BUGGY CHOKE

The buggy choke is the unusual defensive submission executed from underneath side control, where the bottom player uses a triangle-like figure-four of the arms to choke the top player who has settled into a side-control pin. The technique gained widespread attention in the early 2020s after Kade Ruotolo used it to finish multiple high-level opponents in submission-only competition, including Ffion Davies in a 2021 superfight that brought the submission into mainstream BJJ awareness.

The mechanics are counterintuitive: the bottom player, rather than escaping or framing against the top player, traps the top player's cross-face arm and the same-side leg with a figure-four of the bottom player's own arms wrapped around the top player's head and arm. Pulling sharply with both arms while bridging upward applies blood-choke pressure to the top player's neck from below, with the top player's own arm acting as the choking lever against their own carotid.

The technique is one of the few effective bottom-of-side-control submissions in the modern BJJ repertoire and is structurally unusual in that the bottom player attacks rather than defends. The Ruotolo brothers (Kade and Tye) have used the buggy choke extensively in submission-grappling competition, and the technique has entered the mainstream competitive vocabulary in the 2020s. Defensively the technique is countered by establishing the cross-face deeply enough that the bottom player cannot wrap the figure-four, by walking the hips perpendicular to disrupt the angle, or by transitioning out of side control entirely (mount or knee on belly) before the lock can establish.