Every Warrior People and Martial Art has a particular Combat Culture. And it’s my mission in life to study them. 

In my first book, The Forgotten History of WWI: From the Dark Ages to 1939, I presented the world with  my study of British, German, and French Military Combat Cultures at the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical levels.

I did the same thing for Arab Bedouin Guerrilla Warfighting vs. British, French, and American Counterinsurgency in my second book, All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War. 

And now in this article, I will do the same thing for the Combat Culture of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu…hereby referred to by its adherents’ beloved and bizarrely suggestive title of BJJ. 

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY 

This report is based on my firsthand experiences of 1 ½ years in an MMA-based Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym. I have cross-referenced and confirmed this experience with many others. 

I understand the experience I am about to describe is not universal. There are some good BJJ Practitioners, Instructors, and Schools in existence. I have experienced them too. They are shining exception to the overwhelming darkness of the rule.

Because of that, this report is not about them. 

The tale I will instead relate here has been told time and time again, far too many times to be a coincidence of random, isolated instances.

Based off my firsthand experiences and the overwhelming testimony of others, this tale not the exception.

This tale is the rule.

Because when everybody tells the same story, and they didn’t get together to cook it up in the first place…well, then you know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. 

And the truth of this “fire” will shock you to your core…

Unless of course, you’re one of the many silent, sullen people who have suffered the same fate as I!

MEET THE BOSS MAN

Whether it’s a Combat Culture or an intellectual belief system, everything that gets done is what the boss man wants. The boss man always sets the tone. 

What the boss man says is important is the only thing that’s important. What the boss man values is the only thing you value. 

His opinions and presuppositions are gospel truth. To you, they’re not opinions or presuppositions at all: they’re just “the way things are”. 

You don’t question the boss man. 

And the boss man’s beliefs, they’re all codified in dogma and doctrine, and they’re propagated by middle management…the little boss men, who are your immediate boss man. 

POWER TO THE PEOPLE 

When you understand the systematic codification of a set of opinions and presuppositions, you can understand any culture…combat, intellectual, or otherwise. 

That’s why I love the website Evolve MMA. Step by step, they lay out the doctrinal basis for the big MMA Combat Cultures of BJJ, Maui Thai, Wrestling, and Boxing. 

They empower you to do your own research, instead of relying on the “good word” of your immediately available boss man as “gospel truth.” 

So when I came across the site’s two articles, entitled “20 BJJ Basics, Concepts and Philosophies You Need to Know” and  “Sambo vs. BJJ”, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. 

And this jackpot helped me put all the pieces together to interpret my 1 ½ years on the mats…

The seedy, salacious truth about BJJ.

THE COMMANDMENTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW

You see, every Combat Culture’s doctrine has a list of key commandments that are spoken with reverential awe. 

The phrases used to explain these commandments have a common, normal, everyday meaning. 

But then these phrases have the “religious” meaning that you don’t find out about until after the fact of hard-won, bitter lessons learned.

And once you learn these phrases’ real meanings, you can never look back. 

It is to those “secret” religious meanings of  BJJ’s combat culture commandments that we now turn…

YOUR CASTRATION BEGINS

“Position before Submission”. BJJ people say this all the time. They just mean Guard, where you lay on your back and wrap your legs around your opponent (which suspiciously looks like Missionary…).

The phrase “Ground Fighting”  is thrown around as BJJ’s specialty. They just mean Guard.

BJJ also people love to repeat the phrase “Focus on the Fundamentals”. They just mean…you guessed it, Guard. 

But my favorite commandment chanted with abnormal zeal that makes this Guard fetish work has got to be: 

“Technique not Strength”. 

This is a lie that none of the top guys actually believe…not even BJJ Patron Saint John Danaher himself.

But that’s not the worst of it. 

Not by a long shot. 

BEING AND ACTION NEGATED

The best commandments in all of BJJ dogma have got to be “Check Your Ego at the Door” and “Don’t Spazz Out”. 

