jitsu' - edited by rembar

Haha, wasn't this clip upped by Lord Asia?

Man, some thing about BJJ change (better submissions, shittier throws, divergence from judo), but other things never will (Gracie propaganda).

"It is the most complete form of self-defense". Oh, for those simpler, more innocent times. I especially love the flop pass and then what appears to be a pro-wrestling-style rear neck crank (possibly a loose collar choke?) by Carlos at 4:15.

*sigh*, I'm pretty sure I have to upvote or I think I get stripped of all my ranks. I'll just say I'm upvoting for historical significance. Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

"Street fighter with no credentials"???? *cough, cough, cough*. Think again, my friend.

This is a fight between BJJ black belt, MMA fighter, and UFC former champion Royce Gracie and Five Animal kung fu teacher and now 34-21-1 MMA fighter and BJJ practitioner Jason Delucia, taken from one of the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action videotapes.

As a BJJer myself, I intentionally didn't sift any of these challenge matches, and I'm not sure how I'm going to vote yet. I believe that BJJ fighters standing out in high-level MMA competitions through their superior groundwork skills is far more convincing of BJJ's effectiveness than these clips from the BJJ in Action tapes, which amount to little more than propaganda films.

Not to mention, nowadays, these kind of things tend to give BJJ a bad rep, not a good one.

Yikes.

I also dislike many of the things the Gracies do and say, and I like to think that the art has moved beyond their control and has become something that is owned by no single person or group.

And for the record, I think dojo-storming is stupid, but I do not believe all styles to be equal in terms of imparting fighting ability, which is where the ring or cage comes in. I think MMA is a perfect pressure-testing ground for martial arts as well as martial artists.

I love watching this sport, but I would never take part in it. Much like hockey, cause I cant skate.

The one thing that i do not like about the gracie dynasty is the lengths that they go to, to show how good their martial art is agianst other arts. Kenpo, and some other thing on GoogleVideo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naWEbPDz80w

Fistly bringing one art form and dueling another to prove that one is better than the other is foolish. "There are many styles of Wushu. One style is not better than the other, there is only difference in skill." -Jet Li's Character in Fearless.

There is a terrible stereotype that follows KickBoxing, MMA, and even my style of Martial Art is that we do the art in order to show our egos. In somecases we do just that, but in most cases its because we have no choice. Training to fight is one thing but training as a warrior in all your aspects of life is the way, only doing it halfway is foolish. The only certain thing in martial arts is that there is uncertainty.

This was a great vid! I think that submissions work from any angle, but I perfer to do my fighting from a distance behind Tachi!

*sigh*.

While it is true that the Gracie family made submission attacks famous by representing Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) in mixed martial arts (MMA), everything you just posted is - and I almost never say this - completely ignorant of the sport and martial arts as a whole.

Submissions were not brought into "the sport" - and by this, I assume you mean MMA - by the Gracies. The Gracies, as I wrote in my BJJ sift, took the judo/jujitsu taught to them by Mitsuyo Maeda and developed the newaza groundwork into a new system, focused on establishing positional improvement and dominance before the application of submissions. It was this conceptual change from the general judo mindset of throw-and-fall-or-scramble-to-position, rather than the submissions themselves. Judo, for the most part, has all the submission BJJ does, it just generally doesn't train them as much or as well. So really, the submissions were brought into the sport by judo, which was brought into creation by Kano through adaptation of the teachings of jiu-jitsu. If you want to argue about fighters using the submissions, sure Royce Gracie made use of them famously in UFC 1, but the first UFC tournament was set up to ensure no other submission grappling styles, including judo, was entered to make a clearer differentiation of style versus style, among other reasons. When such fighter picking was stopped, submission fighters from many styles sprung up in MMA competition.

If you're not talking about modern MMA, then consider the fact that pankration from Greece in 648 BC was the first Western MMA competition, and chokeholds and joint locks were widely displayed and documented.

Consider that catch wrestling can be traced in nearly every culture, from Lancashire catch-as-catch-can wrestling to the US hook wrestling to the Indian pehlwani.

Or you might even be referencing the infamous gong sau of China, where kung fu masters would challenge each other for the rights to open schools in villages or cities, matching style versus style, starting from millenia ago and continuing to the present day. Of course, dubious as the documentation surrounding those matches were, and as stupid as kwoon-storming is, there have been accounts of Chin na masters defeating other strikers through armbars and rear naked chokes.

As for "ruining the sport", I can only assume you're talking about the present version of MMA, as represented largely by the UFC and Pride FC (which have recently been merged as one organization. The UFC and Pride, as you may know, evolved out of the Vale tudo competitions in Brazil and Japan, which when brought to the US were imitated and televised. Of course, you should also be aware of the fact that vale tudo tournaments were largely organized by Helio Gracie, the original creator of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and his descendants. The UFC was created largely as the brainchild of Rorion Gracie, Helio's eldest son and BJJ black belt, as well as Art Davies, one of Rorion's student. In fact, according to many inside sources who were present for the UFC's founding, it was created in a large part to showcase BJJ for the US, just as Pride FC was created in a a large part to showcase Rickson Gracie, another one of Helio's sons, versus Nobuhiko Takada, a famous Japanese shoot-wrestler and mixed martial artist who also trained in a form of submission wrestling. So how exactly do you figure that modern MMA, which exists largely because the Gracies wanted to showcase the effectiveness of submission fighting versus pure striking styles, is somehow ruined because it did exactly that?

