Some people are taken by surprise and are just so caught off guard that they take a minute to process what's going on and then the guy closes. It's not always easy to react well ahead of time even though that's idea. As for choking, in that jurisdiction it may well not be as bad, also, it totally depends on how it's worded.

Well, good on him, nothing wrong ethically with what he did at all.

However, he wasn't 'attacked' and a silly pissing match like this isn't an example of 'self defense' any more than having to subdue one's drunken uncle is.

Dealing with this kind of low grade social violence seems to carry with it a different set of rules for what is safe, what is appropriate etc.

Surely BJJ is quite useful, but equally surely you better damn well utilize it different from this video if this situation calls for it, restraining an unruly guy is a different ballgame than having to save your own skin imho, and i'd say presenting one video and claiming it's 'proof' across the board of something's applicability is questionable, and that goes for any art.

Waiting till they actually physically attack you is not good self defense, it's asking to be put in the hospital or worse. As for applicability, nobody is saying the techniques he uses, or even BJJ as a whole is applicable "across the board." All I and others seem to be saying is that in this particular situation it was effective. Everything depends on the situation, BJJ has it's place but no art or techniques are the answer across the board.

Good points guys. The title of this thread was intentionally provocative, there's only small number of characters I can use for the title and I wanted to get people talking about an interesting video. I couldn't come up with a better title within the limitations of the title constraints. So apologies for the lacking of my patois, but I'm glad it got people involved with the thread and got people talking about this.

BJJ was good in this situation, just an example of how it can be used effectively outside of class. As has been mentioned by Zach and Stormdragon, it's not a golden hammer that will solve every problem though. I agree with Stormdragon though in that I don't think ANY art is a golden hammer that covers every situation.

Sure, in this particular situation it was effective...so would any decent grappling art have been in restraining the guy. To me that's the fallacy of taking a general strategy and saying "hey look here is X working" for real..

No one said BJJ was THE answer here just that it was A answer that worked. Wrestling would have been fine too, or Sambo. But a sport grappling system (BJJ doesn't always have to be that but that's pretty much all Ryan Hall uses it for) in general can be effective.