Things not to do in life, number 37 = Stand behind an olympic level Judoka with one arm drapped over his shoulder.
Nice kick too. For all the hype that judo gets from the MMA crowd, it seems to be that it's fairly rare to see a classical judo throw in MMA. Good to see it in action.
I personally have never known it to be hyped up by the MMA community just out of curiosity what do you mean.
Thats cos there are relitively few really good Judo guys in MMA. Karo is the obvious example in the UFC, but Yoshiyuki Yoshida is another guy whose performed some great Judo throws. Fedor, Sergei Kharitodov and Hideko Yoshida are all examples of fighters outside the UFC who have used their Judo well. I think Judo performs very well given the small number of Judo based fighters.
Pure Judo players dont do very well in MMA as a whole due to the lack of Gi. Practicing & training only with the Gi leaves a lot to be desired when trying to make the transition into MMA. Judo players with a wrestling back ground as-well, will do much better - IMHO.
This is a very good point but one that can also be made about BJJ. And has been in fact. You need to cross train and train without a Gi, that applies to BJJers, Sambo guys and Judokas Fedor is was a national judo champ, and I think shows his skills when he fought Matt Lindland espcially. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judoka#Judoka_.28practitioner.29
I've heard of a couple of no gi judo classes cropping up around the county. Not sure how well it'll do though not having a gi negates every throw I learnt there.
I think it's important to note that BJJ and Sambo players do so fairly often, while judoka don't so much. There's much more of a fighting atmosphere associated with the other two now, whereas many people prefer Judo to be Judo for the sake of Judo. For note, Fedor is primarily a sambist. Most eastern europeans you find with judo records are. Early sambists primarily competed in Judo simply because there was much more room for adancement, with it being in the olympics, and the connection has simply held up since the fall of the soviet union. It makes me wonder sometimes at what point you stop doing sambo and start doing judo, considering their similarities. Khabarelli comes to mind. And it's definitely possible to throw pretty much every throw in judo without a gi, especially if you've got gloves for a stopper, but you really have to do it smoothly. You can't muscle it, because your hands will just slide. I'm not sure how common an idea it is in the sambo community, but at my school we really consider the gi to be training wheels for positional control and throwing grips.
I teach all my Judo students NO-GI Grappling once a week (every Wednesday). They love it and often prefer it over Judo, due to all the restrictions, stoppages, penalty calls, etc. that you find happens in Judo matches but dont see in BJJ or Grappling events. TRY IT, YOU'LL LOVE IT! Im in NO way trying to put down the art I so love. Im passionate about Judo, but it does have some draw-backs.
And a story from my judo instructor while speaking to some Russian judo players in the early 1960's at a tournament in Europe. He asked who the Russians trained with and received their black belts from because they were crushing it in the tournaments. Their response was, " We train with each other and we just wear the black belts because everyone else is wearing them too!" You can imagine the jaw drop. They were pretty good at faking judo just by doing sambo! :jawdrop::ninja2:
Anyone been watching this season of TUF? I don't think he has a judo background, but Jonathan Brookins has thrown his opponents(including a couple of black belt judo guys) in just about every fight. I think he's caught them all with pretty much the same sacrifice throw. Effective and fun to watch technique no matter where he learned it. edit: Don't know why I spaced out on Brookins, probably because so many wrestlers in MMA just shoot for takedowns then ground n pound or lay n pray and I hadn't paid attention to Brookins' background. The throw he's been using so well is the wrestlers' lateral drop.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhKsGgUCaUI&feature=related"]YouTube - Judo - Efficiency[/ame] Thats a decent HL. Although it must be said that Judokas in Japan used to/stll do get to wear their gi in MMA!
It will be difficult for any top level judo player to move into MMA with much success just because of the amount of effort and time it takes to get to the level they need to in judo. In counties like Japan, France, Brazil and some of the old soviet block there is sponsorship, government assistance and support from universities that means the athletes are full time; they have no need to earn a living from MMA. By the time Hidehiko Yoshida moved into MMA he was retired from judo and fought at light heavy/heavy weight. In judo he fought at 70kg, he was a shadow of the athlete he was because top level judo takes a ridiculous toll on the body. Anyone who has trained to the top level of another sport will find it difficult to transition to another one; plenty of BJJers have struggled as well, Andre Galvao, Jorge Gurgel, Rolles Gracie Jr etc, even Jacare still has a lot to prove. Guys that have used judo successfully in MMA like Fedor and Karo started MMA at a young enough age that they could use and adapt their base in MMA. Don't just look at pure judo players for how effective it can be in MMA, Damien Meia, Fabricio Werdum, Big Nog, Jon Jones and many others have some training in judo and have used techniques successfully. And lastly, judo and bjj are gi arts. If you want to understand them properly and the principles behind them you need to get to a decent level training in the gi. Once you have some understanding of the principles then look at adapting them. You can't train judo or bjj solely without a gi - that would be called submission wrestling.
My coach lost a European final to a Russian in 1963, it was one of their first competitions and no one knew what to expect from them. I also once asked a guy who is a judo 6th dan and a sambo master of sport what the main differences were and he said in Russia there weren't any, a Sambo club is a Judo club. The exchange of information went the other way as well; Sambo as a system was developed later than judo and adopted the gi and techniques from it. In the 70's Kashiwazki went to Russia and fought and won sambo tournaments. The guy I referred to above said that Kashiwazki's book, Fighting Judo is basically considered the 'handbook of Sambo.'
Nice video! I can never understand why you would choose to wear a gi if your opponent wasn't. Surely it just gives them more handholds? I can't see how it benefits the judoka to be the only one wearing a gi in an MMA fight.
jimmy wallhead is a classic example of a good judo guy in MMA, former teenage british and i think european champion..... a few years ago he beat 4 BJJ blackbelts in a year inside the cage, none of them could take him down so he either KO'd them or grounded and pounded them, that for me is great use of judo keeping te fight where he wants it