And finally, you have absolutely no idea about submission grappling. If you think getting a submission hold is a "basic skill" that can beat anybody, and the sport now revolves around using and avoiding those holds, then how do you figure that only one of the five current UFC title holders is a well-known submission specialist, and even HE won his title fight two days ago by knockout? If it's such a get-out-of-jail-free card, why doesn't everybody just use those magical subs? How come sprawl-and-brawl and ground-and-pound are becoming such dominant strategies of fighting in MMA fights? Oh, and what did you mean by "strength, skill, stamina or fighting spirit" having no effect on submission grappling? Superior skill, strength, stamina, and fighting spirit is what submission grappling is all about. The fighter with the greatest combination of all four will win, just as with any other art in MMA. Look at Yuki Nakai, the grappler who continued a fight despite being eye-gouged illegally to the point of complete blindness and yet continued on not only win his fight by submission but also fight AGAIN the SAME night against the most feared grappler in the world at the time, Rickson Gracie. Look at Ronaldo de Souza, aka Jacare, who had his arm broken in a fight but continued to fight and win. Heck, look at Rickson Gracie, who is well-known for having an insane cardio routines involving sandy beaches and mountain running. Or any of the MMA athletes at the top of the sport, who train and spar and weight lift and run and work out for hours on end each day and every day so they can become strong and build up endurance and improve their skills, all thanks to their fighting spirit and determination to be the best.

If you doubt me on any of those facts, just get yourself to a real, honest-to-goodness MMA gym, and tell the first MMA fighter you see that submission holds are ruining the sport. Seriously. I'd like to know what happens.

Do you know why I'm annoyed by your comment, Enzoblue? I'm annoyed because training submission grappling is not fucking easy. It is hard, painful work to train. It is expensive as hell, in terms of money as well as time and effort. I am shit-awful at it, and my only goal each day I step on the mat, which is every damn day, is to suck a little less than the day before, and sometimes, like today, I don't feel like that's happened, and I haven't been able to move my neck in certain directions for days because of a neck crank that got cranked on too hard. And yet tomorrow, I'm going to put on my smelly, sweaty gi, get in my friend's carpool, and go roll around on a mat with large, sweaty men who outweigh me by over 50 pounds on average for several hours, and come back tired and sore and cranky. (Hah, pun, get it? It's a joke because my spinal column isn't functioning properly.) And I'm happy with all of that, from the musty gym smell to the same old jokes my friends make about me being gay that they've made for years, because through my training I know I am acquiring a skillset that is not available or acquired in the general public, and yes, I do take pride in what I do because it is a part of my life and part of who I am, and also there's the fact that my training and dedication can and have helped me to choke fools out who are deserving of it, just as those things have saved the lives of friends and acquaintances who were attacked in ghettos and Iraqi villages. And yet here you come to say that I, along with every other MMA competitor who has devoted far larger amounts of their life to perfecting the art of submission grappling, am ruining the beautiful sport of mixed martial arts, a sport that I am, as well as those competitors far above me, dedicated to as well and one that I do my best to represent well in the public eye. No. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you say that, because you're wrong.

Consider this: the UFC and modern MMA changed what "one would actually consider fighting". People used to think those flicky, chambered TKD kicks would hurt, or that they could just avoid a takedown attempt with elbows to the spine, or even in later years, they could just fight out of guard. The sport has evolved, and anybody who has a half a brain can see that a good MMA fighter needs to train to fight out of the three ranges that have been established through the test of the fight, standup, clinch, and ground, as well as be able to strike, grapple, and submit from all three ranges if necessary, as well as defend against an opponent's attempts to do so to oneself. Submission grappling is part of the sport out of necessity, not because it's what people (and by that I mean Westerners) think of when they think about fighting, or because it looks pretty - it's in the sport because it works. The skills and abilities trained in sub grappling allow a more skilled fighter to beat a less skilled opponent, given reasonable size comparisons, just as with every other martial art that has been used with success in MMA. The concept of MMA is the extension of Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do - take what works, and lose what doesn't. So in reality, sub grappling being used to win fights in MMA is really part of the evolution and development of martial arts, in fact it embodies what MMA and the development of effective martial arts is all about. And if that simple fact offends, then perhaps you don't understand quite as much about MMA as you might like to think you do.

For those who aren't in the know, submissions are special holds that get a persons arm or leg in a position where you can either break your opponents arm or leg, or choke a person out. They were brought into the sport by the Gracie family of Brazil.

It has ruined the sport because anyone who learns the basic skill of getting a good submission hold can take out any opponent regardless of that opponents strength, skill, stamina or fighting spirit. It's like a get out of jail free card, and now the sport revolves around avoiding the holds more than it revolves around what one would actually consider fighting.

Ahah! thanks.


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