The irony of this comment (and I am a Keenan fan) is that he has become the purple belt equivalent to today's competitive black belt scene. He can't hang with the current generation anymore competitively. He is still an amazing grappler and teacher, but is out of that competitive top group.
From all accounts Rickson was legitimately still amazing on the ground well into old age.
"Keenan Cornelius...modern day purple belt". <45>
That's actually hilarious if true, you talk about him like he's some old dinosaur the guy is barely out of his 20's.
Regards Rickson or any elite martial artist for that matter, I actually think its as big as if not a greater testament to their skill the ability to maintain a high level into old age and adapt their game accordingly with bodily decline. Prime is all very well but youth can make most things work, the real test is when some of these attributes decline or at least one learns how to maintain them well past the point that is normal for age.
It's just part of ageing and competing unfortunately. When you can jump online and get world class instruction from the other side of the world in 2 seconds, people are just simply going to be better in a technique based sport.
Yes this is true, no one could have predicted the rise of the Internet and the ease of spread of information. Hell, its been years since I trained Judo and grappling arts consistently aside from occasional dipping in from time to time, but I wouldnt be surprised with watching so many online instructionals my rear naked choke technique is probably better than a lot of old school high level BJJ belts and catch wrestlers just because I've seen so many variations and nuances of the hold and how to set it up and adjust it. This is not a situation that anyone could have predicted.
The question is, if the Gracies had known it was going to become like this, would they still have tried to popularize GJJ? The whole idea and model was the world would learn it was an effective style but you had to go to
them for the info and training, not any unaffiliated grappling teacher + online videos.
Old style Judo is such an awesome sport, but their whole history around removing techniques and blocking people from earning money in MMA is weird.
Not really. From the flip slide of it look at what happened to the Gracies, they got disenfranchised from their own art to a large extent and its only going to get worse. Why would the Kodokan want or allow that to happen to them? BJJ itself is arguably a disenfranchisement of Kosen Judo anyway.
Furthermore, from a GJJ perspective modern sport BJJ doesn't match what their original intent was ie self defence. So controlling what goes and what is included in the corpus of technique preserves the intent of the style.