Competition Selects for What It Rewards

How competition rules quietly reshape fighters, techniques, and entire martial arts

Recently, the West Point Combatives Team competed against the Navy Jiu-Jitsu Team under submission-only rules associated with Eddie Bravo.

There were highly skilled fighters on both sides. That should be said up front. The technical level was high, the pace was aggressive, and the athletes were committed to finishing fights. And, for the record, Army won, again. ;-)

But that’s not the interesting part.

What stood out was how both teams fought.

Across the matches, there was a consistent pattern: aggressive pursuit of submissions, but relatively little emphasis on controlling the opponent. Positions that are traditionally considered dominant in a fight, because they allow you to strike, disengage, or impose damage, were often passed through or abandoned in favor of immediate submission attempts.

From within the rule set, this made sense.

Submission-only formats reward finishing. They do not reward positional control. They do not reward maintaining dominant position unless it leads directly to a submission. And they do not account for striking, something that is always present in real fighting.

This did not happen in a vacuum. When submissions re-emerged in the wake of the early UFCs, they captured people’s attention. They looked like a kind of magic fight-ender, sudden, technical, decisive. Entire systems began to orient around that moment. Submission-only formats are, in many ways, an extension of that fascination.

But that focus obscures something important.

In actual fighting, the ability to control and dominate an opponent physically often matters more than the ability to finish them instantly. This is one of the reasons wrestlers have consistently transitioned so well into MMA. Wrestling is built around controlling another human being—taking them down, holding them there, and imposing position. That turns out to be directly transferable to fighting in a way that many submission-focused systems, by themselves, are not.

So the athletes adapted.

They fought for what mattered in that environment.

And in doing so, they revealed something important.

In an upcoming article I am going to examine the major submission grappling rule sets in use today, their structure, their incentives, and their utility as tools for training fighters. That discussion will include systems like International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, Abu Dhabi Combat Club, and submission-only formats like the one used in this match. It will also include an examination of the Army Combatives competition rule set and why it was designed the way it was.

But before we can evaluate any of those systems, we need to understand something more fundamental.

Rules are not neutral.

They do not simply regulate competition. They shape how fighters train, what actions they default to under pressure, and what they will do when they later find themselves in a real fight. Over time, they reshape the structure of the art itself, selecting for certain behaviors, reinforcing them, and allowing others to disappear.

If you don’t understand that mechanism, you will misunderstand everything that follows.

You will look at a system and see techniques, without seeing the incentives that produced them. You will see athletes, without understanding why they fight the way they do. You will argue about realism without recognizing that every competition system with live energy is perfectly realistic, within the environment created by its rules.

So before we can have a meaningful discussion about modern grappling competitions, and their relationship to fighting ability, we need a foundation.

We need to understand how rule sets evolve, how they reshape the arts they govern, and how the relationship between training and fighting changes over time.

That is what this article is about.

Starting Point, Fighting

All martial arts competition systems begin with a simple, practical purpose: to encourage and measure real fighting ability. They are created as training tools, structured environments where practitioners can test themselves against resisting opponents, refine their skills, and develop the attributes required to prevail in violence.

At the outset, the purpose is clear: the rules exist to prepare fighters for real combat.

But the moment competition takes hold, something begins to change.

Competitors, quite rationally, begin optimizing for victory within the rules they are given. Not for fighting in the abstract, not for some distant real-world application, but for winning this match, under these conditions. Coaches refine strategies that produce consistent results. Athletes specialize in what works. Organizations formalize and clarify rules to ensure fairness, repeatability, and spectator understanding.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the purpose inverts.

The rules no longer serve to prepare fighters for real combat. Fighters begin to train to win the competition within them.

From a training perspective, competition is always a selection mechanism. It tells people what matters. If the competition rewards takedowns, athletes develop takedowns. If it rewards positional control, they become masters of control. If it rewards submissions, they hunt submissions relentlessly. And if it does not reward something, striking awareness, weapon control, disengagement, that skill will atrophy or disappear.

