Good evening guys! Today, I was a stellar mood, first off I had a great p80x recovery week out but more than that I saw the results for IBJJF and saw Alliance top both female and male divisions and was extremely stoked (train with Marcelinho). I then was doing some stretching and received an e-mail from a buddy of mine out in Cali who trains Jits with Cesar Gracie and does several things with the Diaz bros and the whole fight camp (promotion, gear, etc). He sends me a link to the following...
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Gracie Elite Team Debuts at the 2010 BJJ World Championship
June 3, 2010
Kyra Gracie, Rilion Gracie, and Renzo Gracie last year at the 2009 BJJ World Championship.
Careful observers of the jiu-jitsu competition scene could not have missed a new entity on the registration lists for the 2010 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championship that takes place this coming weekend. Also known as the Mundial, the event is the most highly regarded competition in the gi and draws the planet’s best jiu-jitsu athletes, so fans take note when several highly regarded competitors’ affiliation this year was listed as Gracie Elite Team.
So what is Gracie Elite Team, and how did it come about? The FightWorks Podcast caught up with Cesar Gracie and got a few answers. According to Cesar, the new squad is comprised of athletes from Gracie family members Ralph, Renzo, Rilion, Ryan, and from Cesar’s own crew. The intention was to put together a more formidable team than they might individually, and “shake things up a bit”. The idea to create the new team was proposed about a month ago. When asked if this was a team that jiu-jitsu practitioners can expect to see for many years to come in high-end competitions like the World Championship or if this was just an experiment, Cesar replied that you never know and that they would just see how it goes.
Gracie Elite Team’s 2010 Mundials black belt competitors:
Black / Brown Belt Women:
Kyra Gracie (Leve)
Black Belt Men:
Caio Terra (Galo)
Joseph Capizzi (Galo)
Almiro Barros dos Santos (Pluma)
Samir Chantre (Pluma)
Caio Almeida (Pena)
Celso Venicius Alves (Leve)
Joao Paulo Bertuccelli (Leve)
Alexandro Ceconi (Pesado)
Luiz Gustavo Costa (Pesado)
Marcel Fortuna (Super-Pesado)
Gabriel Vella (Pesadissimo)
Several of the competitors listed are regular winners of medals in events like the World Championship like Alexandro Ceconi, Kyra Gracie, Caio Terra, and Gabriel Vella. Expect to see similar results this weekend in Gracie Elite Team’s debut performance.
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Now, what you may not see right away is the actual
REASON behind this. Now, after reading the article, I google chatted him and asked him if he knew what this was about. His answer was the following:
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my guess is to organize a presence in the Jiujitsu community like Barra or Alliance
If you ask me, here's why....
Because when you are a ref at a tournament and Alliance has 100 people yelling and chanting and we have 10 because we are a small school, and the ref needs to make a call that's iffy. Which way do you think he'll swing? The huge school with tons of people yelling and getting crazy or the small school?
Schools will always cheer for their teams. There's nothing wrong with that. However you can't refute that that doesn't weigh in on a refs decision making. Especially when something as subjective as advantages are the final score.
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He goes on to discuss "Advantages" and how they should be removed from brown/black belt level matches, as the concept is subjective. here's a basic definition of it...
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V- ADVANTAGES:
It is considered an advantage when the athlete attempts but does not complete any of the fundamental moves of the fight; i.e. sweep, take down, submission etc.;
• Advantages through takedowns: When there is a visible loss of balance in which the adversary nearly completes the takedown. A visible loss of balance durring an attempted throw will also result in an advantage.
• During closed guard (when the athlete on the bottom has his legs wrapped around his opponent’s waist):
A-) The one on top will earn the advantage by being on the offensive, trying to dominate his adversary’s guard (pass the guard). For the referee to consider it an advantage, the athlete that is on top must come close to passing the guard, forcing his adversary to exert energy to regain position e.g. half guard, almost immobilizing, etc.
B-) The one underneath will earn the advantage if he almost sweeps his opponent, putting him in a dangerous position, as well as when he attempts a lock that forces his opponent to defend. NOTE: for the sweep attempt to be considered worthy of an advantage the athlete underneath must open his legs.
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now it's clear that there are guide lines but similarly as in the UFC, judges and refs often times get things wrong
. More importantly that being tied in with the fact that a larger school does indeed have more members, but more importantly, a larger fan base, could influence the outcome of a match in a sort of "bias".
In the UFC, especially on TUF, we've seen coaches tell fighters to look confident in the win/decision at the end of a fight by raising their arms and not appearing tired or winded. We've seen plenty of fights get called on favoritism, crowd reaction, not understanding ground game / octagon control/ effective aggressiveness...
In fact, several times on these forums people have suggested watching certain fights with the sound off to avoid Joe Rogan's bias as well.
All these things create a
grey area for judging and decisions
NOW YOUR THOUGHTS!!!
In MMA, obviously fight camps don't all go out to the cage, but fighters do have large followings of fans, and oftentimes loud crowd reactions do influence fights...
Now, how do you deal with it?
My personal response was that, in reality all sports have bias and often times unfair calls are made...Do you think that's the reality of the situation? OR...do you think that MMA has way more room for error in theory and in practice than other major sports?
banter away
KnoqOut Fans Challenge 3! Are fans a problem in BJJ and MMA?! 
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