So the old guy here was one of the original UFC #1 referees at the first ever fight and saw the behind the scenes fukkery. His position seems to be that the Gracie family somehow deliberately engineered the early fights so that they faced people unfamiliar with grappling(BJJ) so they would further their chance to win.
I.E. no wrestlers, judo, etc. which are people familiar with defending against simple take downs ....and deliberately so they weren't present.
I've said for a long time the issue isn't so much the effectiveness of BJJ. It's that noone knew how to defend against it or (when/in what way) they were susceptible to it. Once folks understood the ins and outs of BJJ striking came back strong. That said all this other stuff about them basically engineering early UFC fights to take advantage of the fact that most strikers were unfamiliar with grappling; I am actually surprised about and didn't know.
Generic example:
If you have a boxer and he is fighting a guy who is throwing kicks to the leg. The boxer is going to have major trouble ...not because kicking is some revolutionary new act but because the boxer doesn't know how to defend against those leg strikes or (when / in what way) he is susceptible to those leg strikes.
Once the in's and outs of those leg strikes are understood that boxing comes back into play heavy. The same type of simple phenomena occurs with grappling.
