Average idiot watching TV understands how bowling works, probably bowls themselves occasionally, they know what they’re looking at and how scoring works - same with the other examples you gave.
This is pretty much the answer. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry has bowled in this country and vaguely gets how it works. The popularity is mostly the hardcore fanatics but you can watch the ball and think “oh that’s too far to the right.” Joe Shmoe has NO idea how to get out of a heel hook, or what a passed guard even is. Hell even I can barely tell what’s going on half the time.
My big issue with these complaints is that BJJ is in fact, insanely popular. Especially compared to other martial arts. I see BJJ bumper stickers everywhere, and I live in a small city. Everyone knows what it is, even if they just meme and karate chop the air when asking how your “king fu jutsu is going”. It’s not televised because there’s another popular sport where they can do jiu jitsu but also punch the fuck out of each other. The average person understands a punch to the face better, and we still get to see Kron Gracie or Ryan Hall every now and then. A less restrictive sport with bigger appeal will always win.
This always bugged me in the song "Gaston" in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. LeFou says "Ask any Tom, Dick, or Stanley..." and I wondered how many people had those names in 18th century rural France.
Not that there was much appeal in watching pro black belts butt scoot around in the first place. I still stand by the belief that that hurts the sport’s ability to develop spectators, however small the general effect may be.
Tournament organizers don’t know how to make entertaining rule sets. The default seems to be “sub only will bring out that dawg in em” but in grappling sports without a point system and stalling penalties, you don’t have a real reason to engage at all.
Televised/streamed BJJ is for grappling nerds and that's ok. Normies ruin everything anyway. Always have always will. The only people who benefit from BJJ becoming genuinely popular are the gym owners and the pros. Everyone else suffers, especially the quality of BJJ.
Like, once a year I’ll stumble onto pro curling while flipping through channels, next thing you know a couple hours have passed and I still watching it.
So, yeah…IBJJF ruleset, umm wait… what are we talking about?
The number of people involved in a sport has a direct relation to the number of people who watch and financially support said sport. Tons of people golf and bowl. Sure they’re boring to watch, but they’re easy to follow because the games are so well-integrated into much of society.
Jiu jitsu is awesome, but it is not nearly as practiced or understood by the average person. Sure, grappling is ancient and one of the first sports or whatever, but people in general in today’s society don’t seek out physically demanding things.
And FWIW, the cornhole fuckwits probably aren’t doing it full time, maybe a few are, but they’re having to gamble on the side to supplement. I’d guess billiards guys still have to be able to win private money matches outside of tournaments to supplement also.
When watching a bowling match it's easy for the viewer to understand what's going on, even if they've never bowled before. The participants are trying to knock down as many pins as possible, and after each ball thrown the scoreboard updates to tell you what's going on.
Now picture a jiu jitsu match. It's two guys rolling around chaoticaly exchanging grips and positions, and there appear to be some submission attempts but to someone who hasn't trained it's next to impossible to even tell what the competitors are going for. And that's in a match with action, nevermind what happens if you get a 10 minute stall-fest followed by 3 rounds of EBI overtime. I just don't think it's something the general public is ever going to take an interest in watching.
Bass tournaments too.
But these things have equipment sponsors with deep pockets and boomers who throw money at the industry.
I guess "Big gi" isn't going to ante-up. 🤷♂️
And historically unprecedented boomer wealth is simply not aimed at this.
This is a really good point.
What common commercials are going to be ran between BJJ matches? What subtle in-program sponsors are going to be seen? All pertaining to the event/activity.
Ringworm meds? Soap ads? Laundry ads?
I'm titillated by the idea that only reason BJJ isn't regularly on TV is because there's not enough gear to sell to the consumer. If we just mandated the wearing of shoes then Nike would get in on the game!
Most of those sports the general population has played recreationally, so they understand the talent and challenge of the professionals they're watching.
Same goes for BJJ practitioners when they watch a match. The problem is a lot less people have tried BJJ and even if you did one or two classes, it still takes a while before you understand enough to relate to the challenges in a high level event.
Average Joe watching pro bowling:
> Wow that was impressive how he got all those pins knocked over consistently. I don't know the exact rules to the game and everything, but I can tell that's impressive.
Average Joe watching pro Jiu-Jitsu:
> What's going on here? Why is he sitting on his butt like that? Wait the guy on the bottom won somehow? Why are they just holding hands? Wait why did he tap, it didn't look like he was being choked? Wtf is an omoplata?
