There are plenty of reasons a BJJ practitioner may decide to leave their home academy, from moving to a new state, a better class schedule, or simply because they like another gym more. But even though the modern jiu-jitsu world is starting to let go of the “creonte” mentality, there are still traditionalists out there who think you should stay at one gym from your first day or jiu-jitsu to your last.
Kron Gracie himself appears to be among those who believe that you should always stay loyal to one academy, and he made his thoughts known to reporters during open workouts for UFC on ESPN+ 19. The discussion centered around Cub Swanson (who will face Gracie in a featherweight match this Saturday), who says he’d been kicked out of multiple jiu-jitsu gyms in California because the instructors wanted to “respect” Gracie, and as such, didn’t want to help improve his opponent’s grappling.
While that reasoning may raise some eyebrows, Gracie believes Swanson should’ve just kept training with his original team and avoided seeking outside training altogether. “The way I grew up in training and fighting martial arts is basically you have a clan and a team, and you’re with your team forever. If you leave your team, you’re [a] traitor. That’s the way I grew up. I have this instilled in me, and no matter what’s going on with me or my team, that’s my team. I don’t… get to just pick and choose as I go along with this career, whether it’s jiu-jitsu or whether it’s fighting. In the old times of war, you had a clan, and you can’t just go, ‘I didn’t like this clan this time; I’m going to go somewhere else,” he told MMA Junkie.
Will Swanson be able to out-grapple a Gracie despite his training troubles, or will Gracie add another win to his resume? We’ll find out when they face off on October 12.
