"Rickson Gracie never needed weights!"

This kind of outmoded Gracie folklore is the problem with 21st century BJJ. So what? That's like saying a prize winning mathematician can win a high school math competition. How is that relevant to high schoolers who want to win? Rickson destroyed people because he was a technical outlier, at a time when few people had anywhere near as much submission grappling skill. "The best BJJ practitioners" are not most of us, and we will never, ever become half as technical as Rickson.

Technical outliers in just about any sport can defeat just about any dabbler who tries to abuse strength. Tennis, hockey, even in weight lifting. A guy with less muscle mass can often lift more than a guy with more muscle in the snatch, if he has better technique.

However, in contact sports, a slightly better dabbler will almost always lose to a much stronger dabbler, because athleticism is a huge part of the equation. It's not as elegant or as mystical as the martial arts folklore we want to believe, but strength dominates the lower tiers (and often the higher tiers) of contact sports. If it didn't, weight classes would be unnecessary, and you would see lightweights winning the absolute division left and right.

Typically most people in BJJ are a few years in, and are looking for an edge. That edge comes from having a body that is generally physically prepared to practice the sport, and at least, a body that is not a liability to itself. Like I said, this goes against the Gracie marketing dogma, because their intent is and has always been to sell BJJ to the average guy (much bigger market, the base of the pyramid) and not so much to the serious athlete (the middle and top of the pyramid.)

And this dogma is kind of fair in a rote self-defense context; it is indeed true that a bean pole of a kid with 12 months of BJJ can destroy a clueless oaf with 40lbs on him in a fight. But let's not create a false dichotomy wherein everyone is either some physically weak Helio-esque BJJ hero or an untrained oaf--if your intent is to fight other BJJ practitioners at a competitive level, they are not unskilled oafs, and typically they strength train, at least sometimes. They might even be setting their alarm to wake up and tear it up on an Olympic platform. In which case, you might be fucked.

The differential in game-changing skill between two competitive mid-belts is often pretty narrow. Strength and other physical attributes will and always DO play a significant role. If the skill gap is too wide, well, then that player probably belts up. Therefore, if you are competing, you have to bring your physical A game as well as your technical one. It is simply not realistic in 2016 to think that you can show up to a competition as a mushy-bodied dorkus with 2 stripes on your belt, suffering under the delusion that somehow the 2 stripes on your belt confer you a magical advantage over the 2 stripes on the other guy's belt, unless you have a complete gameplan from takedown to submission that you have practiced 500 times.

The athletic dominance advantage enjoyed by a 165lb blue belt with a 450lb deadlift compared to a kid in his weight class with a 200lb deadlift is enormous, it's as pronounced as 2 weight classes, because he's as strong as average players of that size, and probably has the same amount of lean body mass. Now, this weaker kid can choose to train 12x/week to try and neutralize that strength advantage with skill, but he also might slip and fall on a purple belt, and the value of his skills advantage might then be negated. His instructor could just hold him back, but then he risks being accused of sandbagging.

That's one good thing about strength--it can't be sandbagged! A true mongo can show up and hulk smash everyone with little talent, toss them around like the mountain or a giant in Game of Thrones, but the worst that will be said of him is "man, that guy is fuckin strong!" Sandbagger is a really pejorative title that will stick with you, but "ragdoller"...well, dog with sunglasses, lol. "Deal with it." Very few people get sympathy for losing to a stronger opponent in competition. Do you want sympathy, or victory?