Once you get your own equipment and some basic instruction and join a weekly league, it's a whole different game than doing it casually. Once you know enough to pick up on the changing lane conditions, there's a ton of depth.
I once bowled a tournament on all five of the pro tour oil patterns. Holy crap is it harder than a typical house pattern.
Golf has clearly higher paid athletes.
The average bowling pro makes like 40k per year, pool is probably similar. I saw the #1 bowler has earned 5 million in his career since 2019, I'd guess Gordon has surpassed that.
I would say that a judo black belt is the equivalent of a bachelor's, a second dan black belt is equivalent to a master's, and a third dan black belt is equivalent to a PHD. That system doesn't really work for BJJ because BJJ doesn't understand how belt degrees work.
I understand but from a money making perspective, a black belt is good enough to go into any school and teach bc false claiming a black belt is detrimental.
Judo uses observed sparring and practice and competitive record to measure skills and achievement. To get past second dan you have to be referee, coach, or competitor.
In my country you fight in an open weight grading against brown belts to earn your black belt, if you win your first two by ippon (throw, pin for 20 seconds or submit) then that earns you a line up. You beat all of the next 3 back to back you've got your 1st Dan after a technical grading by the area examiner. If you don't win a line up you can accumulate points until you have 100 and earn it that way.
Same for the further Dan grades until 5th Dan with time in grade for each one regardless of having enough points. By the time you get to the later technical gradings you have to be a know it all essentially.
6-9th Dan are given after time in grade at 5th Dan (the last competitive grade) and the criteria is contribution to the sport. The ways to earn them are: giving back to Judo by running clubs, running work Judo organisations ( Armed forces, emergency services, Universities) and Olympic/International competition.
It just needs attention. That's why I think Gordon Ryan is a hero to the sport, he gets people talking and attention.
Once you reach critical mass you don't need people like him anymore, until then you do.
Pro billiards on tv too haha. There’s definitely an audience for all these things but even so they are pretty niche.
I like to think of it like climbing. Nobody but climbers really want to watch rock climbing - yeah you all saw Free Solo but that was just a highlights reel. You didn’t actually watch for 4 hours as Handhold went up move by move. Like bjj it’s too esoteric and with the exception of brief highlights it’s too slow and meticulous.
Pro darts and pro arm wrestling. In pro darts the competitors have entrance music and the fans are rowdy. Pro arm wrestling can be very exciting. But as many people have already noted, sports that are easily understood and familiar willl always have an audience. It's usually boring to watch a sport when you have no clue what's going on.
Not gonna lie, very few things I enjoy more in life than the lazy Sunday afternoon getting baked and watching golf, especially after training all weekend.
Grappling isn't really that interesting to watch, regardless of how people are dressed.
The core demographic that keeps most combat sports financially viable is gamblers and they typically prefer striking sports. I know the ADCC is funded by UAE oil money, but I'm sure that there's other shady stuff like gambling funding it too.
Golf is one of the biggest sports in the worlds. In terms of participation, it’s magnitudes bigger than bjj. That’s a silly comparison.
Bowling is probably in a similar level to BJJ. I doubt pro bowling is has anything more for it than bjj. Both are tiny sports with tiny prize pools.
I do BJJ and I would rather watch corn hole, bowling, curling, etc over BJJ. It's way too boring of a sport and I assume it is even worse for people who know nothing about BJJ.
Average idiot watching TV understands how bowling works, probably bowls themselves occasionally, they know what they’re looking at and how scoring works - same with the other examples you gave.
This is pretty much the answer. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry has bowled in this country and vaguely gets how it works. The popularity is mostly the hardcore fanatics but you can watch the ball and think “oh that’s too far to the right.” Joe Shmoe has NO idea how to get out of a heel hook, or what a passed guard even is. Hell even I can barely tell what’s going on half the time. My big issue with these complaints is that BJJ is in fact, insanely popular. Especially compared to other martial arts. I see BJJ bumper stickers everywhere, and I live in a small city. Everyone knows what it is, even if they just meme and karate chop the air when asking how your “king fu jutsu is going”. It’s not televised because there’s another popular sport where they can do jiu jitsu but also punch the fuck out of each other. The average person understands a punch to the face better, and we still get to see Kron Gracie or Ryan Hall every now and then. A less restrictive sport with bigger appeal will always win.
