Closing the Brackets in BJJ (well applies to any tournament based martial art)

Sid_Justice

In Jiujitsu competitions it seems to have become common place, at all levels from local to World Championships for members of the same academy who meet, either at the beginning of the tournament or in finals, to close the bracket.

This means they do not contest the bout, but have a prearranged agreement on who wins. There are many lines of reasoning, if you meet an opponent in the early stages from your own academy, it's not worth anyone's while exhausting yourselves in a very tight match up and making the winner less competitive for the next round, thus, they rely on ranking to decide the winner.

In the final, they might believe that fighting a team mate in public is not part of their ethos so they use the same criteria to declare winner.

Roger Gracie, multiple time world absolute champion is against this believing anyone who makes it to the final has the right to fight for the medal and not just give it up to the more senior team mate. I'd be inclined to agree with Roger, what do other people think?

Clive

IMO, it's Brazilian rubbish. People who refuse to compete should be awarded a loss, simple as. Refusing to take part in the final = joint silver in my book.

EnjoyChoke

You should fight, to the very best of your ability, anyone who's put in front of you.
I've seen this carry on start to creep into some Irish competitions, don't agree with it.

pablohoney87

They should always fight. Matches and tournaments are all about who is better on the day. Not who has been told or is believed to be the better fighter.

r_obric

its hard to do anything about it.

if 2 fighters dercide the fight by throwing a coin they could go through the motion of one being tapped out.

Sid_Justice

In Judo competition we did a few years ago friends of mine were in the final or the bronze medal fight and weren't overly interested in fighting each other so they just went out and one let the other guy throw him for ippon. Was war afterwards, about the spirit of judo being brought into disrepute and life long bans threatened. I think they both got DQed.

Barry.Oglesby

I can see the point for the early rounds, but for the final it's different. Recently Rafa and Guilherme Mendes fought each other in the final of the Pro Cup.

Possibly a large part of it is the senior guys afraid that the younger one will win

Bres

I've seen this situation accur in freestyle wrestling competitions, it's an awkward discussion to have between the fighters. But you cant count the underdog out...
In my club when i started there was i guy i could never beat and he trounced me so when we were matched up in the final i didn't think i would win and people assumed the result. so i had nothing to loose and gave it my all and won.
So it is very tricky, people fight different in competitions then in a club training session!

Burnt

As a competor I would find it insulting if you didn't go out and give it you
all to beat me.

As a coach it may reduce the risk of injuries internally but at the same time
your promoting and instilling an incredibilty and lazy mental attitude within
you fighters. If you try and finish second best fair enough; you tried, but to
not try should be utterly unacceptable .

Sid_Justice wrote: »

In Judo competition we did a few years ago... I think they both got DQed.

I remember this clearly, I believed they were both DQed also. While I
disagree strongly with the entire idea, if your going to do it picking the
third throw from the Nage no kata is rather blatant. :eek::o

Chris89

I refer you all to the infamous final of the Informed Performance u76 advanced submission tournament of yesteryear.

wingnut4

I totally disagree with this, the person who wins should go through by fighting fairly. The best person goes through to the next round. Maybe im just being competitive but I couldnt do this. At the end of the day if I was to get through by winning fairly I would be representing the club and the team anyways.

Niall Keane

In internationals there should be qualifiers ie one person per weight cata per country. This was sanshous solution, before you had the hosts and countries like Switzerland and Italy flood the ranks with the aim of injuring the good opposition to soften them up often with illegal techniques to allow their not so good top guys a chance of winning. Pretty ****ty practice but in my experience never underestimate the desire of some coaches to win, they will cheat, if they're clever just bend the rules, and to me stacking a comp full of **** to tire the opposition is just that!
So the question should be why place two guys in the same catagory? Personally I demand that one o my fighters move up a weight if two end up the same on the day, some would consider that foolish?

smacl

For any of the euopean comps I've competed in (chinese wrestling, round robin format in qualifiers), where possible we made sure we knew the team weight categories didn't overlap long before entering, so if you needed to move up or down, you trained accordingly. In the british open (chinese wrestling, knockout format), the organisers always tried to match up bouts such that where you had two competitors from the same club at the same weight, they wouldn't be matched up in the first round. This makes a lot of sense; you cheer your team mates on in the early rounds, and if you're lucky enough meet them later on, you go at it hell for leather.

I would have thought that for anyone competing regularly on the same circuit, they're always going to end up fighting friends at some point.

da-bres

Chris89 wrote: »

I refer you all to the infamous final of the Informed Performance u76 advanced submission tournament of yesteryear.

That was hilarius!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBkEZdI583A

Niall Keane

"we made sure we knew the team weight catagories didn't overlap"

yea but as I said those coaches eager to win at allcosts want to maximise their chances, I recall us stating pre a European 2002? that the five of us entering would all move up two catagories an take all the golds which we nearly did, there was an occasional silver, but we were more interested in being good at martial arts, which for us meant being able to beat those heavier and stronger, nowadays I hear of people cutting 15-20kg to compete, I don't see the point, if you can only beat someone 20kg lighter then what you practice ain't martial arts it's dieting! now I see the point in being fighting fit and up to 5 kg o a drop can be expected but overcutting well This to me goes hand in hand with stacking the ranks with useless fodder (the old Mayo GAA trick - have a useless thick as pigsh1t but tough lad out there to "mark" their best player) seems contrary to the whole purpose of competition. To me it's about testing onesself - a necessary tool to develop skills, and not a method of building up a martial CV. Although funnily enough when you look at our international results they probably beat hands down any of the dieting, win by numbers brigade.

