Anyone who has been following Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the last 20 years remembers well "the choke heard round the world," when Carlson Gracie black belt Wallid Ismail choked Royce Gracie unconscious with a clock choke when Royce turtled to avoid the guard pass. If the BJJ community didn't realize how awesome a choke it was at the time, another Carlson black belt by the name of Mario Sperry again drove the point home when he submitted Royler Gracie in an early IBJJF tournament.

Nowadays, this seems like a rather predictable outcome, Sperry was a multiple-time world champion and considerably bigger than Royler, but at the time, the Gracie family had a mystique surrounding it propagated by their performances in early American and Japanese MMA (along with some fantastic marketing). The clock choke became a subject of obsession for many of us just getting started in BJJ at the time, and continued to evolve quietly over time as other techniques took center stage.

Here, we'll take a look at the basic mechanics of the choke, and several ways to avoid or escape the position.