had he continued to focus on grappling competitions instead of jumping to MMA right away? Ive followed this guys career from the Gracies through Nova Uniao and I tell you..at 20 he had as much skills as anyone at that age...Also this guy received his BB faster than Marcelo. Obviously hes made a great decision chosing UFC to Abu Dhabi in 2001 and made an unbelievable splash in his first few fights..notably the destruction of Uno...and simply has the best MMA JJ in the world I know Gracia is p4p greatest JJ practioner and his resume especially at no gi is unmatched but I would have loved to see Marcelos textbook JJ to BJ more revolutionary game
It's possible. I'd be quite interested to see how BJ would've done against Garcia in a grappling match, gi or no gi, though I prefer no gi. Then again, BJ's toughest opponent ever, according to himself, was Shaolin Ribeiro, which was pretty much considered even according to what I've heard. Garcia vs Shaolin? Well..... [YT]7CMsPRMkslw[/YT]
Quite scary how good Marcelo is evrytime I see this video..no gi hes the absolute best ..the thing also is his demeanor is so calm. Because like you said Shaolin is a beast and rumor has it that he even submitted a young BJ a few times... looking at the naturalness at the sport, Id still say BJ had the biggest upside. I mean lets just based on the way he stood and did well against Machida..shows you that the guy can learn fast
To me MMA is the truest test of bjj; unlike other sports bjj was developed for the explicit purpose of no holds barred fighting. Grappling alone doesn't reward top position as much as mma. As for BJ in grappling, I think he could have, he was a champion in the gi, and is great without it in mma which has a bigger talent pool than pro grappling, so why not? I do think BJ actually has the more textbook game than Marcelo with his x-guard game.
I meant was Bj flexibility and the rubber guard actually provided more options and has been copied by a few guys..I know Bravo invented this **** so it was pretty revolutionary in that sense