Not because athletes are ignorant, but because they are rational. They train to win.

Over time, this produces a kind of evolutionary drift. Techniques that succeed under the rule set are selected, refined, and amplified. Techniques that do not are discarded, even if they remain effective in actual combat. The system becomes increasingly efficient at producing winners of the game, and increasingly indifferent to anything outside of it (Poliakoff, 1987). Competition selects for what it rewards.

This pattern has repeated itself across martial cultures and across time.

All martial arts competition systems begin with a simple, practical purpose: to encourage and measure real fighting ability. But if you want to understand how they drift, how the game slowly replaces the fight, there is no better place to start than boxing.

Because boxing has already gone through the entire cycle.

The Bare-Knuckle Era: Fighting as the Foundation

Early prizefighting in England operated under what became known as the London Prize Ring rules (Broughton, 1743/1997). These were not “sport” rules in the modern sense. They were closer to a negotiated framework for settling violent disputes under some degree of order.

A round did not last a fixed amount of time. It ended when a fighter went down, whether from a strike, a throw, or simply being knocked off balance. After that, there was a short rest period, and the next round began when both fighters came up to the “scratch” line at the center.

Wrestling was allowed. Clinching, trips, and throws were part of the game. Fighters could seize each other, off-balance each other, and send each other to the ground to end a round. Striking was central, but it was embedded within a broader understanding of fighting.

And perhaps most importantly, the hands were bare.

That single fact shaped everything.

Without gloves, the human hand becomes a fragile weapon. The skull is hard. Knuckles break. Cuts open easily. A poorly placed punch could end not just the fight, but a fighter’s .career, and livelihood. There were no modern orthopedic interventions, no surgical pinning, no reliable rehabilitation protocols. A broken hand was often a career-ending injury (Gorn, 1986).

So fighters adapted.

They punched differently, more vertically aligned fists, more measured shots, fewer punches or combinations. They targeted the body more frequently. They valued positioning, balance, and control because reckless exchanges carried enormous cost. The pace was slower, but the stakes of every exchange were higher.

In other words, the rules, minimal as they were, still reflected the realities of violence.

Why the Rules Changed

The shift away from bare-knuckle fighting did not happen because people suddenly misunderstood fighting. It happened because of practical pressures.

Bare-knuckle fights were brutal, unpredictable, and often prolonged. They produced severe facial injuries, broken hands, and public discomfort. They were also difficult to regulate and commercialize. For the sport to survive, and grow, it needed structure (Gorn, 1986).

Enter the Marquess of Queensberry Rules (Queensberry Rules, 1867).

These introduced timed rounds, mandated the use of gloves, and restricted wrestling. The stated purpose was to civilize the sport, make it safer, and make it more appealing to spectators. Gloves reduced superficial damage to the face. Timed rounds created rhythm and predictability. Removing grappling simplified the contest into a more easily understood form.

But each of these changes carried second-order effects.

Gloves did not just protect the face, they protected the hands. And once the hands were protected, fighters could strike with far greater force and frequency without fear of immediate injury. This opened the door to combinations, headhunting, and sustained exchanges that would have been prohibitively risky in a bare-knuckle context.

The anecdote often told about James J. Corbett, “Gentleman Jim,” captures this transition. Corbett, who bridged the bare-knuckle and gloved eras, preferred to fight under the newer rules in part because gloves protected the hands and allowed a longer career. He built his style around that reality, using footwork, distance, and repeated clean strikes rather than the slower, more cautious exchanges of bare-knuckle fighting. Where earlier fighters had to preserve their hands, Corbett could afford to use them. He is often associated with the shift toward the more technical, movement-based style that defines modern boxing (Gorn, 1986).

Gloves were not just a safety measure. They were an economic one.

They allowed fighters to fight more often, extend their careers, and build a profession rather than a series of one-off brutal contests.

