Bri,
Many of the senior masters went and trained with the gracies for a very long time. And at one point the gracies and the ATA were going to integrate the systems fully so that the gracies would have an instant world wide exposure. Politics and money came into play and that deal was never finalized. So instead they moved forward with training the instructors in a top down fashion.
Granted even today they are a few instructors that have not yet learned the groundfighting but those grow fewer every year.
I have seen many of the masters who trained with the gracies and they are awesome on the ground. I was in the very first class given to instructors on ground fighting and since then back in the early 90's. Over the last 10 years many more instructors have attained a very high proficiency in ground fighting.
This same thing has been done with Krav Maga, The deal allows ATA instructors to cross train in Krav and then when they are certified by the KM group they are allowed to begin teaching it in the ATA school.
one other note,
ATA, STF and WTTU are the same organization under different names in the world.
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