Brazilian Jiu-jitsu as an art and a science has had top technical monopoly on position and control. It has evolved extensively in its sports arena, but I believe it has been lagging a bit behind in self-defense. What it teaches on self-defense needs to be updated on many of its old ideas. Also, with the exception of the rare few fighters, its application even in MMA should be revised in my humble opinion…….
With the sport of MMA growing——more skilled and well-rounded fighters are found around us. Compared with the 90’s, the frequency of the number of people being aware of distance control, basic kicking, boxing, clinching, and ground fighting is higher. This being the case, the isolated, age-old ideas of Bjj self-defense may only be good if you were in a self-defense situation and the other person is absolutely clueless about fighting. But these trends especially in the next 10 or 15 years will be shrinking more and more.
There are many positional moves from the sport of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu that still directly translates to self-defense which are great, but there are also aspects of it such as frequently observing two competitors, right away sitting on their butts and chasing ankle locks, or quickly pulling guard without any attempt to demonstrate skills in takedowns and so on, are all antithesis of the reality of many self-defense circumstances which may culminate in the death of a friend or a loved one.
The ergonomics of the collective game of the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu has greatly evolved, but the vector-ergonomics of its strategies has unnecessarily degraded in its scientific principles of parsimony. This can easily be observed, because in countless competitions where we see an objective that can generally be accomplished in let’s say 4 transitional moves, they happen to be accomplished in 6 to 10 moves. From one perspective Brazilian Jiu-jitsu seems to be evolving greatly in one direction of the arrow of time, but within another arrow, it seems to be chasing ideals that are quixotic in essence.