Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship "is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors."
- via Wiki

I don't know where such poor sportsmanship comes from in BJJ, whether it's culturally from Brazil, or culturally by the people who first started competing or what it is, but it's downright abysmal.  The amount people celebrate when they win a match in BJJ is downright disgusting.  It was so bad that they actually made a rule against excessive celebration.  I believe something needs to be done from the coaching level.  I remember winning a wrestling match in 7th grade, was a barnburner comeback.  I was down 3 points with just a minute remaining in the consolation finals of a rookie tournament.  I was able to hit a switch and then a butcher pinning combination and I got the pin.  I was so excited I jumped up and shouted "YEAH!" with my hands in the air.  I got my hand raised by the referee then my coach took me by the arm, pushed me up against the wall and chewed me out.  "I never want to see you hot dogging around like that again."  He explained to me that I should have won the match regardless and no matter how much I want to let out my excitement, I need to show everybody around little to no celebration.  Why, you might ask... Because you need to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal to win, that you were supposed to win that match. 

I see guys who win the worlds by 1 advantage point, have some sort of ritualistic type choreography prepared and they perform it with such enthusiasm, you would have thought he won a $1billion lottery.  Here are some examples of being immature and overly celebrating a victory:







And then here's another one that gets me...  The match goes to ref's decision and both BJJ superstars act like absolute morons "petitioning" for a win:



On the other end of the spectrum, there're the sore losers, however there seems to be far less examples online as most of it comes verbally after the match.  I hate hearing the excuses "I was better than that guy" or "if only I got on top" or some other bullshit.  Take some responsibility that you were beaten by the better competitor on that mat on that day (not to say that poor reffing hasn't lead to some TERRIBLE losses, of which I've been a victim of twice), look at your mistakes and learn from them.  The attitude of "I was better than him/her" will only stunt your growth as a competitor.  I know that feeling, I know what it feels like to lose to somebody less skilled than myself, however I lost on that day on that mat to somebody better prepared than me and I try to see what I could have done differently in many different areas in order to learn and have a better outcome the next time I compete.  Did I train enough? Did I eat right? Did I have the right strategy going in? Did I execute my techniques properly?  Enough excuses, get back in the gym and learn from what went wrong and from what went right, don't sit around and cry about it like so many Blair Academy wrestlers do when they lose (seen it so many times, almost feels like the coaches encourage it).

This overall unsportsmanlike behavior needs to change.  Learning to control your emotions whether it's in winning or losing can be tremendous for your mentality.  Separating your emotions from the match will allow you to learn so much more from it.