Three Keys To Diego Lopes’s Game That Show Why Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Works

Good Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Makes MMA Easy

A few weeks ago, Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson was streaming and managed to piss off a large portion of the MMA world. Johnson was watching Street Beefs when he flippantly said MMA is the easiest sport to be a world champion in.

Johnson’s argument is that MMA is a generalized sport. In generalized sports specialists can exploit holes in their opponents' generalized games to become world champions. The counterargument says generalized sports like MMA are harder than specialist sports because of what you have to learn to be successful in MMA.

Let’s ignore the fact that these two arguments don’t actually intersect and go deeper on the conversation.

Contrast MMA with boxing or an even more specialized sport like sprinting. In both boxing and sprinting there are literally less movements allowed than in MMA. Less movements allowed yield fewer and more highly defined tactics and strategies for success. Less available strategies mean that there are fewer and fewer people that could ever hope to be successful in the sport.

Said another way, specialized sports require specialized athletes and your likelihood of being a specialized athlete that falls into the correct sport young enough to train long enough and eventually compete at a world championship level is exceedingly low. This physical egalitarianism is actually one of my favorite parts about MMA.

You can be a slow MMA fighter if you employ an effective strategy that accentuates your abilities, masks your slowness, and exploits the holes in your opponent's game. You cannot be a slow sprinter and expect to have any success much like your likelihood of being a successful boxer with a short reach is incredibly low.

In Johnson’s stream he also said that in MMA grappling is superior to striking. The combination of these two inflammatory comments is what we’re going to focus on today. We’re going to look at a grappling specialist in the UFC that is having success because of their specialization.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Employed Effectively

I see a Brazilian jiu-jitsu resurgence happening in MMA right now. For a while, many fighters seemed to abandon submissions and completely neglected guard work in favor of developing their striking, takedown defense, and the ability to stand up.

Don’t get me wrong. All things being equal, I would tell all athletes to prioritize learning wrestling over other skills because of how overpowered being on top in MMA is. Conversely, being stuck on bottom in MMA really really sucks. With that being said, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu resurgence I'm seeing is not a return to traditional guard play.

The Brazilian jiu-jitsu resurgence that’s happening is a return to Brazilian jiu-jitsu techniques, with modern MMA elements added in. Top players are better integrating strikes into submissions and passing instead of focusing on one or the other. Bottom players are developing holistic grappling games that allow them to effectively play a version of BJ Penn's "60 Second Guard". There is also a reinvigorated focus on leg locking as well, but that only comes out through some of the best grapplers in MMA.

One fighter that does all of the above brilliantly is rising star Diego Lopes.

Diego Lopes Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Pedigree

Once upon a time, Diego Lopes was best known as the grappling coach for Irene Aldana and Alexa Grasso. Lopes's grappling roots go much deeper than that.

Lopes’s sister, Debora, is a black belt, his brother, Thiago, is a third degree black belt, his father, Elias, is a fifth degree black belt, and his uncle, Edmilson, is a coral belt. That means his uncle has been a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt for 38 years.

Lopes’s family’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu expertise literally predates the UFC.

Lopes first got his shot at the UFC in 2021 on Dana White's Contender Series. Unfortunately Lopes lost an absolute barnburner to Joanderson Britto and was not awarded a contract. Lopes was pushed back to coaching the UFC fighters while competing on the regional scene and in professional grappling. Lopes then picked up two professional MMA wins and one loss before getting called up to fight the undefeated featherweight terror Movsar Evloev on the week of the fight.

Lopes lost a close fight but won Fight of the Night, a contract, and everyone's attention. He would go on to win his next fight by flying triangle arm bar, and now he's cemented himself as a rising fan favorite. Let’s look at a few examples of why Lopes’s game is so special.

Smart Submission-Oriented Scrambling

Diego Lopes has a bottom game that's perfectly suited for MMA. Why? He's never static. From the second Lopes finds himself falling to his back he is already fighting for the next position.

All coaches teach techniques. Better coaches teach tactics about when to use techniques. The best coaches teach holistic strategies that tie everything together and give students a framework on how to win. One strategy an old coach of mine used to harp on is to beat your opponent to the next position.

No one’s game is perfect. No matter how strong your frames are, how good your base is, or fast you move your feet, you'll get scored on. When you find yourself past the point of no return, it's important to recognize that the position is lost AND you can win the scramble by getting to the next position first so you have an advantage over your opponent.

Lopes beat Evloev to the next position so he could make the best use of his kimura grip and still score. Just like every strike is not a knockout blow, not every submission attempt gets the tap. You can attack submissions to off balance your opponent, stand up, or just keep them on defense.

Sometimes Lopes beats his opponent to the next position and scores a submission win by doing so.

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