Tye Ruotolo Calls It 'The Ultimate Scissoring Championship' And Honestly We Needed That

Tye Ruotolo just handed us the most accurate rebrand in the history of competitive jiu-jitsu.

After defending his title at ONE Fight Night 41, Ruotolo was asked about the state of high-level no-gi competition. His answer: "When there's a lot of butt scooting from both sides, it just makes it difficult for fans." He paused. Then, with the delivery of a man who's clearly been thinking about this for a while: "I call it the ultimate scissoring championship."

Perfect. No notes.

He then added — and this is the part that elevates it from funny to transcendent — "I brought my girlfriend here. I don't want her to see me just in the 50/50 the whole match."

We've all been there. You talk someone into watching a superfight. You hype it up. You explain the stakes. You tell them these are the best grapplers on the planet. Then the match starts and both guys sit down simultaneously and begin aggressively crab-walking toward each other like two crabs disputing a parking space. Your significant other turns to you and says, "So... who's winning?" And you have to look them dead in the eye and say, "Technically neither of them, but also both of them. It's complicated."

The butt scoot discourse is older than most white belts at this point. But Ruotolo hit different because he's not some casual complaining from the stands. He just won the match. He could've pulled guard and scissored his way to a decision and nobody would've blamed him. Instead he chose to be exciting, then publicly roasted the alternative.

The man brought his girlfriend to a professional grappling event. He wanted her to see cool shit. That's all any of us want. That's the entire sport's marketing problem distilled into one sentence.

Somewhere, a 50/50 specialist is reading this and preparing a seventeen-paragraph Instagram caption about how "the game has evolved past your understanding." We look forward to not reading it.

Sources

• Tye Ruotolo Criticizes Butt Scooters In BJJ
• Tye Ruotolo on BJJ's Guard Pulling Problem

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked above. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.