After over a decade, I’ve become competent in the art of throwing someone to the ground and keeping them there even when they don’t want to stay. I then bend their arm the wrong way or get my arm around their neck until they yield.
With it comes the title of “Professor” that people say to me. I thought I would like it much more than I do. I told someone to call me Professor ${user.surname} and they did and it felt uncomfortable.
On the topic, people started showing me more respect the next day I showed up to class. I guess the week before, as a 4 stripe brown belt, you were still talking smack to a fellow practitioner, but if you’re talking smack to a BLACK BELT then that’s territory reserved only for edgelords who spit at authority.
1% of people who step into the gym ever step back out with a black belt. And, as such, I have become the bourgeoisie of the sport. At the top of the hierarchy, I collect a disproportionate amount of submissions. In fact, I get taps I didn’t earn because people often defeat themselves before they spar against me. Like the bourgeoisie, I am prejudice against people of a different color than me. I think blue belt deserve to suffer for the crime of being a blue belt. The middle class (blues and purples) should (LITERALLY) get squeezed by me to give me more submissions. Brown belts think they’re honorary black belts, but they’re not. I’d just as soon call them a lower belt when it comes to line up before and after class and they’re at the front of the line while I’m looking at everyone in line. Not only that, but my Epstein equivalent is all the trips, wristlocks, and belly down submissions I do to brand new white belts while talking smack. I do it in front of everyone else - what are you going to do? I hold all the power in this hierarchy!!
I’d recommend BJJ insofar that fighting is the most fun thing to do ever. It’s very funny the way that nerds who like Japanese culture need to get along with sports gambling enjoyers in order to cooperate under the same roof. I’d recommend much more highly being good at BJJ. I don’t think my ego could take having to rise through the ranks of the sport anymore; if I started today I would plateau around blue belt.
The average man who is into MMA or jiu jitsu has this attitude that they’re better than you because they’ve learned how to hurt you. “I know when I walk into a room I could kill any other man there with my bare hands,” is an unironic sentiment I’ve heard from multiple men who like this stuff. One of my friends has been really into it for a couple years now and I’ve joined him at a few beginner classes, and all these dudes really rub me the wrong way with their macho bullshit
The underpinning belief for most modern practitioners of MMA/BJJ seems to be the smug idea that any interaction has the potential to turn violent, which makes them the right in any argument a priori because they know how to break your arm
I want to make one push back before I agree with you. I think jiu jitsu is on the receiving end of so much slander that it’s hard to hold it in the same regard as MMA. Plenty of it is homophobic. But also, there’s this consensus that butt scooting (not engaging on the feet and instead starting a match from your butt) is embarrassing. It’s part of what makes Mikey Musumeci piss so many people off (the other part being such a company man).
I took some years doing kickboxing and judo so that I’d feel confident on the feet, call that gender affirming training. Smugness from a BJJ player is almost certainly more insecure than the same interaction from an MMA fighter.
I came into the sport from the anime side more than I did from the sunglasses in car pfp side. So I regard being good at it with the same prestige that I might have for someone who has won regionals in a Smash Bros tournament. But I still dream of turning a home intruder into a human hanging mobile, so you might have clocked me. If I’m in a room, instead of fantasizing about beating randos, I fantasize about what my bankai would be.
Though I’m right a priori because my beliefs are disciplined by feminist literature and Marx making me the one true leftist
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Oh yeah, I’ve had the locker room talk about finding peptides and other such things. I’ve met a lifetime’s worth of tough guys and people I wouldn’t want to be alone with. Your critique is well founded. You can find a library’s worth of horrible takes and ragebait about self defense and when you need to use violence. Bryce Mitchell is a UFC fighter and homesteader who is outspoken for his faith based proof of flat Earth theory.
But I’ve also met a bunch of people covered in tattoos up their face and down their fingers who couldn’t have been nicer. I went international and people thought I was cool while I was a brown belt. There are some hardworking, kind, hilarious people who do MMA. One girl liked fighting because everyone would buy her shots and give her weed afterwards. One guy was a public defender who taught the most inspired, systems-based approach to no gi I’ve ever had in my life. One guy who had been training for damn near as long as I had was so upset when I didn’t get my black belt during a promotion ceremony that he told me it’s part of the reason he quiet and one of the reasons he was going to give them for leaving. I doubt they’re all comrades (besides the lawyer), but they’ll always have room in my heart.
It’s unfortunate so many people that do it are those types, I have a friend who does it and he described it like a mental challenge, like chess but you wrestle with dudes
My friend likes it for that reason, and I wanted to like it that way (it seems similar to the problem solving in rock climbing, which I’m into), but unfortunately the majority of people you have to socialize with in these spaces are not the types I like to be around
I was having coffee with the last opponent I got to face in a tournament. We had a laugh because, after they had pulled guard, I audibly went “hmmmm” as I thought about how to get past their legs without getting my neck choked smoove off (which has ABSOLUTELY happened to me from someone from that same gym same position).