Lightweight submission grappling king Kade Ruotolo says BJJ artists “start to forget about their jiu-jitsu” when jumping to MMA

Kade Ruotolo believes there's a concerning trend whenever Brazilian jiu-jitsu artists permanently make the move to mixed martial arts.

The reigning ONE lightweight submission grappling discussed in an interview on the Jaxxon Podcast how natural BJJ artists tend to forget their roots when they are free to use all possible martial arts inside the cage.

Ruotolo pointed out that it could be how BJJ artists who become MMA fighters won't drill submission grappling holds as much as they try would when they shift their focus to striking and wrestling.

"They're working on their other tools and they start to forget about their jiu-jitsu as much. In jiu-jitsu, if you're not training a lot it's easy to be rusty and to really not have those positions in lock."

Kade Ruotolo is one of the most dynamic submission grapplers on the planet, and he'll try to bring that explosiveness when he eventually makes a jump to MMA in June.

The American submission grappling phenom will face Blake Cooper at ONE 167 on June 7 at Impact Arena in Bangkok.

While there are concerns about whether Ruotolo could be as successful in MMA as he was in submission grappling, the 21-year-old already passed the eye test regarding his grappling and wrestling.

Ruotolo was never one to pull guard to start his BJJ and would rather grab his opponents and force them to the ground using either trips or a straight slam.

Watch Kade Ruotolo's entire interview below:

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Kade Ruotolo says spending an entire life with twin brother Tye toughened him up

It's not uncommon for brothers to get into physical fights, what's rare though is having a twin brother who also holds a ONE world title.

Kade Ruotolo recalled in his interview on the Jaxxon Podcast that he and his twin brother Tye, the reigning ONE welterweight submission grappling world champion, often got into fistfights with one another outside BJJ training.

Those fisticuffs with his brother led to him developing an innate toughness that he plans to bring against Cooper at ONE 167:

"The only reason why [I'm this tough] is because of my brother. Growing up, we've been doing this our entire lives. It wasn't just jiu-jitsu, we were trying to kill each other every day. Healthy competition. The amount of fistfights we had, we probably created bare-knuckle. Just non-stop scraps. It really toughened us up."

ONE 167 is available live and free to all Prime Video subscribers in the United States and Canada.