Killme00

Chris89 wrote: »

I refer you all to the infamous final of the Informed Performance u76 advanced submission tournament of yesteryear.

That was pretty funny.

wingnut4

haha that was brilliant

Bres

For big competitions obviously a club would have a team to put through with one in each weight or as many covered, but for irish competitions shouldn't they be used as a gauge for team selections for clubs?...

Niall Keane

but for irish competitions shouldn't they be used as a gauge for team selections for clubs?...

Bres, I see no problem with local comps, but I often wonder if persons of the same team should be placed against each other at knockout stage? The prevailing policy is to separate them so they get experience outside of the sparing pool they train with which would make sense, (if we were all interested in improving martial arts and looking after our students. I dont believe everyone who coaches is honourable, I know of one one coach who sent guys to a closed -shop type world championships in 2008. His fighters had max 3 fights prior, competing in sanshou against lads with almost 100 fights, many pro, the outcome was predictable, and I was told by one of his students that they only entered to be able to say that they had competed at that level, they didn't care about winning, pretty wreckless? One lad ended up in hospital with 17 stitches to his face. was on Youtube as "killer kick to the head" before taken down. I fought the lad who did the damage in 2005 in Milan and had barely beaten him on points, that was after 87 international bouts, anyway I digress) What I'm saying is if the comp is a qualifier, or in some way significant then my experience has been that unscrupulous coaches will fill a category with dross and have a pecking order where their guys when meeting get byes (one bows out), once I saw a guy go straight to a final without a fight, while his opponent had fought 3 bouts, i.e. 6-9 rounds in the preceding 4 hours, that's simply not fair! To combat this anytime I've been involved in organising a comp, I post the results fully, i.e. if someone got there on byes the results should state so. You would not believe the amount of what many consider reputable coaches who gladly feed their students to the lions in the hope of gaining some promotion / advertising for their clubs.

Bres

It is a tough scenario to call, to be honest i wasn't taking full contact/head shots into account...
Although it shouldn't matter too much, obviously no-one wants to injure a team mate, but if you want to get to a final and possibly win it's very much down to the compeditors and their sportsmanship.
Boxing seems to manage it quite nicely i thought in ireland.

As far as coaches flooding competitions just to get a name for their club at their athletes expense, It's gonna happen... i completely disagree with it, but it's gonna happen...

Sid_Justice

I've only seen clubs enter extra players in tournaments just to injure and soften up opponents for a team mate in the Karate kid.

Niall Keane

Then you should get out more Sid!

just-joe

I think that if you meet teammates in the first round, then the reasons why you wouldn't take it serious are obvious. Especially if you're closely matched, then why waste your energy and deplete your chances of doing well in the competition overall? In my opinion competitions are (largely) about winning, and winning medals, not just the first round.

Another interesting one was that at the sydney olympics judo, an Iranian and an Iraqi (as far as I can remember) met in the first round, and one forefitted the fight because of political or religious differences/troubles in their home country or something along those lines, I'm not too sure...

So now say you're a fighter who narrowly missed qualifying for the comp, and could have given beating either of those guys a good shot. Perhaps gone on with medal hopes. Instead you're left out and the guy doesn't even fight the first round. Should players be allowed to do this?

Clive

just-joe wrote: »

I think that if you meet teammates in the first round, then the reasons why you wouldn't take it serious are obvious. Especially if you're closely matched, then why waste your energy and deplete your chances of doing well in the competition overall?

For fairness sake if nothing else -

1. Other competitors could have an equally tough first match, but not have anyone who'll bow out and give them a free pass.

2. Inevitably it's the more "senior", more successful student who is put through in this instance. The more "junior" guys should have his chance to exceed all expectations - I've lost loads of times to guys I should have, on paper at least, beaten. Having a different coloured belt or less pretty medals shouldn't mean you have to bend over and take it from some golden boy.

Burnt

just-joe wrote: »

Another interesting one was that at the sydney olympics judo, an Iranian and an Iraqi (as far as I can remember) met in the first round, and one forefitted the fight because of political or religious differences/troubles in their home country or something along those lines, I'm not too sure...

I was an Iranian, Arash Miresmaeili versus an Isreali Ehud Vaks. The Iranians have a policy of non-competition with any Isreali athletes.

Miresmaeli didn't exactly refuse to fight he simply failed to make weight.
At the time he was the current two time world champion and the favourite
for olympic gold. He recieve a substantial monetary reward after the games
from the Iranian government.

just-joe

Clive wrote: »

For fairness sake if nothing else -

1. Other competitors could have an equally tough first match, but not have anyone who'll bow out and give them a free pass.

Hmmm I guess this is a fair point, but then you could start complaining about whoever you get matched against.. Its the nature of competition that some people will have a tough route and some will have an easy one. Some fighters already receive byes just by the draw, which is equally unfair really.

Clive wrote: »

2. Inevitably it's the more "senior", more successful student who is put through in this instance. The more "junior" guys should have his chance to exceed all expectations - I've lost loads of times to guys I should have, on paper at least, beaten. Having a different coloured belt or less pretty medals shouldn't mean you have to bend over and take it from some golden boy.

Looked at my post and I don't think I explained myself properly.. I wouldn't really agree with fighters having to do it without a choice. It is only fair that either fighter get the chance if they want it, and as you say the better fighter on paper doesn't always win.

However if clubmates know each other well, and know that they're very closely matched, maybe even training partners, then its their choice.

just-joe

Thanks for correcting me Burnt. I had no idea that he got paid afterwards too, or that they had a complete non-competition policy..

I still think it is unfair though, that someone who would have been willing to fight the Israeli, missed out on their chance.