Eddie Cummings VS the Danaher Death Squad
A welcome break from my mundane existence and a lucky break for the Jiu Jitsu community.
Great news! Leglock DVDs will soon become cheaper, more diverse, and more widely available.
“When men of iron will live in close association, there are bound to be occasional clashes”. That’s how Bertie Wooster characterized an argument with his butler, and it’s equally applicable to the conflict between leg-lock master Eddie Cummings and his old teammates. The cause doesn’t seem to have been malice on either side. It’s simply a question of: “how long can a leg-lock specialist keep up a friendly relationship with his teammates? The fact that we are only having this conversation now, after Cummings and his former teammates have achieved success and recognition, is a testimony to the patience and good character of everyone involved.
As the name implies, the martial arts are a medium of self expression. You can’t “choose” to be an elite leg locker anymore than you can choose to be a poet. The soul decides the form of it’s emanations, and the mind an body are merely a conduit. For me, martial arts has to feel like a dialogue in which I ask the opponent a series of questions, and trap him with his own answers. Bruce Lee felt that a fight was like a “small play” in which he was the star performer. By it’s nature, leg-locking is a test of concentration, like holding a legal deposition. The attacker forces the opponent to answer an endless series of precise questions repeated over and over again with minor variations. He persists until his victim fatigues mentally and makes a mistake. There are many paths to victory, but you can’t perfect, much less invent a system unless it agrees with your character, the weapon chooses the warrior so to speak.
Leg-locks are fast and decisive techniques. Heel hooks in particular, work well against lager opponents, and are neglected and thus poorly understood by the BJJ community. These attributes made the techniques Eddie’s muse presented him central to his teammate’s success under the submission-only rule sets that became popular as they began their careers. Unfortunately, leg-locks are also a cold, unfriendly, and isolating means of achieving victory. The enormous value of Eddie’s contribution contained the source of the current conflict.
Most styles of grappling are highly personal. The goal is to connect to the opponent, feel his balance and intent, understand him better than he understands himself and then move him into an impossible position. There’s a lot of movement, improvisation. Most ranges of grappling are full of moments where you find yourself thinking “wow, nice one!”. If the guy is much better than you, you can’t help feeling happy for him and admitting to yourself that he “earned” his victories. You also end up with the feeling that the process of losing improved your body awareness and otherwise taught you something about jiu jitsu.
Leg-locks are all about isolation and mobilization. The goal is to get your opponent sitting helplessly on his behind, unable to reach you with his arms and unable to effectively use his legs. Thus immobilized, he’s in the frightening position of seated spectator to a highly efficient attack on the joints of his body least capable of self repair. The key to this art is concentration, and a willingness to risk the health of both ones’ own knees and the knees of one’s training partners. It’s the kind of steely indifference to human costs common to surgeons and a certain type of historic leader. Experiencing it is more like watching a card trick than receiving a lesson, without an explanation all you learn is that the hand is quicker than the eye.
The trouble is, once the historic moment passes, and the surgery is over, the steely indifference remains. Without the potential benefits of opening up an undiscovered continent of grappling possibilities, the utility of having a guy around who’s always yanking on your legs lessens considerably. With friends like Gordon Ryan, and Garry Tonon having incorporated as much leg-locking into their game as suits their more playful an athletic natures, it was clearly time for Eddie to pull out a magic umbrella and fly to another school where people need a leg-locker to take their gym to the next level. Like death, this change isn’t just inevitable, “it is a consummation devoutly to be wished!”
I spent the formative years of my adulthood in China, constantly shooting my mouth of about what “western culture” was like. I used to wow my Chinese friends by telling them that “To an American man, it’s much more embarrassing to have a public fight with a male friend than to discover that one’s wife is having an affair.” I believed that at the time, and on average it might have been true. If your wife is having an affair, it shows there was clearly something to like about her in the first place. My theory was “a public fight with a friend shows poor self control and bad judgment.” I never could have anticipated something like these Instagram feuds.
Nowadays, nothing is embarrassing. Public feuds between comrades are a form of recreation. The “sin” of adultery as is a mundane anachronism, although it persists as a source of financial and social disaster. Even intellectual honesty is generally recognized as too high a standard for a person to aspire to. Although the potential sources of shame decrease everyday, the allure of gossip remains undiminished. If there’s no source of embarrassment, then going through other people’s dirty laundry on the internet can’t do any real harm. At least, that’s the flimsy excuse I’m using for writing this nonsense.
