I have a love/hate relationship with Eddie Bravo's book Jiu-jitsu Unleashed. First I don't like it, then I love it, then I'm not sure. Somewhere in the middle is where I end up. Eddie Bravo's claim to fame is beating Royler Gracie fair and square at Abu Dhabi Grappling Championships. This is a no Gi submission grappling tournament and features the style of grappling that Eddie specializes. Joe Rogan, of Fear Factor and UFC announcing fame, is Eddie's training dummy for the book.
I like the fact that Eddie does not hold back and clearly says what is on his mind. The first part of the book is really Eddie's resume and a detail of his martial arts journey. This section takes on more importance with this book than it might in another book. The reason being is that Eddie has kind of gone off on his own and evolved his little system. If he had not had the success that he has had, there would be little reason to listen to what he has to say.
Eddie beating Royler gets my respect for Eddie, having Eddie's students beat top level people gets my respect for his system. It is one thing for a phenom like Pat Miletich to be successful with their own system; it is much more impressive that Pat can consistently turn out top level fighters using his system. It still remains to be seen if Eddie's system is something that can be adapted and used by the masses.
After laying out his credential, Eddie goes on a rant. Eddie seems to have gotten himself bent out of shape because many BJJ instructors think that you should first train with the Gi and then go learn Submission Grappling without a Gi. Eddie believes that this all wrong. You should train without a Gi only if your goal is to enter Submission Grappling tournaments. This may seem like pretty obvious to us in 2006. However, you kind of have to take a historical perspective to truly understand things.
Before Abu Dhabi, what was Submission Grappling? It was nothing. Well, not quite, it was essentially what you did in class when you grappled without a Gi and did not punch. It had no real set of rules and was not really a martial art in and of itself or a branch of an art. Some people may have even thought they were practicing Vale Tudo fighting. If fact the instructional tape market is littered with "Vale Tudo" sets that involve no punching. These instructors, without really even knowing it, were teaching some version of Submission Grappling. The most glaring example of this is Craig Kukuk's BJJ A-Z. This tape set was meant to be a Vale Tudo set and sucked for this purpose. The tapes never dealt with with punching in any meaningful way. If a tape set does not deal with punches as a main part of its strategy, it is not a Vale Tudo tape set. Then Abu Dhabi comes along and a new art was born called Submission Grappling. This breathed new life and purpose into a lot of dead tape sets. Now you have a set that is perfect for those looking for no Gi moves where punching is not an issue. If you think this is an isolated case, just look at the section on my site dedicated to Submission Grappling Videos. Out of the 10 video sets currently listed, only 2 of them were meant to be Submission Grappling sets. Most of the others were Vale Tudo sets gone wrong. Which sounds like an exciting companion video to Girls Gone Wild. Definitely buy the latter and steer clear of the former.
One of Eddie's main points is that you should train without a Gi for Submission Grappling. I totally agree with this. I don't think it is necessary to learn sport BJJ first and then move to Submission Grappling. Where I think Eddie has dropped the ball is the fact that he is under the impression that Submission Grappling is a good way to learn Vale Tudo fighting or that they are the same thing. Without trying to sound like an SAT logic problem, I think Submission Grappling is as close to Vale Tudo fighting as Sport BJJ is to Vale Tudo Fighting. Vale Tudo, Sport BJJ and Submission Grappling are completely separate arts. Anyone that thinks that they can take their strategy from one discipline and apply it without extensive modification is in for a serious ass kicking. It is true that they all share subsets of techniques, but the strategies and use of the moves is entirely different. Eddie spends some time making the point that a pure sport BJJ guy would not be as successful as a person who train exclusively for Submission Grappling. The same could probably we said of someone who trains exclusively for Vale Tudo. Many Vale Tudo fighters turn their backs on Sport BJJ to concentrate solely on Vale Tudo. It is not so easy to shift gears and meander into the Sport BJJ World Championship on a moments notice and be successful.
All this being said, Eddie does breakdown his system of grappling step by step. Interestingly enough, Eddie's bread and butter position is the half guard and a submission called the Twister. Eddie seems to be a pretty practical guy when it comes to grappling. If you keep finding yourself in the half guard all the time, you had better figure out a way to fight and win from this position. From there Eddie covers the Rubber Guard, Twister Side Control, the Mount, The Back, Passing Guard, and Transitions. A majority of the moves and setups detailed in this book are unique variations that you won't find anywhere else. Eddie walks you though his logic for each position and then strings moves together in a logical progression. Every move has a memorable name that has some obscure meaning to Eddie. Some of the technique names are things like, The Twister, Loco Plata, Silverado, Plan C, Staple Gun, and The Duda.
As far as the book itself, the black and white photos are not bad, but do no live up to the high standards that we are see from the books produced by Kid Peligro. A couple of the moves are hard to follow from the description in the book. This book would make an excellent companion to a DVD that shows these same moves. This book is in no way intended for those just starting out in grappling. This is true even if all you want to do is learn Submission Grappling. This book makes no attempt to explain the basic positions etc. This is fine, you just need to understand that this book is intended for intermediate grapplers and above. In fact, this is a book that you will probably keep coming back to and have a very different impression each time you read it. That is what happened with me.
Complete book contents are as follows:
Introduction
My evolution
The proving ground
2003 Abu Dhabi qualifiers
2003 Abu Dhabi World Championships
The "gi vs. no-gi" controversy
10th Planet Jiu-jitsu
Half Guard
Intro to half guard
Half guard sweeps (7 sweeps)
X-guard (X-guard sweep & double X)
Submissions
Apollo
Kamikaze calf crank
Ken Shamrock toehold
Electric chair with sweep
Rubber Guard
Introduction to the full guard
Mission control
Over-hook triangle from mission control
Over-hook omo plata from mission control
The Duda
New York
Triangle from New York
Left arm bar from New York
Omoplata from New York
Omoplata to inverted arm bar
Omoplata to straight arm bar
Omoplata to triangle
The go-go plata
Invisible collar
Spider Web
Basic arm bar to spider web
Arm crush to arm bar
Triangle arm bar
The slide
X-break
Silverado
Twister Side Control
Intro to twister side control
Twister
Banana split
Crotch ripper
Calf crank
Kimura off twister side control
Near arm bar off side control
The Mount
Intro to the mount
Monkey mount
Slow triangle
Arm triangle
Inverted arm bar
Arm bar from the mount
Loco plata
The Back
Intro to the back
Basic rear naked choke
The 100 percent
Marcelo
Passing the Guard
Intro to passing the guard
Underpass
Staple gun
Tornado
Twister pass
No-hand pass
Transitions
Intro to transitions
Ninja: Twister side control to back control
Twister side control to back control option 2
Detour to back: Spider web to back control
Back to the twister
Swim move: Invisible collar to spider web
The creep: Back to spider web