ADCC veteran and BJJ world champion Robert Drysdale made a striking claim during an appearance on a podcast while discussing the evolution of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and its relationship with judo.
The conversation had turned to whether jiu-jitsu could simply be dismissed as “newaza,” the ground grappling component of judo. Drysdale pushed back firmly on that framing, pointing to just how far the sport has traveled from its judo roots, using youth competitors as his clearest example.
“Look at what you, even Oda Tsunetane who was at the at the upper end of techniques there, or even like some of these Kosen guys and how sophisticated their techniques were. They’re nowhere near as sophisticated as what some of these guys are doing.”
He then directed the argument toward youth competition as concrete proof of that evolution.
“You go to ADCC youth and you watch those 9-year-olds and those children are far more sophisticated than any judoka on the ground ever in any period in history. I’m not, this is not an exaggeration. Just look, watch them. Some of those kids are doing things that I don’t understand. And I’m like, I’m pretty sure judokas in the 1930s didn’t understand them either. These guys are ahead of the game and they’re children.”
Drysdale used this observation to reinforce a point he had been building throughout the episode: that jiu-jitsu, while undeniably descended from judo, is now a fundamentally different martial art.
His argument centers on the 1975 rule set, which he describes as the single most important evolutionary marker in the sport’s history, shifting the practice from a roughly equal weighting of standup and ground work to something overwhelmingly ground oriented.
“I am drawing a distinction between jiu-jitsu prior to 1975 and after 1975. It’s fundamentally different.”
When points are awarded for back takes and mounted positions, generations of athletes, including children, develop ground sophistication that simply has no parallel in a system that does not reward those positions.
His closing argument tied the two ideas together directly. Acknowledging that back takes and ground control exist across many grappling arts, he maintained that emphasis is everything.
“The existence of the arts, but the emphasis is not there, because the emphasis was created by the rule set by a generation of practitioners that had evolved inside Vale Tudo rings as the competitive arena for them to develop their skills.”
