John Danaher is an esteemed BJJ coach with a background in academia. While Danaher has never competed due to health issues he’s suffering from, he’s widely considered one of the brightest minds in BJJ today.
Danaher and his students are big fans of ‘no time limit’ ruleset despite the fact it’s not spectator friendly. Recently flograppling asked Danaher to explain his fondness for the ruleset and he had this to say:
“It’s got a purity to it. When it comes to rule sets the big question of who are you trying to entertain?”
“And for the average fan, I think no time limit is probably a bit of a disaster, to be honest with you. Like the action is very, very slow and many of the people who watch I maybe even the majority, don’t understand the importance of pacing and how if you come out too hard, too early, it almost always works against you.”
“And so the idea of watching a match that just goes on and on with not a lot of action, it’s tough for a lot of people to watch. So in terms average spectator, it’s not the best rule set, but it does have one great virtue. And that’s that if you’re patient enough, you’re going to get a result. Like it will be a definitive result.”
“It will be a very pure result. In fact, it will be the most pure result. There’s no ambiguities, there’s no appealing to, you know, the referee did this or if he did that, it’s just like two guys on a mat and they go into a one quits. There’s no more unambiguous result than that. So it has this purity to it, but it comes at the price that you need to be patient.”
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– Editorial staff of BJJDOC
