Herbert Burns: 50 BJJ Submissions in Under Four Minutes
Fifty BJJ submissions in under four minutes. That was the highlight reel Evolve MMA put out for then-undefeated featherweight Herbert Burns back in 2015 — a tight, fast-cut clip of armbars,…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
Fifty BJJ submissions in under four minutes. That was the highlight reel Evolve MMA put out for then-undefeated featherweight Herbert Burns back in 2015 — a tight, fast-cut clip of armbars, triangles, chokes and leg locks landed across the gi mat, the no-gi mat and the cage. Watched cold, it still hits the same way: a Jiu Jitsu black belt who finishes from everywhere, and who treats every position as a setup for the next submission.
A decade on, the names around that clip have only gotten bigger. Herbert went on to sign with the UFC. His older brother Gilbert "Durinho" Burns turned the same family game into a welterweight title shot and one of the cleanest grappling pedigrees on the UFC roster. The Burns brothers came up out of Brazil with a serious competition BJJ background — multiple-time Pan and World medallists at black belt — and that grappling base has been the constant through every chapter of their MMA careers.
What 50 finishes in four minutes is actually teaching
It's tempting to watch a reel like this and walk away wanting fifty submissions. The lesson is the opposite. Cue it up frame by frame and the same handful of finishes keep coming back: rear-naked choke, armbar from guard, triangle, kimura, heel hook. The variety isn't in the catalogue of moves — it's in the entries. Burns finds the same five or six submissions from twenty different positions because his Jiu Jitsu fundamentals are clean enough to make the path obvious from wherever the scramble lands.
That's the through-line in every great submission highlight, and it has only gotten more obvious in 2026's grappling landscape. Mikey Musumeci hits the same kneebar setup a dozen ways. The Ruotolo brothers strangle people with the same darce from the same front headlock for entire ADCC weekends. Gordon Ryan's back-take-to-choke sequence on the biggest stage in BJJ is essentially one finish. The volume in the clip is the by-product. The submission is the thing they actually own.
Use it the way you'd use any other reel
The good way to study a reel like Burns' in 2026 is the same as it's ever been: don't try to learn fifty moves. Pick one finish that keeps showing up, pause every clean entry to it on YouTube or Instagram, write down the two or three positions it's launched from, and drill those positions on Wednesday nights until they feel like one move. That's how a Jiu Jitsu highlight reel becomes useful instead of overwhelming. It's also a quietly accurate picture of how the Burns family built the games they're still winning fights with today.
See you on the mats.
Originally published in Jiu Jitsu Style, 2 February 2015. Refreshed for 2026.