That Time PAC Did A Turtle Drill On Kazuchika Okada

Real fighting is both sillier and better than most pro wrestling fans give it credit for

I don’t follow AEW particularly closely. As far as I’m concerned, the promotion primarily existed to give me new Emi Sakura matches to watch on Dark and Elevation. So when they stopped producing those shows, I stopped remembering that it existed for more than a few moments at at ime. Now I follow it just enough to give my mom updates on whatever funny thing her boy Kazuchika Okada has done this week. 

But a few events happened that necessitated this dip into their world: First, I visited my friend’s fight gym, and one of the regulars asked about my BJJ background while I was there. I said “Oh, I haven’t trained in years. I mostly use my knowledge to better appreciate pro wrestling now.” Then I came home and saw a random gif of Okada vs PAC that happened to appear in my Twitter feed and, still hopped up on adrenaline from fighting and telling people I had a very special relationship with wrestling thanks to my fighting, I just had to say something about it.

(And then I got waylaid for almost two weeks by deadlines, personal issues, and a lightly sprained wrist courtesy of the few rounds of modest but still humbling boxing I attempted during the gym visit. Pro tip: don’t take five years off between training sessions.)

But anyway…

The tweet I saw featured these six seconds of action from Okada and Pac’s AEW Continental Championship match at AEW Dynasty on April 21. 

Accompanied by the caption “What if I breakdance on you? To establish dominance.”

My goal here isn’t to mock or criticize the original poster. It’s not like they’re wrong. PAC is, in fact, breakdancing to own to Okada here. And that is funny. But it also happens to be something that actual trained fighters do in warmups and drills. And matches, if they get really lucky. 

In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu drill form, this move involves your training partner kneeling on the mat and curling up over their legs—aka the turtle position—while you put all of your weight into resting your chest on their upper back and start spinning around them, switching directions as desired or instructed by your coach. The goal of this move is to help the person on the bottom become more comfortable in what is a quite unpleasant and stressful position and help the person on top develop cardio and situational awareness. In theory, this will give the bottom the tools they need to relax and regroup when they’re in a compromising position in a fight so that they can start to figure out how to escape it and hopefully work toward a more offensive position. It gives the top the ability to quickly work around an opponent in the turtle position in an effort to either take the back mount or open them up to limb attacks or choke attempts. And, if they’re able to get enough fast and slickly executed spins in, they’re probably going to be able to add a little psychic warfare to the mix, because it’s basically saying “lol, I’m so much better than you that I can do drills on you in a real combat situation.”

Which, yes, is a longer winded and nerdier way of saying exactly what the original poster was able to intuit in six seconds.

What intrigued me about it, though, is that a lot of people seem to think that this is just a wacky pro wrestling affectation, when it happens to be one of the more realistic moments that I’ve seen in wrestling lately.

Something that I’ve started to notice as a lapsed BJJ/Muay Thai hobbyist and former MMA writer who dove headfirst back into pro wrestling fandom is that people who don’t watch real fights tend to have a very different concept of what should or does look “real” in wrestling. Quite often, I think they’re in a bit of a Plato’s cave situation where they’re picturing the way that old school wrestling portrayed real fighting, not how actual real fighting occurs. Because real fighting? It can be so much weirder and more fun than a lot of people who have never dipped a toe into that world can imagine. There’s room for show offy moves that are done in an effort to score a psychological advantage (or, in some cases, impress judges who aren’t as educated in the combat sport they’re presiding over as they should be). Occasionally, there’s room for moves that are both show offy and effective. Like Yukio Sakaguchi’s flying arm bars and triangles or his cartwheel guard pass.

Yes, that’s a legit shoot move, too.

Even if I never don my gi and tie my dust-collecting blue belt with no stripes again, I’m glad that my time on the mats left me with this sense of combat fun and fuckery.