The Story of the Von Flue Choke
Not many martial artists can say that they developed their submission, but Jason Von Flue is one of them. He developed his famous Von Flue choke over 20 years ago, and he recently shared the story of how he developed it on the MMA History Podcast.
Jason details that the development of his choke initially started after a visit to Pedro Sauer’s academy.
During the class, Sauer showed the classic guillotine choke defense, where you wrap your arms around your opponent’s shoulder and lay down pressure to make them let go.
“He shows this counter to a Guillotine choke from inside guard where you just come over, lock it in, and put so much pressure that they’ve gotta release the Guillotine and loosen their guard up… and I liked that.”
“I liked that defense. So I go out to Michigan with these guys, show them a bunch of basic Jiu-Jitsu for a month. I play around with this and I figure out how to do this from half-guard… So I come back home, I played around with this, choked some guys out with this from half-guard, and I hit everybody on the team except for Chuck with it. Everybody was saying it was BS and it only works for you, and then in WEC 7 and 8 in August and October that year… Chris Irvine and Nick Gilardi, I put them both to sleep from half-guard with this choke.”- Jason Von Flue.
Where many of us first saw Jason use the Von Flue choke was during his appearance on the second season of TUF. Millions of people saw Jason put his opponent to sleep using his patented choke..
After that, every Jiu-Jitsu and MMA gym in the world began drilling his submission. The Von Flue choke has become a mainstay in guillotine choke defense.
Fighters like Ovince St. Preux became a master of the Von Flue choke and submitted three opponents with Jason’s submission.
Check out Jason Von Flue tell the story of how he developed the choke, along with his fighting career, in his interview below.
Bobby is martial artist for almost 20 years with a BJJ black belt under Professor Sergio Miranda. He is also a karate black and former combat sports athlete, who loves all things grappling.