These phrases are Predatory control mechanisms that target Being and Action respectively in turn. 

These two rules are created by the BJJ hierarchy to let unscrupulous upper belts feed their ego on dominating hapless White Belts, while eliminating the instinctive fighting spirit of the said White Belt. 

This makes the hapless White Belts progress MUCH slower in learning to fight, which means more money for the BJJ Gym. 

Money and Ego Gratification. 

You lose it. They get it. 

For a supposed Warrior Caste, you literally can’t get farther from the ideal. In fact, you literally can’t get more Slave Caste than that. 

Unless of course, if you use your BJJ Gym as an opportunity to bang your female students in some bizarre kind of trailer trash swingers’ club, then yeah, you’ve completed the trifecta of Slave Caste Morality.  

Yet another BJJ Lie.

But wait, there’s more…how exactly does this translate on the mats? 

NOT EXACTLY BLITZKRIEG 

Yet another mindless slogan bandied about when you are starting out is “Focus On Your Defense”. 

This just means Bridge and Shrimp, which Catch Wrestler and founder of Scientific Wrestling Jake Shanna accurately describes as “basically like the fetal position.” 

Furthermore, it discourages actually making the Bridge and Shrimp useful as an escape by using Horizontal Pushing Motions…because you know, “Technique not Strength, brah…” 

Everything on the “Offense” being taught becomes about Guard. 

Guard, Guard, Guard, Guard, Guard. 

“Takedowns” and “Throws” are a throwaway afterthought. Don’t dominate the standup game and seize the initiative…just lay on your back and do Guard. 

HOW YOU LOST AT THE MAGINOT LINE 

Meanwhile, you’re getting your Guard smashed by guys ignoring all these silly rules given to you above. 

Then they’re laying on top of you in Mount and Side Control, and you can’t get out with your neutered Bridge and Shrimp escapes that don’t work. 

As you lay there panting like a beached whale and helpless like road kill, your eye sight blurring black into tunnel vision and your lungs about to burst form panic, you start thinking to yourself: 

“Gee, if this was prison this guy could rape me and I couldn’t do anything about it…”

And then suddenly horrific visions flash through your mind as you imagine all your friends and mentors dying bloody, gruesome deaths at the hands of your foes…all because you couldn’t protect them. 

Because you couldn’t escape and turn the tables with your castrated Bridge and Shrimp.

You failed. 

And you feel like you want to throw up and die. 

CAKE IN THE CAVE BY GASLIGHT

But there’s one more indignity left for you to suffer. You’ve still got to get the icing left to put on the cake. 

And that icing comes when you are smugly consoled with the ultimate sucker line: 

“Don’t Get Frustrated”. 

Yep. 

You’ve just had salt dumped in the wound with yet another Predatory control mechanism to keep you from opening your eyes to all the blatant gaslighting going on. 

Because if you keep your eyes closed, you’ll  keep forking over your money to humiliate yourself and stay ignorant while the instructors gratify their ego and line their pocket books. 

That’s one sick version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 

And it happens every day, closer to home than you’d think. 

MY PAIN, YOUR GAIN, OUR GLORY

At the end of the day, the majority of BJJ is the ultimate systematic Predatory combat culture. It has perfected the creation of a nation-wide a two-tiered tyranny of Predatory and Prey, Top and Bottom, Master and Slave. 

If you’ve been there, then you know.

Be gaslit no more. 

And if you’re trying to find a combat sport for you, don’t buy into the dogma. Sure, check out the local BJJ Gym. But know what you are potentially getting into. 

Instead of drinking their kool aid, work on your Wrestling and Boxing and even Muay Thai while you get strong. So when you do roll on the mats with these BJJ freaks, you can turn the tables and even out the score. 

Don’t let my hard-won wisdom be bought in vain.

Instead, make my pain your gain…and may you triumph on those mats to make your dreams of Pulp Fiction Glory a Reality!

Pulp Fiction Power to you, my friends!

Sincerely,

Richard Barrett

03-15-2023

3:42 AM