Eddie Bravo has a good system for it but he doesn’t have the only one. Just look to competitors like Baret Yoshida for examples of no-gi closed guards that are nothing like Eddie’s. Look at all of the ADCC competitors for that matter.

Don’t get me wrong, I like rubber guard and most of Eddie’s moves. That should be clear from how much I work on them.

But I want to rid you of the idea that it’s somehow the only way to do no-gi, and that the rest of BJJ is completely lost when there’s no collar to grab. I would say that the majority of BJJ works without the gi.

I would be amazed if that karate instructor had ever read BJJ rules, so no, I don’t think so.

What amazes me is that you don’t start “interpreting” Bravo’s moves to match the stuff you are studying at your academy and elsewhere – you have a lot of integrity so I’m not suggesting you would ever do this deliberately, with Eddie or anyone else’s material, but it’s still very hard not to see the unfamiliar (rubber guard etc.) through the eyes of the familiar (more traditional bjj techniques with gi). Your ability to “drop yourself into” a new system like this and talk like an “old hand” is amazing.

BTW, on an unrelated note, I was reading the tournament rules for bjj tournaments last week, and towards the end they indicated a verbal tap could be given by hollering “AI” – not the English “tap” – probably since the rules were translated from Brazilian. Is there any chance that’s what the ill-fated karate practitioner was trying to say in that first tournament you had, as opposed to doing a karate “kiai”?

“7-) When an athlete is under a submission position and he screams or say “Aï” , will be the same as if he taps.” http://www.ibjjf.org/rules.htm