100 Taps: or, Why Not To Fight A BJJ Blue Belt

Something I've been thinking about recently, partly because I've been training like fucking crazy.

First, the maths. To get your blue belt in BJJ takes, usually, at least a year. Training at least twice a week, and sparring for – roughly – three or four rounds every time you train. At the start you’ll get tapped out all the time, but eventually you’ll start to tap out other people – sometimes in one or two of your rounds, sometimes in all of them, sometimes twice in one round. Let’s say that, conservatively, that averages out at one tapout per training session, per year. Let’s also say that, somewhere along the line, you take a couple of weeks off – although not too many, because you’d never get your blue belt this quickly if you did.

50 x 2 x 1 = 100

Easy. Now, what this means:

By this stage, you’ve pretty much ‘won’ 100 fights. Not by getting more points than the other person, or hitting them in the face or pinning them on the floor, or even throwing them on the floor – although on concrete that’d be a pretty definitive win – but by doing something that would knock them unconscious or break one of their big, important joints if they didn’t politely ask you to stop. And sure, some of the people you’ve won against will be small or inexperienced or not trying their best, but plenty will be big, and aware of exactly what you’re trying to do, and trying very hard to do the same thing back.

Most boxing gyms won’t let you spar anywhere near that much, or that hard. No decent Muay Thai academy is going to let you knock out 100 people. Plenty of karate schools don’t even let you touch each other.

Yes, not every fight will end up on the floor – although you’d be surprised how often they do, especially if one person wants them there and the other isn’t a rugby player or a judoka or a wrestler. Yes, punching and biting makes things a bit trickier, although people tend to forget that the BJJ guy can do that as well. And yes, the addition of knives or mates changes a lot. But the fact remains that if you fight a BJJ blue belt – *any* BJJ blue belt – you’re fighting someone who’s fought a lot of well-trained, aggressive people. And won. 100 times. Oh yeah.