#TrueTalkTuesdays 112

I believe they should, as they will force your technique to be better

Play the video in full screen to see all the action.

There is a viral clip going around from the High Rollerz BJJ even that passed over the weekend. In it, a gentleman by the IG handle @the_blaccmutant got caught in an arm bar courtesy of his opponent Mike Kee, and decided to use Mike like a kettlebell and snatch him straight over his head.

What?

Yes, it was an amazing feat of strength. You can hear the crowd gasp, and as we all know, what comes up must come down. But the how is important, as you can see in the video, it appears that Mr. Mutant doesn’t slam him but rather “shook” him off.

A slam would mean that the opponent was “driven into the ground”, which means the slammer would be falling on top or driving his weight into the slam. As you can see in the video, Mr. Mutant remains completely upright and around the 4 second mark you can see the shake.

Unfortunately for Mike, he still landed hard on his head and from what I understood the match ended there. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.

Many people think all forms of slamming should be illegal as it’s too dangerous. I think that as a blanket statement that is false.

There are two main categories to consider here when we talk about slamming: escapable and unescapable.

An unescapable slam is one where the person being slammed has no way of preventing the slam from happening. This would be a suplex, reverse body lift, or some either throw where the victim is off the ground and has no way of escaping.

Usually, these slams are not particularly dangerous, unless there is a “spiking” – where the slammer purposely controls the slam to put the victim on his head. Spiking of an unescapable slam illegal in every promotion I know of.

An escapable slam is one where the victim of the slam can escape by releasing their hold. Usually this is a submission hold, a guard, or some position the victim feels is strong and doesn’t want to let go.

Usually, the victim has made some key errors to lose control of their position and allow their opponent to take them airborne. Even so, most tournaments do not allow slamming in this situation as well – except ADCC, which even allows spiking during submission attempts.

I agree with this stance. If we banned techniques simply because they were dangerous, we wouldn’t have a sport to compete in, lol! Everything we do is dangerous.

It’s like how people banned leg locks for a long time, and that resulted in a population that was more in danger of getting leg locked – not less.

I feel the same with escapable slams. I have never been slammed in my life, because I either do not let my opponent’s lift me, or if they did, I release right away. It’s really not difficult to release a submission. Sure it sucks, but its your fault you didn’t control the position properly.

I am a realist, and I believe ultimately my martial arts training reflects nearly exactly what I would do in a self defense situation. So training for “no rules” environments makes your game much more fundamentally sound.

Training for the possibility of being slammed improves your technique – as you don’t have a rule to protect you for having bad technique.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?

Comment with your take on this. And if you like this article, please do me a solid and share it with your friends. Thanks!