The Technical Transformation

Once gloves, timed rounds, and restricted grappling were in place, the evolutionary pressure shifted.

Fighters began optimizing for what worked under the new rules.

Head movement became more pronounced because gloves allowed fighters to throw far more punches to the head without breaking their hands, making prolonged exchanges at punching range increasingly common. High guards developed because gloves could absorb impact. Combinations flourished because the hands could survive repeated contact. The jab emerged as a central tool, not just to strike, but to control distance and accumulate scoring.

At the same time, other elements disappeared.

The integration of grappling vanished. In bare-knuckle boxing, the clinch was still part of the fight. Fighters wrestled for position, off-balanced one another, fought for underhooks and head control, and used trips and throws to put opponents on the ground and end rounds. The transition between striking and grappling was fluid because it still reflected the realities of fighting at close range. Under modern rules, the clinch became something different, less a fighting position than a temporary interruption in the action, quickly broken up by the referee. The ability to off-balance and throw an opponent, once a normal part of boxing, became illegal. The emphasis on conserving the hands diminished. The strategic pacing of bare-knuckle fighting gave way to the rhythm of rounds and judges’ scoring.

The sport became increasingly specialized around gloved striking exchanges, timed rounds, and the demands of modern competition.

But it also became something different.

A modern boxer is an extraordinary athlete, optimized for a specific environment: gloved hands, timed rounds, no grappling, and a scoring system that rewards clean strikes. Within that environment, the level of skill is unmatched.

But the system was no longer evolving around the realities of fighting. It was evolving around the realities of competition under the rules.

None of this was accidental. None of it was the result of confusion or failure.

It was the natural outcome of competition as a selection mechanism.

Once the rules changed, fighters adapted. Once fighters adapted, the techniques evolved. Once the techniques evolved, the identity of the sport shifted. And over time, the connection to the original purpose, measuring and preparing for real fighting, became less direct.

Winning the game replaces winning fights as the goal.

And boxing, perhaps more clearly than any other martial art, shows how and why that happens.

Judo: From Character Development to Spectator Optimization

If boxing shows how a fighting system evolves over time, Judo shows how it can be reshaped when its purpose changes.

Because judo did not begin as a sport built for spectators. It began as a developmental system, designed by a teacher with a broader aim.

Jigoro Kano was first and foremost an educator. He served as principal of the Tokyo Higher Normal School, which was Japan’s leading teacher-training institution, and later became part of what is now the University of Tsukuba, and later held senior roles within Japan’s educational ministry. His work in jujutsu was not simply about preserving techniques or winning fights. It was about developing people (Kano, 1932; Bennett, 2015).

Kano’s stated principles, seiryoku zen’yō (maximum efficient use of energy) and jita kyōei (mutual welfare and benefit), make this clear. Judo was designed as a method for cultivating disciplined, capable individuals who could apply effort intelligently and act constructively within society. The conscious path was technical mastery. The designed effect was character.

Competition had a role in this system, but it was not the purpose.

It was a tool.

Through randori, practitioners tested themselves against resistance. They learned timing, balance, and control. They experienced failure, adapted, and improved. The rules made this possible at scale by reducing catastrophic injury while preserving enough realism to develop skill.

In that environment, the rules served development.

Throws, pins, chokes, and joint locks all had a place because they reflected real control over another person. The system remained broad because the goal was not to produce specialists in a narrow domain, but well-rounded practitioners shaped through pressure and practice.

This is what we would now call a developmental sport.

The goal is to build the character of the people who participate.

The Shift in Purpose

As judo spread internationally and grew in popularity, a second purpose emerged.

It became a sport.

And at the highest levels, particularly with its inclusion in the Olympic Games, it became part of something else entirely: the entertainment ecosystem.

This shift matters because it changes the incentives.

Professional and Olympic sports are, in practical terms, part of the entertainment business. Professional and Olympic sports are, in practical terms, part of the entertainment business. Their purpose is to gain and hold the attention of an audience in order to sell tickets or advertising. To do that, the sport must remain entertaining to watch. That creates pressure for visible action, clear scoring, decisive moments, and a pace that keeps spectators engaged.

