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People are defending it because its basically true. We are talking about combat sports where Olympic level women can't make their own high school team. Where the star girl in a gym will routinely get humbled by a guy who's trying to get better at football and so is taking up the sport in the off-season.
That's not to say some men can't just be weak or unathletic, but it's silly to compare a 21 year old girl who's the best in the county to a 40 year old who works out once a week and picked up combat sports in his 30s and think that makes any sense.
If you think that’s the situation, you are mistaken. In college about five guys from the varsity football team came to the mma club to try out grappling. All of them were physical specimens, and when I rolled with them it would just be me submitting them every 30 seconds to a minute for the whole round. I just recently submitted a competitive college wrestler in practice (after getting thoroughly beaten positionally of course). I’m not a bad submission grappler and I’m not a 40 year old out of shape dad who just picked it up recently. I’m not a great one either, but I know my way around on the mat.
Bjj is just not something where strength matters nearly as much as untrained people think it does. There is enormous skill depth, on the level of chess or go. Given that it is something you can get good at by knowing things and making rapid decisions, it should not be surprising that some women are able to get good. Every gym has a 16 or 20 year old scrawny kid who has a great guard game and plays a good spidery high tempo defense against guys half again his weight. A athletic woman who lifts will have pretty much the same level of physicality as those kids, and if it’s not surprising when they hit triangles and heel hooks on everyone there is no reason to think a woman couldn’t either. Women’s minds are just as good at knowing things as men’s are (maybe modulo stuff at the tails which does not matter here).
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