It is, to a degree. The difference with actual BJJ is that the goal is singularly focused towards unconsciousness and pathways to achieve it, which include pins of all kinds that you can also see in wrestling. Double-leg takedowns are absolutely part of the curriculum, as are other “wrestling” staples. Wrestling is just another form of sport grappling, and wrestlers can be real handfuls right out of the box. They just have that bad tendency to expose their back and other sport habits that are best discarded for non-sport purposes.
Wrestling also selects for a lot of elite athletes who go on to have a lot of success in MMA, but I would never recommend someone study wrestling over BJJ if their goal was handling violence with their bare hands and good coaches were present. I wouldn’t offer anyone advice about the best way to become an elite competitor in MMA or grappling, let alone how to best conduct SWAT tactics or something like that, but you can be certain that it will have a great deal of overlap with BJJ.
Mimicking the best guys on the planet can and does result in a lot of misplaced training priorities in BJJ. Just because the top guys are doing particular moves in high level sport grappling does not mean that you should spend your mat time focusing on getting to that spot to make that sequence possible. There’s better stuff for 95 percent of trainees to be working on. Keeping everyone on the rails and not losing the plot of mat time is, in my opinion, one of BJJ’s “secret sauces” that results in normal looking guys becoming absolute motherfuckers to tangle with.
The thing with BJJ is that becoming a black belt will make just about anything else you want to incorporate rather easy to do. Gouging someone’s eyes out is simple if you have them pinned in high mount or have broken them down to such a degree that they can’t use their arms to stop your fingers. BJJ can also be thought of as an ordering of priorities, and there’s always a higher priority than attempting an eye gouge.
Eye gouges aren’t trained because striking such a small area of the body isn’t particularly reliable compared to what else could be trained with the time. It is also hazardous to the trainee if done at full force.
Everything I’ve read from your description and elsewhere tells me that Krav may be a more expedient path to addressing a few specific scenarios involving weapons, if well-coached. That may be the case, but it is also the case that there’s plenty of guys selling an absolute lie under the sales banner of “Israeli Badass” or some variation of “Special Operator”, yet no Isreali Badasses or Special Operators are anywhere to be found teaching class. It’s the same as gyms who have a legendary Brazilian fighter’s name on the gi, who definitely was a vale tudo badass, but no legendary Brazilians are coaching any of the classes, where stuff like berimbolos are being taught.
BJJ is much, much more lethal than any other martial art in my opinion. If you orient your training towards achieving unconsciousness, well, you’re already there. Ending an unconscious person’s life can be done without any special training at all. Going from two people standing to rendering someone unconscious involves quite a bit that can happen, and BJJ addresses the majority of what that can be.
Furthermore, you don’t HAVE to go to the ground unless your choice is made for you. It is not particularly desirable in every situation, but it is common and useful enough to devote a massive amount of mat time to addressing. The guard is not a position that’s hunted, but a bad position that is common enough to address in depth. No sequences are taught where you actually TRY to get someone in your guard when you begin on your feet. There’s no reason to hunt for the guard unless you are in an even worse spot, like the bottom of mount.
At the end of the day, its all about training priorities. This stuff is all optional unless, of course, someone decides that today will be your mandatory fighting day.
