Reflections on ADCC 2017: The rise of submission only grappling. The last few years have seen a significant growth of a new facet of grappling – the submission only movement. It was spearheaded by Mr Eddie Bravo's EBI shows, which quickly gave rise to others based on a similar format. Unfortunately the movement ran into a lot of entrenched resistance when it first emerged – as most new ideas do. For years I heard numerous complaints that these shows attracted only mediocre talent and exhibited only limited skill sets. I just smiled and said nothing. I knew the criticism was based on the erroneous idea that a new movement would emerge fully mature. That is not the way the world works. ANY NEW MOVEMENT TAKES TIME TO DEVELOP. Submission grappling is no different. ADCC is almost twenty years in existence. If you look at early ADCC competition it often looks amateurish compared with contemporary events. EBI type competition has only been around a few years. It was a pleasure to see athletes who have figured prominently in submission only formats do so well at this years ADCC. Gordon Ryan, wagner rocha, craig jones and Elvira Karppinen were either Medalists or were able to take on and defeat prominent champions in ways that would have to impress even the harshest critics of submission only events. Our squad had its beginning in sub only events, in particular EBI, we don't forget that and will always be grateful for Mr Bravo giving us a great format to make our start in. I am happy that the world got to see that sub only grapplers can play a strong role in other forms of grappling. Rather than see ADCC and submission only as opposed formats, I hope the effect will be to break artificial and unreasonable divides between them. Given more time I expect submission only athletes will mature and develop in much the same way ADCC athletes have and lead to many dual champions in both styles – each has so much to offer with regards skill development of the athletes involved.
