UFC 100: More Judo, Same Great MMA Flavor
Published by Jim Genia on May 13th, 2009 in Current Events

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In the beginning there were Remco Pardoel and Christophe Leininger, two skilled yet not quite top-level judoka trying their hands at a new sport. But since then MMA has seen more than its fair share of studs tossing people around, like Karo Parisyan sending Dave Strasser sailing through the air at UFC 41, Hidehiko Yoshida depositing Wanderlei Silva onto the mat in Pride or Fedor Emelianenko doing pretty much anything other than when he punches foes into oblivion. Fans of limited-rules combat have witnessed firsthand the usefulness – and sometimes the shortcomings – of the “gentle way”. At UFC 100 in July, a trio of gi-wearers will enter into the Octagon in the form of American welterweight contender Jon Fitch, Japanese superstar Yoshihiro Akiyama and Korean black belt Dong Hyun Kim. How effective will they be in getting their opponents down? And how viable is judo for a sport that requires training in various aspects of combat?

“It’s extremely functional,” says Dave Camarillo, an accomplished judoka who created an amalgam of judo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and dubbed it “Guerilla Jiu-Jitsu”. Camarillo is one of the people behind turning Fitch from a wrestler into a submission-savvy mixed martial artist. “Things that become traditional become widely used, so people develop a defense to it. Wrestling is very common so people have developed sprawls. In judo, there are a lot of techniques, like sweeps or trips, which are low-risk that people haven’t necessarily developed defenses to – low-investment and high-impact techniques where the risk isn’t that great but the rewards are getting someone to the ground.”

Fitch wrestled at Purdue University before earning a black belt in Camarillo’s hybrid style, Akiyama was a decorated top-level judo competitor in Japan and Kim studied in South Korea and New Zealand. Given their varied backgrounds, would someone with a trained eye notice subtle differences in how they put their opponents on their backs? “You’re probably not going to see much difference,” says Camarillo. “You’re going to see basic techniques that they learned from the gi but adapted for MMA. Most are going to come from the clinch and are going to be very calculated. As far as the strategy behind it or the technique, it’s all going to be similar.”

What are Camarillo’s thoughts on high-level judoka and the obstacles they face in MMA? “They’re faced with the same obstacles as anyone from a wrestling background or jiu-jitsu background,” he says. “Whether it’s judo or wrestling or whatever, the beneficial aspects of the art have to be retained and the detrimental aspects have to be dropped.” Camarillo, however, is a strong advocate of cross-training, and of an aspiring fighter ironing out the kinks of wherever he’s weakest. “Take Karo, for example,” he says. “I think he’s a little bit stagnant in his MMA game. We’ve seen some evolution but not a lot of it. A lot of people who are strong in one area use it as a comfort zone.”

How will Fitch do against the Brazilian Paulo Thiago? Will Akiyama send Alan Belcher flying? Will Kim utilize a trip or footsweep to get Canadian scrapper Jonathan Goulet down? Only a fortune teller with a decent crystal ball can say for sure. But one thing is certain: UFC 100 will definitely provide fans with more judo while retaining the sport’s same great MMA flavor.