Guard is much better than many alternatives if you end up on your back, but you should begin attacking immediately, hunting for position of submission. The one time, from personal experience, it is life saving is when a guy is trying to pull a gun and you use closed guard to lock that gun in a waistband until you remove his right hand as an option.
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Right, it all comes down to how you train the positions, not necessarily the positions themselves.
Pulling Guard (which is different than jumping Guard, or “butt scooting”) would be something one should only attempt as a last ditch effort to take the fight to the ground (which would only be a wise move given very specific conditions). That tactic is often employed out of a sporting mindset of conserving energy (as takedowns generally require more effort and don’t really afford more in the way of points than say sweeps) and the environment being engineered to be “friendly” (padded, flat, devoid of potentially dangerous objects or structures, and smooth/low friction) to doing so.
Add multiples, change the surface to pavement or worse yet gravel, eliminate protections for downed opponents, and you’d likely see a decrease of not almost complete lack of pulling Guard in Grappling and/or MMA.
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To me it’s ridiculous to watch two opponents of the same weight do a double guard pull. I can see in an open weight class in which someone could face an opponent who is 50-100 pounds, or more, heavier but when weight is roughly equal it is just weak and looks stupid as they end up playing footsie. BJJ comps should all simply penalize guard pulling. I would give the opponent the two points as if he scored a TD.
I hear you and tend to agree, but, unless either of us have some sort of sway over the people who create the rules for BJJ or Submission Grappling competitions, it’s unlikely we will see an end to the practice of pulling Guard any time soon.