The Imanari Roll: BJJ's Most Gangster Heel Hook
When we first posted this clip of Masakazu Imanari rolling under a leg in the summer of 2015, we gave it one line: probably the most gangster heel hook you're ever going to see. A decade on, the…
Words: Jiu Jitsu Style
When we first posted this clip of Masakazu Imanari rolling under a leg in the summer of 2015, we gave it one line: probably the most gangster heel hook you're ever going to see. A decade on, the BJJ and Jiu Jitsu world has finally caught up to what that little Japanese featherweight was doing on tape — and the line still holds. Watch the roll today and it looks less like a stunt and more like the opening chapter of the modern leg game.
Imanari is the godfather of this stuff. Long before heel hooks were respectable, he built a whole MMA career out of dropping beneath bigger men, threading their lead leg and finishing on the ankle before they understood what had happened. The mechanics are simple to say and brutal to drill: a deep step, a roll under the lead leg, an exit into a leg entanglement, and a finish on whatever the position hands you. Get it wrong and you give up your back. Get it right and the match is over. That's the bargain, and Imanari took it more cheerfully than anyone.
Why the rolling heel hook still matters in Jiu Jitsu
What looked like a controlled fall down a flight of stairs in 2015 is now standard vocabulary. ADCC and Jiu Jitsu podiums are routinely decided on ankles. Gordon Ryan turned the inside heel hook into the cleanest finish in the sport, Craig Jones built a brand on the entries, and the Ruotolo brothers — Tye and Kade — fold rolling entries into superfight cards that play on ESPN without a single eyebrow raised. The IBJJF, the last real holdout, finally opened heel hooks up at brown and black belt no-gi. The "exotic" submission is now first chapter on every serious leg-lock instructional.
The roll itself is the part beginners fall in love with, and rightly so — it's spectacular. But the lesson Imanari was really teaching isn't the somersault. It's the control underneath it. The heel hook ends the moment the knee crosses your centre line, and everything before that is leg-entanglement geometry: hip to hip, knee line over knee line, the inside of the foot threaded across the hip crease. The roll is just the entry. The position is the technique. Drill it the other way around and you'll spend your white belt years giving up your back to people who never bothered learning the somersault at all.
So treat the Imanari roll the way it deserves. Find a training partner who values their knee, drill the entry slowly, learn to tap a beat early, and respect the finish as the last thing in the sequence rather than the first. The most gangster heel hook you're ever going to see is also one of the most honest lessons in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu — the flashy bit is the easy bit, and the control is where the real work lives.
See you on the mats.
Originally published on Jiu Jitsu Style, 17 July 2015. Refreshed for 2026.