Product Description

BJ Penn, MMA Welterweight and Lightweight World Champion, is the only non-Brazilian to win the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championships and is a fighter in the UFC. "Mixed Martial Arts" outlines his revolutionary system of fighting, detailing techniques, fight against the cage and formulate strategies based upon your personal attributes and strengths.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60497 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 308 pages

About the Author
Erich Krauss is a professional Muay Thai kickboxer who has trained and competed in Thailand. Glen Cordoza is a professional mixed martial arts fighter and co-author of Muay Thai Unleashed: Technique and Strategy of Thailand's Warrior Elite.

Customer Reviews

The Book of Knowledge - Near perfect
BJ Penn is regarded as one of the best pound-for-pound mixed martial artists in the world. If you watch one of his fights, you will quickly discover that he is a force to be reckoned with. He is currently Lightweight Champion of the UFC and is amongst the top contenders in the Welterweight division. He has a solid ground game, unnatural balance and crisp striking skills - a true well-rounded fighter.

So what do you get when a fighter of his calibre writes a book? A vital asset to any practitioner that's what.

The book starts with an entertaining foreword that acts as a nice introduction to Penn's fighting career. He also puts you into the right mentality with the training + drills sections. From there onwards it moves towards the many techniques listed within the book.

The book is clearly split into appropriate sections in a logical order. Stand-up to clinch to ground. The techniques are given a brief write up which is accompanied by pictures from multiple camera angles and easy-to-follow captions. This is especially useful for any submissions novice, as some techniques could be made difficult to learn from just one camera angle.

All techniques within this book provide a wealth of information on the basics of MMA. However, if you are considering a move into MMA this book alone is unlikely to lead you to successful career. It only covers the basic techniques from every field.

I used this book as a teaching tool at my MMA class; newcomers can easily follow the instructions and it allows them to gradually improve all aspects of their game whilst providing tips here and there. At the start of each section there is an introduction and the `DO's' and `DON'Ts' list make for a very informative read.

PROS-

Covers a wide variety of techniques
Multiple camera angles
Effective instructional captions
Can set the foundation of a mixed martial artist to be

CONS-
Techniques from every aspect (striking, clinch work, throws and submissions) are very basic. The ground-game section for example covers the basic submissions such as RNC, guillotine choke, arms bar, kimura, americana, omaplata and triangle choke. Any experienced BJJ/Judo guys buying this book may want to consider an additional purchase if they wish to advance their own ground game. The same goes for any strikers out there - there are limited striking techniques, little to none on kicks. This is why one star is deducted.


In conclusion, this is an excellent book and it provides many of the most effective techniques used to by champions today. It sets the tone for any amateur and anyone who is interesting in the ever-growing sport of mixed martial arts.

This book is indeed a book of priceless knowledge and a must buy (unless you wanna get TKO'ed by some basic technique).

Setting the standard
Anyone who has seen BJ fight knows what crazy skills he has. He's unorthodox with a complete skill set that we all aspire to.

This book goes some way to explaining what he does and how he does it. If you think this book will get you anywhere near his level then you'll need some amazing natural ability of your own. What this book does offer is a solid foundation in training for modern mma. It covers every area the fight could take place, standing, against the cage, in the guard, you name it he's covered it.

There are countless techniques covered from real basics to more advanced counters to the previously shown techniques.

One of the great points of the book is that where needed 2 camera angles are used for the techniques. It might seem obvious that such a simple thing makes the techniques so much easier to understand but it's not always used in these type of books. This alone takes the guess work out of positions so you can really understand what he is showing.

Although BJ's background is BJJ this is not a BJJ book, he works on the principle you should stick at what you're good at. So if you are a striker that's your first line of attack, if that fails then you grapple. If you've spent years mastering an art only to be told not to use it in a book that book is quickly discarded. So whatever your number one skill set is this book teaches you to how to make better use of it while giving you a great plan B should you need it.

Awaiting Randy's book now to see if he can deleiver the same standard as BJ.

Knowledge is Power
I had high expectations for this book and it didn't fail to deliver. Penn and Kraus have put a great deal of thought into this book. It is well structured and all the major topics (Stand Up, Clinch & Ground) are well covered. Penn describes his MMA game in this book, and the layout makes it very easy to navigate and find what you are looking for.

The striking section in itself was not my favourite as only the basic strikes are covered in this section. But if you look throughout the book as whole then you will see that Penn has covered striking from every position imaginable. The only other thing I would say about the striking is that kicking is not covered in this book at all. But that said, how many times do you see BJ throw a kick in a fight?

My favourite section of this book however has to be the ground game one. I would have bought this book solely for that section. It covers BJJ for the MMA game fantastically. What makes it so good is that unlike a lot of other books, the ground section is aimed at MMA specifically. You don't get your sport JJ stuff here but as always the fundamentals can be transferred.

Penn and Kraus have set the standard by which all future MMA instuctional books will be measured and truth be told, they have set the bar quite high.