Is someone who claims to have taught Navy Seals some of there hand-to-hand combat. He fought in VA once in a vale tudo and ;ost a desicion to a 17 yr old kid with 8 months of training. How does this represent the combat that are elites are being taught?
It doesn’t. First of all, operators aren’t taught extensively in ANY unarmed combat methods, despite what current marketing trends might imply. Secondly, that particular match only showed how prepared Cucci was for rules-based match fighting. It might have spoiled the fun if Frank had knifed his opponent or double-tapped him in the eye.
If u have a problem with Mr. Cucci u can go train with him in VA BEACH as I have. I can tell u this guy is an excellent instructor and he is very good trainer. His guys reg. do well in MMA competition. If u want to challenge him then prepare to defend your eyes and nutz sack cause that’s what he goes for! And try playing him with in knifefighting.
agreed. besides, as i understand it, frank cucci’s current curriculum draws more heavily from kali and muay thai than from bjj.
i say hats off to the guy for putting his money where his mouth is. at least he’s testing himself.
stuart b.
Brad Souders,
Frank has done pretty good in several grappling tournments, I haven’t heard anything about Vale Tudo matches. I know that while he was in the SEALs he was one of those trained by Paul Vunak and is a PFS Full Instructor. I believe Frank is currently a purple belt in BJJ but my information maybe a little dated.-ED
P.S.-I wouldn’t be too hard on him, a couple of the guys where I train have only been doing BJJ for about a year and they regularly clean house in MMA matches against guys that have several years on them.
Poor Frank.
Ryu
LOL @ asking a question and all of a sudden challenging him to a fight. What you guys didn’t hear was the kid he fought who lives in VA beach also trained with him some after there fight. You guys are too busy acting tough to answer a question. There was never any trash talking here just a question. But i guess sometimes when your used to trolling you forget how to have a good conversation.
I didn’t say anything.
If it went to a decision, he’s gotta be doing something right. Remember the immortal Ranger Stott?
Ryu
Ryu why don’t you say that to Stott’s face you punk 
LOL
Does he still have a face to say it to?
brad,
personally, i didn’t take offense. but the question could have been read as a shot at cucci’s reputation. you’re quite right, though, that it didn’t HAVE to be read that way. i think you’re right that we get so used to the trolling that our first impulse is always to assume the worst these days.
anyway, assuming that your question was just that (a question), i think it reflects well on what the elites are being taught (assuming that this is what they’re being taught).
he experiments, he learns, he adapts, and so on. that’s just the sort of thing i’d hope the elites would be learning from a hand-to-hand curriculum.
stuart b.
This is a good point Thanks for the thought. I reread the post and saw where it could have been misleading. MY BAD 
gimme a break
Confused here. you post a deliberately inflammatory post. Then complain when someone suggests that you back it up against Cucci. And dude, that post is belligerent no doubt about it.
Lost a decision. May not have won but he obviously defended himself at least moderately well. Same point I had noticed, Ryu.
Also unless he’s changed Cucci does alot of kali esp. stuff similar to Sayoc style. Heavy on knives. Dude I love MMA events. But personally you give me a choice between a Gracie training the Seals or Remy Presas, I am going to go with the one that teaches them to kill quickly, quietly and armed(OK maybe Presas isn’t a good choice any more but you get the gist). That’s what tax dollars are paying them for.
And as to that point, it’s part of why I don’t really care about the whole PFS/SCARS sales pitch of ‘Seal training’. Someone’s ability to train soldiers how to kill people with weapons doesn’t do much for me. Not going to sneak about and kill people. Not to dis PFS or SCARS, just don’t see how training military personnel is an endorsement of your civilian training.
no harm, no foul.
whaddya say everyone takes a deep breath and starts over.
whenever an instructor puts themselves on the line, they run the risk of ruining the facade, smashing the illusion that they’re more than human.
in truth, i think that illusion should be shattered. we’d all be better off for it.
for my money, i want the real person.
stuart b.
