Firas Zahabi, who is considered as one of the great minds in Mixed Martial Arts, recently spoke about the evolution of the sport. In an excellent interview with BE Alum Patrick Wyman, the TriStar gym head coach says that he finds that the lack of adaptation and development of jiu-jitsu for MMA 'discouraging'.

He says BJJ is 'poorly organized for MMA' and is still tailored more for sport jiujitsu, citing practitioners' resistance to embracing other facets of the sport for the lack of growth:

The Achilles’ heel of jiu-jitsu is, one, that they insist on the gi. Every attack has to have a counterpart. I always tell my students, let’s play rock-paper-scissors. You’re not going to be allowed to use paper. I have the option of rock, paper and scissors, [and] you have the option of scissors and rock. I’m going to beat you 90 times out of 100. When I do jiu-jitsu with the gi and then I take it off, you’re taking away my paper. ... If you look at Jose Aldo, he adopted this philosophy. He doesn’t play guard -- he gets up -- and when guys try to hold him down, then he uses the guard. Sweep, submit or get up; he doesn’t just try to sweep or submit, so he has rock, paper and scissors.

Firas had very high praise for Aldo, and emphasized on how the UFC featherweight champion has learned to adapt his BJJ in to MMA the way that most practitioners from the martial art have been hesitant to do:

He’s not just a grappler -- he can wrestle, too -- but he uses his jiu-jitsu in reverse, where 99 percent of the jiu-jitsu community believes that you don’t do that... His jiu-jitsu, I would say, is number one, because he’s used jiu-jitsu in his fights. He uses jiu-jitsu in reverse. Why don’t more jiu-jitsu guys do that? Why is it that only wrestlers are smart enough to use their skill in reverse? I’ll give you my answer to that question, because I’ve thought about it intensively. One, BJJ guys are s--- athletes. No offense to the BJJ world. I love BJJ; I’m a BJJ fanatic. I just think that their counterparts -- the wrestlers -- have outdone them in the physical realm. Two, the wrestlers are better strategists. Why? When you wrestle, you have three rounds, so you start thinking about strategy as importance. In jiu-jitsu, it’s one round. When the wrestler starts in MMA, he’s thinking, I’ve got to win two out of the three, minimum. That’s the minimum for victory. It’s not what I’m looking for, but it’s the minimum. A jiu-jitsu guy will do something crazy at the end of a round he was winning. Maybe he goes from top position to the bottom looking for a fancy armbar and gives up the round or gives up the position. They make more strategic mistakes than the wrestlers. Wrestlers use their wrestling in reverse; jiu-jitsu guys, no. Third, jiu-jitsu guys, when they roll, when they train, it’s too far from the reality of what happens in the cage, whereas if you look at the training at Tristar, we have to sweep, submit or get up. If we get up, it’s my turn to wrestle you, and we wrestle. Wrestlers are learning jiu-jitsu, and jiu-jitsu guys aren’t so open-minded to the wrestling. They don’t understand that wrestling is as technical as jiu-jitsu. It’s jiu-jitsu standing up, why are you not in love with it? Why doesn’t it fascinate you?

Zahabi believes that a lot of this resistance to embracing the wrestling aspect stems from the specific rule set they're used to. It isn't rewarded in IBJJF, which makes it less of a necessity to be adapted into their games, and in turn makes is less effective for situations in MMA.

The 'best' in IBJJF doesn't necessarily mean they're the best grapplers, and according to him, a lot of them don't train and adapt for more realistic scenarios leading to many jiujitsu champs struggling against less decorated opposition.

As he spoke about the current need for evolution in the sport today, Firas also gave his thoughts on how he predicts MMA will develop several years down the road:

I think the guys who come next are going to have no style. They’ll start in all the styles, so they won’t have a prejudice. Now we see a particular fighter with a great double-leg. We see that guy with the great armbar. It won’t be like that anymore. The MMA fighters are going to beat the grapplers in grappling and the wrestlers in wrestling, and they’re going to beat the jiu-jitsu guys in jiu-jitsu. Why? Because, to them, it’s going to be seamless. They’re going to be more creative, they’re going to be more athletic, they’re going to be more creative because they have less boundaries. They’re going to be more athletic because they’re going to be constantly training their neurological patterns through all the arts. They’re going to learn more skills, more motor patterns, than their counterparts who have specialized in one thing.

There's much more topics discussed on Sherdog's in depth and insightful interview with Zahabi, and I suggest you give the whole thing a read here: Part 1 & Part 2.