american jiu jitsu is the evolution of jiu jitsu itself if i were to ask you this uh this american jiu jitsu term have you heard of this and what does it mean to you i don't think there's such a thing as american jiu jitsu american jutsu for me has always just represented americans who do jiu jitsu no one's asking anyone to call it american jiu jitsu when referencing all of it if anything that's what brazilian jiu jitsu is doing you know back in those days when you saw an american purple belt it was like a
unicorn that was a lot of like oh don't teach the gringos i think maybe they're just a little bit scared you know what i mean they see this coming so they try to put their thumb down on it i get it people want to build a brand things would get kind of superficial and silly if we always pull up these artificial boundaries americans are like changing jiu-jitsu making it more modern i guess as long as we don't erase history like all americans reinvented jiu jitsu and i'm american no we did it the world championships are
here the pan ams are here the last adcc the next adcc they're here american jiu jitsu is here and it's here to stay [Music] i have done the same [ __ ] for 30 years they still can't pass my guard they can't submit me for [ __ ] and that's the only thing that matters for me right now [Music] what's up everybody it's reed here and i'm at fight to win 146 here in austin texas and i'm here for one reason to get to the bottom of this american jiu-jitsu buzzword that you've been reading online
lately so come on let's go see if we can get to the bottom of this have you heard of this american jiu jitsu tournament and what do you think of it yeah um i don't really know honestly i have not but i think that you know i forgot um for me it's very difficult to understand that term american video two is kind of loosely said it's kind of the brazilians and that's everyone else i think it's kind of weird to like try to separate this jitsu where do you actually delineate that line i'm not sure
exactly the connotation of american jiu-jitsu race i think when people use the term american jiu-jitsu it's more about kind of including americans and saying you know it's not only brazilians that are part of the evolution of the art [Music] most of my students american if they say something like this i don't mind but they have to look at for history of of the martial arts they will see you know have a huge influence of brazilians a lot of the time like you go to these brazilian schools and they'll try to make it where it's this
separate you know it's like theirs and you're coming into their home and their stuff and i know that for me american jiu jitsu means that i can be a part of something and like it's my own not like i'm going to someone else's [ __ ] you know it's a fairly new sports though right like this we're in the very beginning stages of something huge and i think that you know people have to be willing to grow and expand we're always going to know it started in japan and with in brazil we're always going to
know that we're always going to respect that fact what haleo did but you know times change and people have to kind of learn how to change with it there's no more reason for separation i mean that was we're trying to separate it or name it or put a title on it that that we want that only creates more separation in the community and i think the purpose of american jiu jitsu was to say hey it can be different i think in that sense it's a great great idea [Applause] so it turns out this term is
a little more nuanced than i originally thought you know it's a wide ranging spectrum of opinions i heard a lot of them today and to be honest i'm not really sure that i'm any closer to learning exactly what this american jiu jitsu term actually means i feel like we're gonna have to bring in the big guns here we gotta go talk to some to some black belts i think brazilians take it as us stealing their art and like rebranding it and reclaiming it which i don't think we're just not doing that we're just giving our
own taste it was okay for everybody to take it from japan they put brazilian in front of it but now that there's american in front of it that's unacceptable i don't feel that there's anything that is being practiced in the united states that differs from what is being practiced in brazil or anywhere else for that matter can we erase history because we got a strong social media presence i don't think we can whether you get into like a thing where you want to call this american dream that's who i'm differentiating i mean sure if you
want to build a brand and sell a video tape sure you can do that no one's asking anyone to call it american jiu jitsu when referencing all of it there's no reason to call it them if anything that's what brazilian jiu jitsu is doing i think it's just not fair to say hey we're brazilians we own brazilian jiu jitsu and anyone who tries to change it is disrespectful anyone who tries to change it's a piece of [ __ ] i looked from the outside oh he just beat hoiler he thinks he's better than everybody he
gets his black belt he threw away the game all i'm doing is i'm trying to improve jiu jitsu in an mma in the ufc that's how it was like a little operation you guys keep doing the game i didn't say stop training the game it's totally divisive we should be fighting to be on tv we should be fighting to make more money we should fight to make uga popular i don't want to represent brazil when i compete i grew up in america all my influence was mainly through american grapplers who learn from brazilian grapplers but
