Beautiful double over hooks kuzushi generation into the rare extension post arm hook sweep.
Playing early versions of what Eddie would later turn into the underjack. Threatening the pillow v/gangsta lean to get the elbow away from the body to threaten Americana/triangle setups. Asymmetrical grapevines to kill bridges, never letting the head be in position for a serious bridge.
Finally getting the mercy dagger with either the mothers milk or Ezekiel (can’t tell from the angle, probably Ezekiel).
Back as a white/blue belt I realized I couldn’t play any kind of wrist control with my left hand and that actually sent me down the butterfly path from knowing that was JJM’s a game. That rabbit hole changed my life more than any other single decision.
Turned out I had a spine that was also made for butterfly guard, which helped.
Technically I have two actually. I was coaching at another good gym a lot for a few years so when I got promoted at one the other did too. Only one of them is ibjjf certified.
First, went white to black under lineage:
Maeda → Carlos → Helio → Francisco Mansur → Joe Moriera → Randy Bloom (former UGer) → my coach →
Being the the most technically knowledgeable coach in the state is cool, except when it’s the probably the 48th best state for BJJ lol. I need to go somewhere bigger before my body completely falls apart.
Hey Carlos was probably solid blue belt level from Maeda lol. Helio and Carlos were good ambassadors, but in my lineage the guys who I would say were actually world class in knowledge are Mansur and Rickson. The Rickson one really should start with Rolls, the era of Rolls and Carlson is when BJJ actually had a claim to be the one of, if not the, best grappling and fightin arts.
No disrespect to the Carlos and Helio. But they only had a few years of high level instruction. Until the 60’s, the Soviets and the Kodokan guys would still have beaten the best Brazilians in NHB or any grappling.
Keenan would have stuff to say about catch guys in the early 1900’s but I think that’s mostly hipster history.
Yeah there’s a lot of debate about that. I need to read Drysdale’s stuff, from what I understand he has some of the best researched info on that.
Fadda doesn’t really have a link to Maeda from what I understand, his is actually one of if the only recognized lineages that doesn’t go through him or the Gracies. I’ve seen it get reported that he was belted under Maeda though, but to my understanding Satake and Maeda were peers, and Satake was perfectly capable to promote on his own. I think Maeda being more famous is why we see his name get thrown in there a lot.
I think the Satake → Franca → Fadda → Nova Uniao pipeline probably got a lot more instruction from the Japanese source, it seems likely to me that the training that Carlos did with was…shorter and less intense. Satake was actually running an academy, not doing favors for his rich friends. Maeda pawned almost all of Carlos training to his student, but whatever rank Carlos got it’s probably fair to say came from Maeda.
To be honest, I don’t think Maeda personally did a lot of coaching of any Brazilians other than Ferro.
To be honest I wonder if we’ve hit the same level as Ancient Greece. I know every blue belt likes to imagine they could berimbolo Achilles, but there’s really only about 150 years of serious technical development in the lineage of any grapplers right now.
The Greeks had the smartest people in the world training for 450+ years, I think there’s a real chance their level of knowledge of martial arts was beyond ours.
Depends though, I don’t think we know enough about the history of sumo to say for sure. There’s an argument to be made that the modern lineage goes back to almost 700 AD.
