Reflections on EBI 9 and rule sets: The remarkable victory of welterweight Garry Tonon over a distinguished field of light heavyweights has impressed many, but underneath that victory are some interesting reflections upon the notion of rule sets and promoting desirable behavior among the competitors and directions of growth in the sport. The fundamental problem the sport faces is this: on the one hand we want to make the sport progress in directions that express our ideals of the sport; on the other, athletes want to win, by whatever means the rule sets allow. In practice this often means that athletes will utilize the rule set to achieve victory in ways that fulfill the letter of the rules, but not the spirit of the rules. Thus they exploit the rule set by acting in ways that increase the likelihood of their victory, but which go against our ideals of the sport. At EBI 9 it was obvious that some athletes were looking to stall to get to the overtime and then exploit the overtime rules to secure victory. Whilst this is perfectly legal and even understandable (every athletes wants to win after all) it results in a situation where the ideal of the sport – that we must look to secure control that leads to submission at all times, is lost. The usual response is to change the rules to prohibit undesired behavior. My point is this – you can never really legislate away the natural tendency of athletes to exploit a given rule set in ways that raise the likelihood of them winning – that's just what athletes do. GOOD attacking, POSITIVE JIU JITSU COMES FROM A MINDSET, NOT A RULE SET. Ultimately, negative stalling behavior is a coaching problem, not a legislative problem. Athletes must be coached towards the ideal of the sport so that they express that ideal regardless of the rule set. Most of the great players of the last decade, Roger Gracie, Braulio Estima, Marcelo Garcia etc, applied an approach of attacking to submission regardless of the rule set they operated under and this is a big part of what made them great. Here Garry Tonon takes gold at EBI 9 where he embodied once again the ideal of constant attempts at control to submission regardless of time and rules.