the techniques are different this culture is different it's just separating more it's so hard already to promote jiu jitsu as it is and now you're bringing american energy to brazilians like they're two different things if you feel upset by somebody calling it american jiu jitsu that means a substantial portion of your own identity is involved in it being brazilian jiu jitsu so if you're feeling upset by that you gotta look inside yourself because there's some ownership there that might not really exist just how the brazilians are happy and that they were proud to say brazilian
jiu jitsu i'm proud to say american jiu jitsu i think the national pride is the reason that there's any contention anyways it's just national pride on both sides and there's nothing wrong with that it's good to be proud of where you're from keep your nationalism for when it matters they're important times to be a nationalist and the patriot is just not one of them you know keep it out of jiu jitsu [Music] there's no sweeps that really exists with one hand right so going like this as long as i don't let him grab my belt
or anything i'm good and then that's when i reach for the second grip and lift here once i pull him up his legs are going to either go in between or it's going to go to the outside it doesn't matter which because i'm still driving my knee across here and then sliding down i called it legion american jiu jitsu because i knew there was there would be a little bit of contention for the name just from a branding perspective you need to be different and that's that's how you make a career in anything is to
kind of establish yourself as your own thing i think i'm kind of just the icebreaker of like setting up a potential separate kind of brand to let americans kind of do their own thing and not have to worry about just getting absorbed into the larger brazilian jiu jitsu idea people like this sense of belonging maybe it's our style you know maybe you get a bunch of american guys that hate brazilians you know maybe it's going to have bunch of brazilian guys that hate americans which is sad it's literally just a weird abstract assumption that there's
even contention there isn't it's just a name that's all it is it's just a name for a gym as i'm trying to do something a little bit different because i don't think that many people actually care about what it's what you call it or what you call your personal style of jiu jitsu american jiu jitsu for me has always just represented americans who do jiu jitsu i think that's a totally reasonable title to attribute to someone who's an american who does jiu jitsu and competes in brazilian jiu jitsu events as an american [Music] i can
see how it feels like an infringement on a cultural thing the majority of people's fans are in brazil and i think a lot of the actual industry of jiu jitsu happens in the us now so there's this sort of like where like where is jiu jitsu actually [Music] it was cano jujitsu that turned into judo and i think whoever taught kano took it to brazil and then taught i think it was carlos gracie senior all of the major combat sports that came out of japan judo brazilian jiu-jitsu and russian samba all had as their true
origin the work of kano he's probably the greatest among the greatest martial artists of all time there's nothing that helion carlos were doing there was a new rule they were doing what the japanese had done 50 years before them it was just branded in a different way so it seemed like something new but it wasn't the people who were most well positioned to make a case for jjj were completely silent about it [Music] when jiu-jitsu first come to america what happened the gracie family patent name nobody could use great jiu-jitsu it became brazilian jiu-jitsu when
the gracies had an argument about the name otherwise we would be doing great jiu jitsu we are standing on hicks and shoulders it is because of him and many other people that we are where we are with jujitsu today not acknowledging that their contribution and trying to act like history started now like that i have issues with it could come off like i'm trying to just take a stamp and like put it on brazilian jiu-jitsu and change it but that's not the case at all in fact i really really admire a sort of cultural pride
about this art that the that brazil brought onto the mass the grand stage which should not be discounted like that the gracie family literally brought this magnificent sport using marketing and their ability to you know make stuff happen and create these crazy businesses that have blossomed into everything we see here today now we're seeing the same sort of contributions being made by american guys i feel like i'm uh it feels like being a proud dad when you have all your students go off to their first big tournament huh this is jacob's style it's a little
different a lot of these guys that showed up at my gym i ended up going back on instagram looking at our messages to see if they'd ever messaged me before and they've messaged me like over the course of like years like asking like advice for how to you know make a living with jiu jitsu or like how to get how to train properly and so jacob i had a message from him like that after he showed up so i won't see them because i just get a lot of messages sometimes but then they show up
and i think that's like what it takes don't wait for a response you know just show up if you want to train somewhere don't wait for them to give you permission just show up [Music] trying to create an environment that has a mutually beneficial situation for athletes who want to compete full-time and want to do jiu-jitsu full-time and try and create some sort of platform or some sort of pathway to actually make money with your jiu-jitsu skill which is pretty slim pickings right now [Music] this is actually a different thing it is very different you
