Brazilian Jiu Jitsu earned it's reputation as the most effective style for self defence. The early days of limited or no rules fighting tournaments (such as the original UFCs) left no doubt. When you take the rules away BJJ dominates.
The reason is simple. BJJ was always focused on self defence. The original proponents of the style, the Gracies and Machado brothers were interested only in what worked in real fights. Especially when your opponent was bigger or stronger than you.
Since then BJJ has exploded in popularity. Competitions have become the focus and we've seen the rise of Sport BJJ.
Sport BJJ is fantastic. It's led to an incredible time of creativity as new techniques and approaches have been developed in the competition environment.
The cost of that however has been, for many schools, a change of focus away from self defence.
At GroundControl Martial Arts we are very careful to take a balanced approach. We prepare our students well for competition and run internal competitions of our own. At the same time we make sure to continue to teach the "old school" style. We make sure our students are effective in those self defence scenarios that don't come up in competition but could prove life saving in real life.
Here's Melissa demonstrating an example from back when she was a white belt!