SBG founder Matt Thornton shared his candid assessment of Krav Maga based on his direct experience with practitioners. Thornton recounted multiple instances where Krav Maga instructors preparing for high-level certification tests would train at his gym, only to be thoroughly outmatched by BJJ blue belts with roughly two years of training.
“My personal opinion of Krav Maga is it’s just really bad MMA,” Thornton stated, explaining that he would often need to teach these Krav Maga instructors basic survival techniques against chokes and fundamental movement principles. Despite their struggles on the mat, these same practitioners would later report passing their Krav Maga instructor tests after just a week of supplemental training at his facility.
“I’ve had people come into my gym who were getting ready to take one of their higher-level instructor tests down in Los Angeles. They would come to prepare for it at my school, and I would put them on the mat with one of my blue belts.”
“Now, a blue belt is the first belt you get after white belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Depending on how athletic you are and how much you train, it can take anywhere from two to seven years to earn. Most of these people had been training for about two years at most—so, 24 months—and had a little bit of MMA experience, meaning some boxing and wrestling.”
“Inevitably, they would wind up getting literally wiped off the mat by my blue belts. I would have to explain very basic things to them—how to survive a choke, how to protect themselves, how to move correctly. They would get a lot out of it, do private lessons for a week, and leave happy. They would go down to their test, tell me they aced it, and I would always think:’Why are you even training that?'”
“You just aced a test after training for a week and getting completely schooled by people with less than 20 months of experience.”
Thornton emphasizes that real fights inevitably involve boxing, wrestling, and ground fighting elements. He suggests that for practical self-defense, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu offers particular advantages, especially when dealing with situations where escape isn’t possible and grappling becomes necessary. The ability to learn these skills without sustaining head trauma makes BJJ particularly valuable for self-defense training.
This perspective appears validated by recent trends in military and law enforcement training. Thornton notes that the U.S. military has adopted a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu-based combat system, with many special operations personnel holding advanced BJJ ranks. He also shared an example of how BJJ-trained police officers, like his former student Chad, could effectively handle challenging situations that might otherwise require multiple officers or escalated force.