won't really see anything like what i do anywhere else previously it's it's pretty unique i think it deserves a unique title and i think the gym deserves a unique name i think the term american jiu jitsu has been around for quite a while you know i think jake shields was the first one dave tyrell those guys i think they were the first ones all those guys were competing as americans in brazilian jesus competitions in adcc that always resonated with me because there were so few americans actually being able to be competitive in those at that
level [Music] right there the american the logo i got the first one to start dubbing that you know start using that term and now it's cool seeing a lot of other guys starting to use and stuff as well purple accent when they're going and taking third that that was when people were being like oh you don't train jujitsu i think that's what i came with her american jitsu so i went and put a gui on literally for one week and went dominated panhandles the purple belt and then went to third ac after that and then
after that the billion dollars a lot better they're like okay this guy's pretty good you know back in those days when you saw an american blue belt or a purple belt i mean a purple belt was like whoa that guy's badass it was like a unicorn for a very long time you could count on one hand like how many people actually were in the meddling rounds of any significant competition as americans look at the board who's won all the black belt world championships are we coming hell yeah but it's dominated in other ways the organizations
are owned by the brazilians the rules are made by the brazilians we don't really have a spokesperson i've actually had referees tell me in world championship finals matches if you don't speak portuguese i'm not talking to you i didn't really have anyone inside of gracie baja really like taking me under their wing and really trying to help me or show me or offer to coach me i blame the brazilians also because there was a lot of like oh don't teach the gringos they didn't really teach me all the good stuff you know they like kept
it in their own little groups of brazilians or they did this you know and they held back you know he's gonna he's gonna get your stuff and run away from it i think that america's best contribution to jiu jitsu is that uh they've helped it evolve so much people are brainwashed by like you know the the the gracie jiu jitsu thing and saying that this is the only way that works and this is the only way we're gonna do things and i think that that's a thing of the past and i think everybody knows that
now too there's cultural differences between brazil and america and i think that reflects a lot in the actual jiu-jitsu itself guys like me and my style we have that wrestling pace which is kind of mixed wrestling with it which you know a lot of brazilians have good wrestling now too but originally they didn't you know we still didn't really need them but they stole the wrestling from us and now it's all it's all fused together you get any elite level wrestler and you train him in jiu jitsu intelligently for a year or two he's going
to do well in hoist gracie actually had a match with matt hughes he got beat up he got beat up at jiu jitsu you can call it whatever you want he beat him up on the ground and he used what brazilian jiu jitsu and he used wrestling he used american jiu jitsu [Music] abcc is like a wrestling tournament with a lot of submission stuff added at the end of the day you could beat a couple guys without wrestling but at the at the top wrestling's gonna uh play a big part to higher level youtube most
guys got pretty good wrestling now they're not gonna be the top wrestler and you know like a freestyle match but they can actually give them good good takedown work if you got great top gaming great passing good rear naked chokes and mounts the wrestling's gonna help because it's gonna help your sweeps and it's gonna help you from getting swept when you wanna pass and try to take that back [Music] guys like keenan guys like counter deangelis these guys are the opposite of that dude they're playing all kinds of lapel guards and worm guards and different
kinds of guards that they've created you know what i mean to me it would just mean an evolved game squid guard i started playing because of i saw cabrini doing lapela plata which is very similar but he didn't seem like he really cultivated the position very much and i kind of took it a lot further and added a lot of different attacks and sweeps that's a little bit what makes american jiu jitsu different is there's a lot more influence maybe from other styles and a willingness to try different styles and see their effectiveness i like
the fact that grapplers are not approaching you know it's the same way tactically i watch gary donan flying you know scissor edwin najimy and um 86 seems like man i was beautiful i think the american style is always always cross-training evolving leglocks we used to be the only way you can uh take out a brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt you're not a beauty okay there's no way you're gonna pass their guards it constantly evolves and if you don't get on the train you get left behind let's go jacob let's attack let's make something happen get up
get up get up yeah yeah break this grip cut that angle cut that angle [Music] especially when it does well he's out of there go go there's sort of a built-in industriousness of in america for sure and what i'm talking about that sort of self brand is kind of what america stands for so like you're supposed to try and make something of yourself and you have opportunity and if you work hard enough you're supposed to be able to get something out of it through that kind of mindset there is a path to monetary gain that