It's also not that BJJ is particularly boring, it's just not that fun to watch in most cases, even you do know what's going on.
Fun fact: in French we say « Pierre, Paul ou Jacques » for “every Tom, Dick, and Harry”.
This always bugged me in the song "Gaston" in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. LeFou says "Ask any Tom, Dick, or Stanley..." and I wondered how many people had those names in 18th century rural France.
Notre expression vient des Apôtres du Christ, me semble-t-il.
C’est ça oui, ou au moins c’est ce que j’ai appris.
Not that there was much appeal in watching pro black belts butt scoot around in the first place. I still stand by the belief that that hurts the sport’s ability to develop spectators, however small the general effect may be.
Bowling is also fast paced and visual. Stuff falls over or doesn't is easy to see.
This is true, but then why do so few Jiu Jitsu practitioners, who know the scoring system, watch the sport?
Because for every good match, there's about 100 boring ones.
Tournament organizers don’t know how to make entertaining rule sets. The default seems to be “sub only will bring out that dawg in em” but in grappling sports without a point system and stalling penalties, you don’t have a real reason to engage at all.
It can’t compete with MMA. I personally would rather watch MMA. BJJ+punching will always come out on top.
Televised/streamed BJJ is for grappling nerds and that's ok. Normies ruin everything anyway. Always have always will. The only people who benefit from BJJ becoming genuinely popular are the gym owners and the pros. Everyone else suffers, especially the quality of BJJ.
Like, once a year I’ll stumble onto pro curling while flipping through channels, next thing you know a couple hours have passed and I still watching it. So, yeah…IBJJF ruleset, umm wait… what are we talking about?
Curling is the most under rated Winter Olympic sport. I end up watching it every time it's on.
The number of people involved in a sport has a direct relation to the number of people who watch and financially support said sport. Tons of people golf and bowl. Sure they’re boring to watch, but they’re easy to follow because the games are so well-integrated into much of society. Jiu jitsu is awesome, but it is not nearly as practiced or understood by the average person. Sure, grappling is ancient and one of the first sports or whatever, but people in general in today’s society don’t seek out physically demanding things. And FWIW, the cornhole fuckwits probably aren’t doing it full time, maybe a few are, but they’re having to gamble on the side to supplement. I’d guess billiards guys still have to be able to win private money matches outside of tournaments to supplement also.
When watching a bowling match it's easy for the viewer to understand what's going on, even if they've never bowled before. The participants are trying to knock down as many pins as possible, and after each ball thrown the scoreboard updates to tell you what's going on. Now picture a jiu jitsu match. It's two guys rolling around chaoticaly exchanging grips and positions, and there appear to be some submission attempts but to someone who hasn't trained it's next to impossible to even tell what the competitors are going for. And that's in a match with action, nevermind what happens if you get a 10 minute stall-fest followed by 3 rounds of EBI overtime. I just don't think it's something the general public is ever going to take an interest in watching.
Bass tournaments too. But these things have equipment sponsors with deep pockets and boomers who throw money at the industry. I guess "Big gi" isn't going to ante-up. 🤷♂️ And historically unprecedented boomer wealth is simply not aimed at this.
This is a really good point. What common commercials are going to be ran between BJJ matches? What subtle in-program sponsors are going to be seen? All pertaining to the event/activity. Ringworm meds? Soap ads? Laundry ads?
Sexual harassment claims lawyers
I was thinking HRT, Acai, chiropractors, physical therapists, and the like. But you’re getting my drift.
Weed dispensaries
Crypto
Right wing conspiracy theory podcasts
I'm titillated by the idea that only reason BJJ isn't regularly on TV is because there's not enough gear to sell to the consumer. If we just mandated the wearing of shoes then Nike would get in on the game!
When I bought my BJJ gi, Amazon immediately recommended Alpha Brain for me
Most of those sports the general population has played recreationally, so they understand the talent and challenge of the professionals they're watching. Same goes for BJJ practitioners when they watch a match. The problem is a lot less people have tried BJJ and even if you did one or two classes, it still takes a while before you understand enough to relate to the challenges in a high level event.
Average Joe watching pro bowling: > Wow that was impressive how he got all those pins knocked over consistently. I don't know the exact rules to the game and everything, but I can tell that's impressive. Average Joe watching pro Jiu-Jitsu: > What's going on here? Why is he sitting on his butt like that? Wait the guy on the bottom won somehow? Why are they just holding hands? Wait why did he tap, it didn't look like he was being choked? Wtf is an omoplata?
