It’s Science: Kron Gracie

We’ve noted before that Kron Gracie is a little different than other current competitors (maybe you’ve seen our video “The Curious Case Of Kron Gracie”). He’s also the only study subject we’ve had so far that is not a world champion. After spending hours compiling the numbers in 15 randomly selected matches, it’s easy to see why Kron continues to break the mold. Few competitors are so aggressive and reckless, but also very calculated. He may be the most exciting BJJ player to watch period.

Kron and Rickson both say they don’t care about points, and that is completely true. No top competitor we have surveyed so far has had aa average/poor point-first-rate (PFR) that Kron does. The PFR basically just outlines how often you score points first, and in Krons case, it’ only 40% of the time. To provide a comparison, Andre Galvao, Marcelo Gracia, and Rodlopho Vieira all score above 85%. But to young Krons credit, his submission rate is much higher than all of those competitors as well. In the matches we observed the other 3 competitors we surveyed above (which you can see in the archives) managed only a 66% submission rate (very good). Kron recorded a submission in 75%+ of his matches. There may be something to this caution-to-the-wind type of approach, but then again, he is the only competitor mentioned in this series without a world championship.

We did a micro-evaluation, similar to what we provide for competitors, that broke down 15 of Kron’s matches over the past 3 years. We have only included techniques and information below that were recorded and observed in the matches we viewed. 15 matches is more than enough for an acceptable sample in this case.

Notable Stats:

• He scored first in only 6 of his 15 recorded matches

• His average match length was approximately 5:53
• 75% of his matches we observed were won by submission
• 6 out of 8 of his submissions were some kind of choke
• We never recorded him offensively using any version of x-guard, de la riva, 50/50, or spider guard

• 50% of his submissions were chokes from the back