you can actually have a career which is super important like you can't neglect that and i think everyone does that in their own way for sure i think to the americans might be a little more uh boisterous about it like we def there's definitely more of like a here i am i'm like doing this this is who i am kind of thing it's just in your face there's definitely our differences i think if anything from this conversation it does show that there is differences and something's happening and there's complexity to it and who knows where
it's going to go but i think it's a reasonable conversation to have for sure one thing i give to america it's the way the i would say the systematic approach to jiu-jitsu [Music] would be first point back in the day there was no names for techniques the methodology was pretty simple it wasn't really much of a class or a learning environment it was more just just train and try to learn through the training and just be there you get to be there nowadays you go to like youtube school there's like you know like you cut
the techniques you know you have structure courses you have all of this jiu-jitsu has evolved and we as brazilians have evolved and know how to how to do business and how to make it out of a system to look at all the videos people sell and i think it's always my system it's my system like back today is like just the way i do it now it's a systematic approach what john danaher did man is systematized jiu jitsu if you're willing to sit down and study i'm gonna give it the time you know it's kind
of like uh you're walking around eight thousand years ago with like stone and copper tools and then suddenly you like unearth something and it's like a foundry that can make iron weapons and it's like just shoots you forward in time like two thousand years i tell people every single mistake in energy academy had no clue how to sell how to market how to answer a phone so that's what the american way gave to brazilian jiu jitsu [Music] that could be indicative of the american culture maybe american jiu jitsu is less about the techniques and more
about how it's being taught and maybe people are leaning more towards that style of teaching because it could be more effective [Music] american jiu jitsu what is it actually i think that definition remains to be seen i don't think it has been completely filled out yet it's um i i think it'd be hubris to like put forth is like what it is because it hasn't become what it is yeah hey you won jacob awesome this is my first major of anything yeah this is our first attempt how does that make you feel as it goes
though it feels good i mean i i think a good environment is where you allow your athletes to take advantage of their strength so i don't like get in and micromanage too much i just provide the environment and i provide some basic advice of how to train hard how to have the right mindset and then we just try and build off of what they're already good at there's going to be a history to this stuff as it grows and grows and grows and it would be really bad if everything just got absorbed under one name
why do we have to pick one we don't have to pick one you can call it whatever you want we all know what jiu jitsu means at this point jiu jitsu involves japanese jiu jitsu brazilian jiu jitsu american jiu jitsu and any sort of jiu jitsu happen in any other country that's what jiu jitsu is and then there's a subset of that brazilian jiu jitsu american jiu jitsu japanese jiu jitsu and all the people that contribute to the overall jiu jitsu and grappling thing and then as you fall i just think the art is first
and foremost and it's for everybody what would you prefer to call it jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu that's it jiu-jitsu it's about being a part of something that's bigger than you building something around you that makes the world a better place that's what's important that's what i think jiu-jitsu should be about you know spreading this beautiful amazing gift that we all have the ability to practice and spreading it out as much as many people as possible rather than trying to build up their barriers instead of our tribes i would like to see brazilian jets or jiu jitsu whatever
you want to call it the most practiced martial art in history to see it out do judo out do wrestling i'll do boxing i'll do all these other martial arts to me that would be a dream come true and for that that requires unity as long as we're all working together grappling promoters let's just make it the best possible the most entertaining possible sport taking a sense of ownership over it especially in such a divisive time that we're living through right now i don't feel is a productive means of conversation everyone gets to create their
own style their own identity in jiu jitsu i think that comparison to music is a good way to put it like genres and subgenres and offshoots of those and they all become different things but it's all still music there's enough room for everyone to do it to however they want to call it whatever they want there's always going to be brilliant innovators there's always going to be people who change the sport for the better at the end of the day it's probably better just to talk about jiu-jitsu that's all that should be important to everybody
it's not about money it's not about fame it's not about success it's about being a better human jiu jitsu is the best catalyst for that if there's a better one i haven't found it [Music] call whatever you want brazilian american jiu jitsu