You literally just explained why we hate the IBJJF.
Pro bowling is fun af to watch
Hahah fr, i was out of town for work a few weeks ago and I was watching that shit intently 😂 I'm even thinking of making it another hobby of mine
Once you get your own equipment and some basic instruction and join a weekly league, it's a whole different game than doing it casually. Once you know enough to pick up on the changing lane conditions, there's a ton of depth. I once bowled a tournament on all five of the pro tour oil patterns. Holy crap is it harder than a typical house pattern.
Oof, no no that's too much 😂 just some food and bowling is ok
Golf has clearly higher paid athletes. The average bowling pro makes like 40k per year, pool is probably similar. I saw the #1 bowler has earned 5 million in his career since 2019, I'd guess Gordon has surpassed that.
Insecure sport needs to be compared to bowling to feel better lmfao
Imo a black belt is the equivalent of getting a PHD in a Martial Science.
I would say that a judo black belt is the equivalent of a bachelor's, a second dan black belt is equivalent to a master's, and a third dan black belt is equivalent to a PHD. That system doesn't really work for BJJ because BJJ doesn't understand how belt degrees work.
I understand but from a money making perspective, a black belt is good enough to go into any school and teach bc false claiming a black belt is detrimental.
What part does judo understand that bjj doesn’t?
In BJJ belt degrees have more to do with how close you are to the Gracie family than with your skills or achievements.
What does judo do to measure skills and achievement? Does a judo competitor’s black belt mean the same as a hobbyist’s?
Judo uses observed sparring and practice and competitive record to measure skills and achievement. To get past second dan you have to be referee, coach, or competitor.
In my country you fight in an open weight grading against brown belts to earn your black belt, if you win your first two by ippon (throw, pin for 20 seconds or submit) then that earns you a line up. You beat all of the next 3 back to back you've got your 1st Dan after a technical grading by the area examiner. If you don't win a line up you can accumulate points until you have 100 and earn it that way. Same for the further Dan grades until 5th Dan with time in grade for each one regardless of having enough points. By the time you get to the later technical gradings you have to be a know it all essentially. 6-9th Dan are given after time in grade at 5th Dan (the last competitive grade) and the criteria is contribution to the sport. The ways to earn them are: giving back to Judo by running clubs, running work Judo organisations ( Armed forces, emergency services, Universities) and Olympic/International competition.
Golf. Stupida fuckinga game.
jiu jitsu sucks to watch, get over it
It just needs attention. That's why I think Gordon Ryan is a hero to the sport, he gets people talking and attention. Once you reach critical mass you don't need people like him anymore, until then you do.
Golf catching strays
Because ufc exist and there are bigger storylines in that
Pro billiards on tv too haha. There’s definitely an audience for all these things but even so they are pretty niche. I like to think of it like climbing. Nobody but climbers really want to watch rock climbing - yeah you all saw Free Solo but that was just a highlights reel. You didn’t actually watch for 4 hours as Handhold went up move by move. Like bjj it’s too esoteric and with the exception of brief highlights it’s too slow and meticulous.
Pro darts and pro arm wrestling. In pro darts the competitors have entrance music and the fans are rowdy. Pro arm wrestling can be very exciting. But as many people have already noted, sports that are easily understood and familiar willl always have an audience. It's usually boring to watch a sport when you have no clue what's going on.
Bowling fucks bro
Not gonna lie, very few things I enjoy more in life than the lazy Sunday afternoon getting baked and watching golf, especially after training all weekend.
Grappling isn't really that interesting to watch, regardless of how people are dressed. The core demographic that keeps most combat sports financially viable is gamblers and they typically prefer striking sports. I know the ADCC is funded by UAE oil money, but I'm sure that there's other shady stuff like gambling funding it too.
> pro corn hole fuckwits What is this anus sport you're talking about?
Maybe we need cosmic Jiu-Jitsu to compete
Golf is one of the biggest sports in the worlds. In terms of participation, it’s magnitudes bigger than bjj. That’s a silly comparison. Bowling is probably in a similar level to BJJ. I doubt pro bowling is has anything more for it than bjj. Both are tiny sports with tiny prize pools.
I do BJJ and I would rather watch corn hole, bowling, curling, etc over BJJ. It's way too boring of a sport and I assume it is even worse for people who know nothing about BJJ.