The same materiel that got Renzo and Kukuk into trouble with their videos was replicated in this book. Let me back up for a moment and go back in time using the Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine. "Sherman, please set the Wayback Machine for 1994." As I have said in the past, Renzo and Kukuk's first tape set was, while the best at the time, seriously flawed. The tapes show wrong and poor techniques and mix sport BJJ indiscriminately with Vale Tudo moves.
The only reasonable justification for Renzo/Kukuk 1 was my speculation that Renzo and Kukuk were treating us like "mushrooms." That is to say, they kept us in the dark and fed us on crap. At the time, we ate it up like Godiva Chocolate and paid something like $360 for these tapes. They knew proper techniques (at the time most of us did not), they just did not want to teach us them. More support for my theory came from Renzo's second tape set. This was a good tape set and many of the same techniques were taught in a completely different and correct manner. Either we were being treated like mushroom or Renzo learned real BJJ in years between making the two tape sets. You make the call. So now we are into the modern day (2002) and here is Renzo and Royler teaching the same crap that they taught on Renzo/Kukuk 1 in 1994. Go figure.
In this book, Renzo and Royler can be seen doing street fighting techniques with the Gi on. What would possess them to do this is beyond me. The sport Jiu-Jitsu moves are just as bad. They actually show the infamous guard passing method that gets you caught in a triangle. You know the one from Renzo/Kukuk 1 where you are trying to pass the closed guard by putting one leg up and then putting one of your arms between your opponent's legs. While they teach this as a proper, but basic guard pass, they now add a little spin on this move, that it is best used as a stacking drill. I wish they would have told me that years ago on the Renzo/Kukuk 1 tapes. However, more accurately this should be called the "Getting the shit choked out of me with the triangle drill." I am sure this "drill" will provide hours of fun for your opponents as you try to pass the guard and they get to practice the triangle choke. As the blood stops flowing to your brain as you blackout, you should now be comforted by the fact that what you thought was a "guard pass" was only a drill. This was only a drill, had this been a real technique you would have heard a loud piercing beeping noise on your TV from the Emergency Broadcast System (For those reading this review outside the US, this comment will make no sense).
This is all very funny in hindsight. However, the book is not so funny in the way it randomly mixes Vale Tudo and self-defense moves with sport BJJ. Again, what the hell were you thinking!!! Shame on you, this could get someone hurt. "Warning: The Surgeon General warns that using sport BJJ moves for self-defense or Vale Tudo fighting will cause you great bodily harm, injury, death, and even birth defects." Renzo and Royler are wearing Gi's in every photo. The whole technique section is a jumble of sport moves (Gi chokes) with self-defense moves (like escapes from bear hugs and rear shoulder grabs) and Vale Tudo moves. Renzo and Royler needed to create clear lines between sport and Vale Tudo.
Also, the photos are often too small and can be hard to follow. On top of this, both Renzo and Royler are wearing white Gi's. This too can, from time to time, make it hard to determine who is doing what.
Where this book went wrong is a good question. This book apparently had the financial support of the prince of Abu Dhabi. This was a good start. It says he commissioned Kid Peligro to produce this book. I am not about to blame Kid Peligro for this book entirely. However, it seems to have been his project. The book is pretty and well written. If they had just put a solid set of techniques in the book, they would have had a winner. The move selection has Renzo circa 1994 written all over it.
One last point. I did not like the fact that they were trying to do a sort of blue to black belt division of the moves. This just ends up looking very weak and jumbled together. Part of the blue belt section is learning to tie your belt? I would hope that anyone that has trained for two years to earn his blue belt, knew how to tie a belt at that point. While we are talking about belt tying, have you ever noticed that the higher ranking Brazilian tie their belt differently. Brazilians like Rorion and Sperry do not tie their belt in the traditional manner as shown in the book. Because Brazilian add the black belt stripes to a large red colored section on the belt they are often forced to tie the belt so that this red section does not end up in the knot. Just a random observation.
But I digress. Where are the white belt techniques? In the whole book, there are only a handful of moves that I would say were something a blue belt would not know. World Martial Arts tried to do this with their Carlson Gracie Jr. Belt Techniques tape set. They had a little bit more success. However, you will note that they did not have any new techniques for the black belt tapes. Those tapes just had Conan and his brother putting the moves together while grappling. The jump to black belt is not made by learning super secret black belt moves; it is made by putting together all the moves you have learned up to purple belt. Becoming an expert at the basics is really the key. So, in the end the whole concept of dividing moves by belts is flawed. I would rather see moves put together in a logical flow that follow the realities of the fight. In other words, move and then counter move, etc.
Bottom line: