Rating Jiu-Jitsu Memes With Ryan Hall: Talent, Terminology and Getting Humbled

Lex Fridman opens by saying that memes are both the lowest and the highest form of achievement of collective human intelligence, and that he likes making brilliant people be silly. He hands Ryan Hall printed Reddit memes and asks him to rate each from 1 to 12. Hall says he supports all of them and is always amused by anything featuring the mustachioed fisticuffs guy.

A meme that jokes that a person moves so well because it must be a gift from God, when it's really practice, gets a four, mostly for being accurate rather than funny. That prompts Fridman to ask whether people tell Hall he is just talented. Hall says he doesn't think he is, and that he has done nothing but martial arts all day, every day.

The only talent he claims is discipline and a refusal to quit, which might even be genetic. He repeats a friend's line that if someone can talk you out of your dream, you don't want it. Hall admits it may or may not be literally true, but he calls it a facilitative belief that can make you more of a go-getter.

A meme about a judo guy opening his book of Japanese terminology leads Fridman to ask whether Hall uses Japanese terms. Hall says not when speaking to English speakers, and he finds Eddie Bravo's renaming of every technique just as odd. He sees these as two ends of a spectrum and says people have to find what is right for them.

Hall says he struggles with the branding he sees in jiu-jitsu, though he adds that if it helps people remember techniques, "right on." He rates the terminology meme a six for being disturbingly accurate. Next, a joke that the best defense against a body triangle is to get really fat gets a two, and a joke that everyone quits after getting a blue belt gets a high score once Hall understands it.

The scores swing widely from there. A meme about looking good after two hours of sparring but not after ten minutes of cardio earns a 10 despite Hall admitting he has never tried cardio, and a meme about being submitted 46 times with no IBJJF-legal finishes gets a two. A "90% of BJJ instructionals" meme gets a six, and an economic-crisis joke about spending less on half-guard DVDs gets an 11.

A meme about the person who murders you on the mat looking nothing like a fighter outside the gym sparks Hall's first-day story. In 2004 at a gym in New York, a white belt of around 130 pounds with about eight months of training badly dominated him. Hall says it felt like magic, and it is when jiu-jitsu became the coolest thing to him, because technique clearly mattered.

Fridman asks whether jiu-jitsu ever kicked his ass so badly that Hall drove home with no music playing. Hall says he used to take the bus home in silence, with a sad feeling that life was meaningless. He then recalls meeting Murilo Santana in December 2009, shortly after ADCC, when Santana turned up outside his school in the snow asking to trade training.

Hall had placed third at ADCC that year but quickly realized Santana was holding back. Even when he asked Santana to go harder, Santana passed his guard about 35 times, and the gap was clearly one of skill, not size. Hall stared at the wall at home that night, thinking he needed to reevaluate his life, and praises Santana as a fantastic instructor who runs Unity Jiu-Jitsu in New York.

Hall says that over time he kept improving, but the gap with Santana stayed the same, which he found inspiring. Fridman has watched others sit in silence staring out a car window after similar sessions. The review closes with a meme about a UFC viewer who wants an expert to explain the ground game, which Hall gives a seven.