This places a premium on qualities that are not necessarily aligned with the original developmental purpose:

Clarity over complexity.
Pace over depth.
Spectacle over completeness.

None of these are inherently wrong. But they are different.

And once they become dominant, the rules begin to change to support them.

Rule Changes Under New Incentives

In the Olympic era, judo rules increasingly emphasized what was most visible and compelling: the clean, decisive throw.

Ippon, the perfect throw ending the match immediately, became the ideal. It is dramatic, unambiguous, and easily understood by spectators.

To support that outcome, other elements of the art were gradually constrained.

Groundwork time was shortened. If progress was not immediate, the referee stood the athletes up. This reduced long, complex exchanges on the ground that were difficult for audiences to follow.

Leg grabs, once a normal part of judo, were restricted and eventually banned. Techniques that led to lower, more defensive stances or slower engagements were discouraged in favor of upright, dynamic throwing exchanges.

Penalties were introduced to enforce engagement and prevent passivity, ensuring that matches maintained pace and visual action.

Each of these changes made sense within the new purpose.

But the purpose had changed.

Posture as the Telltale Sign

Nowhere is this shift clearer than in posture.

In a real fight, especially one that includes strikes, upright posture is functional. It allows mobility, awareness, and the ability to strike while defending against strikes. A bent-over posture exposes the head, limits vision, reduces the ability to generate power, and creates vulnerability, particularly to knees and upper-body attacks.

The fighting systems that Kano drew from operated within that reality. Even when grappling, posture was shaped by the ever-present possibility of being struck.

But once striking was removed from judo competition, that constraint disappeared.

From a purely grappling perspective, a lower, more defensive posture became effective. It protected against throws, lowered the center of gravity, and made it more difficult for an opponent to establish control.

So athletes adapted.

And then the rules intervened.

Penalties were introduced for excessively defensive posture. Competitors were required to remain upright, to engage, to maintain the visual and structural form associated with throwing.

But this posture was no longer being enforced by the underlying logic of fighting.

It was being enforced by the rulebook.

The system had to recreate artificially what had once emerged naturally.

Grip Fighting and the New Game

At the same time, another system expanded to fill the space left by the removal of strikes: grip fighting.

In a real fight, distance is governed by the threat of being hit. Engagement is shaped by urgency. You cannot stand in front of an opponent and methodically work for control without consequence.

In judo, you can.

With striking removed, athletes developed an intricate system of grip acquisition and control. Matches often hinge on who establishes dominant grips, sleeve, collar, inside control, over-the-back positions. From these grips, throws are launched with precision.

It is highly technical and highly effective within the rules.

But it exists because the environment allows it.

The absence of strikes removes urgency. It allows prolonged engagement at close range, where both athletes can work deliberately for positional advantage without immediate consequence.

What emerges is a new equilibrium, one optimized for the rule set, not for fighting.

The Result

Modern judo produces extraordinary athletes. The level of timing, balance, and explosive power required to execute high-level throws is exceptional.

But it produces them within a narrower slice of the original system.

The breadth that once reflected a general approach to fighting has been shaped into a specialized sport, one defined by the demands of competition and, at the highest levels, by the demands of spectatorship.

The Lesson

Judo makes the broader principle unmistakable.

Competition does not just test an art. It reshapes it.

Change what the competition rewards, and athletes change how they train.
Change how they train, and you change how they fight.
Change how they fight long enough, and you change the art itself.

Kano’s original system used competition as a tool for development, for building capable practitioners and, ultimately, strong character.

Modern judo, at its highest levels, uses competition as a product, optimized for clarity, pace, and audience engagement.

Both produce excellence.

But they produce different kinds of excellence.

And unless the original purpose is actively preserved, it will not remain the guiding force.