OK
Should the armed forces teach BJJ to their soldiers ?
hmm… disclaimer: as a near-sighted asthmatic with a desk job, i’m about as far from a soldier as i possibly could be. so take this with a grain of salt.
i certainly think that concepts from bjj would serve any hand-to-hand component the military comes up with. as merryprankster has mentioned on various occassions, being on the ground may be a disadvantaged position in many circumstances, but it isn’t a choice. it’s an occurrence. and the more comfortable you are with dealing with the occurrence, the more readily you can adapt.
in this case, even if the ONLY thing bjj contributed to a military curriculum was how to defend yourself from your back long enough to regain your feet, it would be worth it. it would be interesting to see if a curriculum could be adapted to account for things like the knapsack, etc.
but the point has been made again and again that melee combat isn’t that prevalent in the modern arena, so perhaps actual technique is less relevant than the oft-discussed attributes. and if bjj could imbue soldiers with some increased agility when they’ve fallen, then i think that, in and of itself, would warrant some study.
stuart b.
The reason i ask this is i saw a TLC special on MA and they had the Air Force i believe doing BJJ. They had all there soldiers competing in BJJ type matches. The reasoning the guy said they did BJJ was because the Gracies had used it in real life. I personally love BJJ and yeah i believe mixing it in their training is cool BUT i don’t believe that should be their main training.
What are the chances i just found this post on the adcombat fight forum
I got in a fight outside this club here in Dallas. These four guys were beating up this on guy. I ran over to break it up and all of the people left but one of the group beating up that one guy. The guy was lifting up his shirt showing off his USMC tat. He tried to make me flinch like a kid would do. I waited a couple of seconds and pretended to flinch and was telling him.“Oh, was I supposed to flinch” Then he threw this slow ass punch at me that I ducked, came back and knocked him on his ass. He got up and ran away, and while he was running away he was yelling “I’m going to kick your Ass” it was pretty funny.
Makes me wonder about the hand to hand fighting ability of our Special forces though.
it was the rangers, i believe. and the instructor’s point was twofold. the first point, you nailed. he liked the self-evidence of bjj. there’s less theory and more application.
his second point, i’ll grant you, was a bit contradictory. he said that bjj wouldn’t be used on the battlefield, but that the qualities required to excel in bjj mirror those required to excel in combat. you’re getting pretty conceptual at that point.
that’s why i think cucci is probably on the right track (if he does currently teach the military). the soldiers need concepts and movements that are relatively quickly learned and widely applicable. striking with body parts that would be readily available in CQB (elbows and knees, so as not to jeopardize the hands by breaking them or the balance by kicking), retaining some level of bodily control in situations out of the norm (being on two feet), and recognizing the possibilities in weapons attacks, including knives, rifle butts, etc. (the angles, zoning, etc. of kali).
i think that’s as much as you could realistically ask of a military hand-to-hand program.
but as i said, i’m WAY on the outside looking WAY in.
stuart b.
To anybody who cares 
H2H is a very small component of today’s armed forces training. Why? Because I can take any idiot, hand him a rifle, train him a little bit, and he can lay down fire like a maniac. Even if he sucks, that’s one more round at the enemy, and all it takes is one round to wound or kill.
I don’t mean to disparage the armed forces (heck, I’m in one myself). What I’m trying to say is that a “citizen soldier,” is useful in a combat situation thanks to the rifle. This is a drastic change from farmers armed with makeshift weapons, who really WERE laughable compared to professional soldiers. Don’t even get me started on the constant drilling it took to properly engage the enemy with muskets.
Hand to hand is simply not as valuable a tool as it once was.
Bottom line–military personnel are better served by combat scenarios and firing rounds than working on hand to hand skills… Even the special forces. Small unit infiltration and extraction tactics are more analogous to swat team actions than personal combat.
Completely different animal–totally apples and oranges.