TECHNIQUEoftheMonth

Eddie Bravo basking in glow of UFC's first-ever "twister," set for DVD release

by Derek Bolender on Apr 09, 2011 at 8:45 am ET

History was made recently when "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung forced Leonard Garcia to tap to the first-ever twister submission in the UFC history, which came this past month at UFC Fight Night 24.

Jung stated in his post-fight interview with UFC commentator Joe Rogan he had learned the technique by watching online instructional videos of 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu's Eddie Bravo.

Along with the Internet postings, Bravo already has a book on the market entitled "Mastering the Twister," and he currently is in the process of finalizing a DVD on the subject set for release in June or July.

In other words, the timing could not have been better.

Although Bravo did not invent the twister, a move that originates in wrestling (in which it is known as the guillotine), he is credited with successfully adapting and popularizing the move in the world of jiu jitsu.

"It was pretty amazing, pretty surreal," Bravo recently told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio) after seeing his baby hatch for the first time inside the octagon. "It was actually not the first twister in MMA. It was the first twister in the UFC, but there have been four or five other ones in smaller shows."

Shayna Baszler, Jason Day, Jason Chambers and Nick Thompson all have successfully executed the technique on the regional circuit in recent years, but none executed on a significant platform like Jung did.

"I'm shocked we haven't seen the twister more in MMA," Bravo said. "In my schools, it's normal. It's not that crazy. When people saw the twister in the UFC, that was the whole world watching. People freaked out. They didn't know what the hell that was."

You have to go all the way back to 1985 to trace the metamorphosis of the wrestling guillotine to the jiu-jitsu twister. It began on the wrestling mats in California at Santa Ana High School, where Bravo was a member of the school's wrestling team competing in the 119-pound weight division.

It would be two upperclassmen, one junior and one senior, who pulled him aside and taught him the move. They both thought it would be ideal for the small-framed Bravo, who lacked a bit in the strength department.

"Us weak wrestlers were forced to use our legs in unorthodox ways," Bravo said. "In wrestling they're called 'leg riders.' Leg riders are usually the ones that are good with the guillotine."

In his 20s, Bravo began to train in Brazilian jiu jitsu and find his calling. He brought the guillotine along with him.

"It was always the guillotine to me," he said. "My instructor Jean-Jacques Machado changed the name to the twister, him and his brother. They didn't know what it was. I told them it was a wrestling move I learned in the ninth grade called the guillotine. And there was already a guillotine in jiu jitsu, so they didn't call it the guillotine. They kept calling it the twister.

"Finally, they started calling me the twister, and I hated that. I thought that was the weakest nickname ever. It just reminder me of yellow, green and blue dots with kids playing the twister game."

While it initially may have been rather silly and turned off Bravo, he slowly warmed up to the idea once he started competing and finding success in jiu-jitsu tournaments.

"When people started calling me twister at school, I wanted to put a stop to it," he said. "It became cool in tournaments when I would compete. People in the audience would start calling out the twister. Then all the sudden it was cool. The nickname just stuck. People started calling me 'Twister Eddie' or just 'The Twister.'"

In time, "The Twister" would go on to teach the move to his students while he blossomed into one of the most respected jiu-jitsu instructors in the world.

Now that the aforementioned Jung has brought the twister to the forefront, Bravo fully expects to see the frequency of the maneuver to increase in MMA.

"That's usually the way MMA works," he said. "No one wants to add a new technique into their system until they see someone do it first. Now people are going to start to do it."

While he does expect the sheer volume of twister submission attempts to increase, he does not forecast it ever being prevalent. Fighters are often hesitant to expand their jiu-jitsu skill set, for whatever reason.

"It's very hard to add new weapons to your jiu-jitsu game when you're just sparring," Bravo said. "It's a very slow pace. You have to spend time just drilling without 100 percent resistance and keep drilling that move that is foreign to your game until it is in your DNA.

"We might see their positioning and submission defense evolve, but in order to add new weapons to your game, you have to spend time practicing and drilling them. Very few MMA fighters do that. There's just too much to train, and they're just too tired."

For those who do implement the twister, variations such as the banana split and the crotch ripper could eventually be on the way to the cage as the technique progresses.

Make sure you keep your eyes peeled. "The Twister" most certainly will be doing so.

from MMAJunkie.com