When you train, you train with your teammates. You all work to make eachother better. However, if I was training with a team mate I know I would have to compete against, I would intentionally withhold aspects of my game, I would refuse to show methods to counter different things I am doing and, overall, I would work to make myself better but keep my teammates who pose a threat to me ‘just good enough’ to be threatening, but not good enough to beat me.

The gentleman’s agreement removes that. If two people from the same school face eachother, they should be given the right to choose whether or not they wish to compete. This preserves the family and mutual benefit we offer eachother as teammates. Perhaps, as Chris suggested, if the income potential of a professional BJJ competitor was enough to make a living off of, this would be a different issue. As it is now, however, it is the rightful place of th ecompetitor to choose where and how he competes.

Without one of those changing, and you can only change the first one, this problem is never going away. All the suggested rules can at best shift the problem around a bit.

When two fighters meet, they or their coach can always decide who wins. If they have to ‘fight’ they can decide how that will go. It’s impossible to prove if the fight is real or planned, and a rule saying you could DQ people for planning a fight just opens up a huge possibility for controversy when one day someone decides to DQ people who didn’t plan anything.

If you put them on the same side of the bracket, this same situation just happens in the semis instead of the finals. Then you have two competitors who possibly met in the semis only because of a rule to avoid close-outs and protect the finals, but those could have been the best two fighters out there. This is always a possibility with any bracket, but a specific rule requiring the same team on the same side guarantees it in the case of teammates and would leave audiences wondering if the ‘final’ they saw was really the best two fighting. After all the close-outs recently, a change to this rule would ensure the finals always happen, but make them mean less when teammates met in the semis. It makes sure there’s a fight at the end, but it makes it less likely the two who make it to the end are the ones that should be there.

Regardless of people’s own feelings about other’s motivations, you’ll never be able to make all competitors agree on how much the team matters over the individual or the audience matters over the competitors.

Without restricting entry to one competitor per team, this problem will always be there. It’s just a logical symptom of being one of the few sports where related competitors can be in the same bracket.

It seems to me that if the goal is to make sure the black belt absolute always happens, without degrading what it means to win it because you got to skip the semi finals, then entry has to be restricted. Restricting entry to all divisions this way would cut down too severely on the number of fighters, but at the top level the pool is already small enough for this to work. Either that needs to happen, or close-outs need to just become an accepted part of jiu-jitsu.

At mundials last year Two Alliance? teammates refused to fight each other in the finals.

I’m not sure why I’m so fired up about this topic, and this is not directed at you personally, but I do disagree with your viewpoint.

Quite simply, if someone doesn’t want to compete against a teammate, then one should not enter … a competition. Stick with rolling and in-school tournaments, if your school offers them. It all comes down to the fact that every tournament is an individual event.

I like Rowdy’s idea of having the two fight an exhibition; that way, the fans will see for themselves who the better fighter is, and honor is satisfied.

But personally, I would like to see the two best fight in the end.

Last I checked, BJJ was an individual competition–not a team sport (regardless of the fact that two competitors in a division may come from the same school or organization). There are only 2 competitors on the mat at a time for a given match.

I agree with rowdy–if you refuse to fight, you don’t place.

Even in team sports, it’s not like the New York Giants get two entries in the NFL and might end up playing each other in the Super Bowl. However, on this point some good suggestions that preserve matches for the fans have already been proposed.

That said, those other ideas (placing competitors from the same team on the same side of the bracket or only allowing one person from a school) should eliminate the loss of fights.

personally, i would never do this.

maybe the rule needs to change and could be as simple as how people are seeded to changing the rule to only allow one person from each school in each class. or as severe as if you don’t ‘fight’ you don’t place.

i really think it all comes back to where we want bjj to go. if you are the type who wants it in schools, the olympics and such then things like this don’t help.

i also don’t believe the injury excuse. if you have fought your way through a division you already opened yourself up to injury and really statistically one more match is not raising the chances to an unacceptable level.