BJJ styles are easiest to understand through the people who built them. Two grapplers can know the same techniques and still look nothing alike on the mat, because a style is a choice about what to perfect, what to invent and how much risk to take.
Here are seven grapplers whose styles shaped the sport. One of them was my coach.
Gordon Ryan: a gifted student and a gifted teacher
Gordon Ryan is a student of the legendary coach John Danaher, who brought an academic approach to teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Gordon is a gifted student and Danaher is a gifted teacher, and the pairing turned out to be close to ideal.
Gordon worked hard on his style. Every movement is calibrated and calculated, and that puts him several steps ahead of other black belts.
As a purple belt he began travelling to New York to train with Danaher. He received his black belt from Garry Tonon, with Danaher sharing the decision, and the two later founded New Wave Jiu-Jitsu. His record shows what the system produces: 82 of his 102 recorded wins came by submission, and he won ADCC in 2017, 2019 and 2022.
Marcelo Garcia: the small man who took on the big ones
Marcelo is known for his butterfly guard and his X-guard. He is not a big man, yet he beat many athletes who were taller and heavier.
BJJ Heroes lists him at middleweight, 82 kg, and notes that he entered every open-weight division he could. As a junior he won an adult absolute final against an opponent of more than 300 pounds, by choke, after a 45-minute match.
He finished fights. Of his 85 recorded wins, 55 came by submission, most of them by rear naked choke and armbar. His high-elbow guillotine became so much his own that many grapplers now call it the Marcelotine.
His road to the top ran through judo too, and through the 2003 ADCC, which he entered as a last-minute replacement after losing the trials. He beat Renzo Gracie 9 to 0 on the way to the title. He won five IBJJF World titles and four ADCC titles, and BJJ Heroes ranks him among the best grapplers of all time.
Fernando "Terere" Augusto: speed passes from the top
Terere was known for his speed passes. BJJ Heroes credits him with developing positions such as the Toreando and the Leg Drag, two passes every grappler meets today.
He became a black belt world champion at 20 and was regarded as the best pound-for-pound grappler of the early 2000s. He preferred to fight from the top, and from a bad position he would spin out as fast and as explosively as he could.
In the 2003 World Championship final he submitted Marcelo Garcia with a triangle. As a coach he helped raise André Galvão, Rubens "Cobrinha" Charles, Michael Langhi and Lucas Lepri.
Alexandre "Café" Dantas: polished, aggressive, attacking
I met Café when I moved from Texas to Fort Lauderdale. He was my teacher, and he gave me my blue belt and my purple belt. I would say 75% of my techniques come from him.
What struck me most is that he has competed from the very beginning and still competes, and I do not remember him losing. His style is polished, precise and calibrated, and it is aggressive. He attacks.
His record backs that up. BJJ Heroes lists his favourite techniques as the toe hold and guard passing, and three of his seven recorded submission wins came by toe hold. In 2002 he won the World Championship without conceding a single point or advantage, and that year he beat Demian Maia and Marcelo Garcia, the latter 9 to 0.
Like many great grapplers, he started in judo, at the age of four. His nickname comes from "café com leite", Brazilian slang for a training partner who is easy to beat. He turned it into a name nobody laughs at.
Today he teaches at Gracie Barra in north Florida.
Eddie Bravo: a whole system from one position
What is interesting about Eddie Bravo is that he did not invent one move. He built a whole series of movements from one position. He used the twister, created Mission Control and a whole set of attacks from it, and gave his own names to new movements and positions.
The rubber guard was first seen in competition with Nino Schembri in the late 1990s. Bravo built a training system around it and took it further than anyone before him. His half guard trap, the lockdown, is another name he gave the sport.
His best-known match came at the 2003 ADCC. As a brown belt he submitted Royler Gracie, one of the favourites in the division, with a triangle. Soon after, he opened the first 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu school in Los Angeles. He became a teacher to a huge number of new athletes, and the whole 10th Planet movement is built on his style. A truly unique character.
Roger Gracie: fundamentals, taken to perfection
Roger Gracie is tall, big and very calm. His style is built on fundamentals, but he took them to perfection. He proves with his style that fundamentals work, and that is why they are called fundamentals.
He loves the cross-collar choke, and his style is calm and controlling. BJJ Heroes lists his favourite technique as the cross choke from the mount. Of his 76 recorded wins, 62 came by submission, and he was never submitted.
He won ten IBJJF World titles at black belt. At ADCC, a year after his black belt, he won both his weight class and the absolute, submitting all eight opponents, which nobody had done before. He also beat Marcus "Buchecha" Almeida, after a famous draw at Metamoris in 2012, with a choke from the back at Gracie Pro in 2017.
Jeff Glover: free, playful and unconventional
Jeff Glover is another unique character. He is not afraid to experiment, and he invented the donkey guard. He clowns around a lot, and his jiu-jitsu is free and spectacular, which makes him a joy to watch. His style is very unconventional.
The donkey guard started, according to BJJ Heroes, as a way to taunt and frustrate opponents. Glover turns his back to bait his opponent forward, then throws his legs back into a reverse closed guard. He first used it against Tom Barlow at the 2011 ADCC. It grew out of the kani basami, the scissor takedown that judo and most BJJ events ban, and gave him a legal way to force the engagement.
He fought mostly at featherweight, 70 kg, yet liked to enter the absolute, and he is known for his work in the deep half guard.
How to find your own style
At white belt, you do not need a style. Just get interested in these athletes and get to know how they play. At white belt the main job is to survive: learn to survive in jiu-jitsu.
At blue belt you can start experimenting. Try a move from one athlete you like, then from another. Stay curious and look for the first signs of your own direction.
Write down what you try and what works for you. A BJJ training journal turns those experiments into a style you can see.
If you want the story of how hard the blue belt can be, read Blue Belt Blues next.
Cover photo: Marcelo Garcia by William Burkhardt, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Videos are embedded from their owners' YouTube channels.
