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To understand why Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu focuses on ground fighting, it helps to look at its history and how it developed.
When the Gracie family took up jiu-jitsu in the early part of the last century, they dropped much of the pretense about how a fight “should” look. They wanted to see what would happen if two guys simply fought without timed rounds or a ref to break it up and reset them.
What they found is that unless a KO strike was thrown very quickly, fighters would almost always grab each other and grapple, whether they wanted to or not. You see this in boxing when one fighter is being overwhelmed–they clinch up to stop the strikes. It’s a natural reflex.
Once fighters are clinched, without a ref to break them up, what happens next? Maybe they separate and start kickboxing again. But that strategy already failed to end the fight, so they usually end up clinched again. Here striking is less effective with the distance removed and the arms tied up. The next stop is usually the ground, often even if neither fighter really wanted to take it there.
You see this in the original UFC fights between two strikers. They might punch and kick at first, but as they get exhausted or try to defend strikes, they end up pressing against each other and clinching. Then someone does a headlock, or tackles the other guy to the ground, or they trip and fall down. Now they’re ground fighting, even if unintentionally.
What the Gracies found was that if a fighter was determined to avoid strikes and take the fight to the ground, they could cover up and rush in to clinch or do a takedown. The clinch allowed them to avoid taking damage from strikes as they brought the other fighter down.
Once on the ground, an understanding of grappling positions and techniques gave them the ability to control the opponent and neutralize their strikes, while seeking to end the fight with a choke or armlock.
What really interested them was how this strategy even worked against bigger, stronger, and more aggressive attackers where trying to out-strike them would be foolish.
The type of jiu-jitsu taught to the Gracies by Mitsuyo Maeda was a precursor to judo, and it already incorporated this grappling and ground fighting strategy. The other benefit of a system based on grappling was that it allowed for higher resistance training with less risk of injury (compared to punching and kicking at full force).
While the Gracies didn’t invent this strategy, they did refine it over the years. The Gracies were famous for their no rules, no weight classes, no time limit challenge matches. A search of YouTube for “bjj vs (any other martial art)” or the original UFCs (also a Gracie invention) will show you how this plays out.
You’ll hear people in other martial arts talking about how they would never take the fight to the ground, or say it wouldn’t work against multiple attackers, or that a flaming maw of lava will erupt from the concrete to consume you. The trouble with this is how fights will go to the ground whether you want them to or not (looking up street fights on YouTube will illustrate this clearly), and no one really has a good answer to multiple attackers.
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