It will be replaced, first by the logic of competition, and then by the logic of entertainment.

Wrestling: How Rules Split a Single Tradition into Different Fighters

If boxing shows long-term drift and Judo shows deliberate reshaping under new incentives, Wrestling shows something just as important:

You can take a single, deeply rooted tradition, and by changing the rules, produce entirely different kinds of athletes from it.

Because wrestling did not begin as a narrow sport. It was one of the oldest and most universal forms of fighting.

A Fighting Art with Its Own Culture

Across Europe, wrestling was not just a pastime, it was a foundational fighting skill.

Medieval combat systems included grappling as an essential component. Knights trained in it because weapons fail, distances collapse, and fights go to the clinch (Anglo, 2000). Historical accounts, even stories like the famous challenge between the kings of England and France, where Henry VIII and Francis I met during the Field of the Cloth of Gold and engaged in a friendly wrestling match, reflect a cultural understanding that a warrior, and by extension a ruler, should be physically capable of dominating another man (Richardson, 2013). These were not only sovereign leaders, but warriors by profession. The fact that such a contest really took place illustrates how deeply embedded grappling was in elite martial culture. When Francis reportedly threw Henry, the moment carried symbolic weight beyond the match itself. It was a public demonstration of physical competence, status, and personal capability, traits expected of men who commanded armies and ruled states.

Wrestling was embedded in that world.

It carried its own culture, one tied to strength, toughness, and direct physical contest. It was not separate from fighting. It was part of it.

Later, in the 19th century, this tradition continued through catch-as-catch-can wrestling. This was a rough, practical form of grappling where the goal was simple: control the opponent and finish the match, either by pin or by submission. Joint locks and other finishing holds were legitimate tools. The system still reflected fighting, even as it became more organized.

This is the point of departure.

Because from here, modern wrestling diverges, not by accident, but by design.

Folkstyle: Character First, Fighting Second

American folkstyle wrestling emerged from the rougher catch-as-catch-can tradition, but it was transformed inside schools and colleges into something more developmental than combative. The goal was not simply to preserve fighting skill. It was to build young men.

The likely central figure here is Edward C. Gallagher. Gallagher was born in Kansas, but made his mark at Oklahoma A&M, later Oklahoma State (Oklahoma Historical Society, n.d.). More than simply developing techniques or organizing competitions, Gallagher helped shape collegiate wrestling into a developmental system aimed at building toughness, discipline, resilience, and character in young men. Wrestling was no longer merely a method of fighting. It became a tool of education and formation. The emphasis shifted toward conditioning, perseverance, self-control, and the ability to continue under pressure, qualities schools believed were valuable far beyond the mat.

The rule structure that became collegiate wrestling was formalized through men like Gallagher and Raymond G. Clapp of Nebraska, who published collegiate wrestling rules in 1927, just before the first NCAA wrestling championship in 1928 (Clapp, 1927).

The crucial change was the gradual removal of submissions and other painful finishing holds as wrestling moved from rough catch-as-catch-can contests into schools and collegiate athletics. Earlier catch wrestling traditions had allowed a wide range of joint locks, neck cranks, toe holds, and “punishment holds,” with victory coming by either pin or submission. As amateur and collegiate wrestling developed in the early twentieth century, those techniques were progressively restricted or eliminated in favor of positional control and the pin.

Importantly, these techniques had to be specifically prohibited because they were still widely known within wrestling culture. The rule books did not ban imaginary techniques. They banned techniques wrestlers already understood and used. Early collegiate rules contain long lists of prohibited holds, strangles, twisting leg locks, punishment holds, and potentially injurious submissions, precisely because wrestling still retained much of its older catch-as-catch-can inheritance.

By the time collegiate wrestling was formally standardized through NCAA competition, however, the developmental purpose of the sport had become clear. The emphasis was no longer on finishing an opponent through pain or injury, but on controlling him physically, breaking him down positionally, and demonstrating dominance through effort, conditioning, and perseverance. The 1951 NCAA wrestling guide reflects this mature form of the sport: the pin remained the decisive ending, while numerous dangerous holds and submission techniques were prohibited (NCAA, 1951).

That made the sport safer for schools, but it also made it more grueling. Without submissions as a quick finish, the wrestler had to dominate positionally, maintain control, and break the opponent over time. That served the developmental purpose extremely well.

Freestyle: Olympic Incentives, Dynamic Outcomes

Freestyle wrestling emerges from a different set of pressures, those of international competition and the Olympic movement (United World Wrestling, 2016).

Here, the goal is not just to test athletes, but to present a sport that is engaging, understandable, and compelling to a global audience.

The rules shift accordingly.

Instead of prioritizing sustained control, freestyle emphasizes exposure, turning an opponent’s back to the mat, even briefly, for points. High-amplitude throws are rewarded. Matches are structured to encourage action and scoring.

So athletes adapt.

They become explosive. They take more risks. They develop techniques designed to create immediate scoring opportunities rather than prolonged dominance.

The result is a fast-paced, dynamic form of wrestling that is exciting to watch and effective within its rules.

But it is shaped by those rules.

Greco-Roman: Aesthetic Constraint, Technical Specialization

Greco-Roman wrestling followed a different path. It was not merely a safer version of wrestling. It was also an aesthetic project.

United World Wrestling credits Jean Exbrayat, a soldier from Napoleon’s army, with establishing basic rules for “flat hand” wrestling, including the prohibition on holds below the waist. Exbrayat distinguished this style from rougher strongman contests that allowed striking, dangerous holds, or pain-compliance techniques (United World Wrestling, 2016).

The later name “Greco-Roman” reflected the 19th-century desire to connect the sport with classical antiquity. The point was not historical accuracy. The point was image. The style was meant to look upright, noble, and classically beautiful, similar to how wrestling was portrayed in Greek and Roman artwork.

The technical consequence was enormous. Remove attacks below the waist, and the entire sport becomes upper-body wrestling: clinches, lifts, throws, body locks, and par terre turns. Modern rules still preserve that distinction: Greco-Roman forbids grasping below the beltline or using the legs offensively, while freestyle permits leg attacks and trips.

CONCLUSION

What emerges across these systems is not confusion, but consistency.

Competition does not drift randomly. It drifts predictably.

It selects for what it rewards.

And what it selects becomes what the art is.

Boxing shows how safety and economics reshape technique.
Judo shows how purpose reshapes rules.
Wrestling shows how rules reshape athletes.

In every case, the mechanism is the same.

Athletes adapt to what wins.

And over time, what wins defines the system.

The only real question is whether that system remains aligned with its original purpose, or whether, as so often happens, winning the game replaces fighting ability as the goal.

References

Anglo, S. (2000). The martial arts of Renaissance Europe. Yale University Press.

Bennett, A. (2015). Kendo: Culture of the sword. University of California Press.

Broughton, J. (1743/1997). Broughton’s rules of boxing. (Reprinted in modern collections of early boxing regulations).

Clapp, R. G. (1927). Collegiate wrestling rules. University of Nebraska.

Gorn, E. J. (1986). The manly art: Bare-knuckle prize fighting in America. Cornell University Press.

Kano, J. (1932). Judo: The contribution of judo to education. Journal of Health and Physical Education, 3(5), 37–40.

National Collegiate Athletic Association. (1951). Official NCAA wrestling guide. NCAA.

Oklahoma Historical Society. (n.d.). Edward C. Gallagher. Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. https://www.okhistory.org

Poliakoff, M. B. (1987). Combat sports in the ancient world: Competition, violence, and culture. Yale University Press.

Queensberry Rules. (1867). Marquess of Queensberry rules. London.

Richardson, G. (2013). The Field of Cloth of Gold. Yale University Press.

United World Wrestling. (2016). Wrestling 101: Origins and facts about Greco-Roman wrestling.

https://uww.org