Key Takeaways
- A wrestling-first blueprint for building an Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD, taught by 2016 Olympian and four-time NCAA All-American Frank Molinaro.
- Two volumes and 27 chapters of stand-ups, tripods, changeovers, switches, and chained escapes from the bottom position.
- Pressure-tested at the highest levels of folkstyle and freestyle wrestling, then reframed for No-Gi grappling.
- Narrow by design: no guard retention, no Gi grips, and little Jiu-Jitsu-specific scoring talk — this is escape-and-rebuild material, not a bottom submission system.
- Rating: 7.5/10
Frank Molinaro is not a name you hear often in Jiu-Jitsu circles, and that is precisely what makes How to Build an Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD worth a second look. The Arizona State associate head coach is a 2012 NCAA champion at 149 pounds, a four-time All-American for Penn State, and a 2016 Olympian who placed fifth at 65 kg in Rio.
His two-volume instructional takes the bottom-position wrestling he spent a lifetime perfecting and packages it for grapplers — specifically the ones who spend every round flattened, pinned, or fighting off their back without a dependable route back to neutral.
Download Here: How to Build an Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD
In most gyms, “bottom game” means guard: retention, frames, sweeps, maybe a submission hunt. Molinaro is teaching something different and, for a lot of No-Gi players, more urgent. He is teaching how to escape a genuinely bad bottom position, rebuild a base, and either stand back up or reverse the position outright. This is the material that decides wrestling exchanges in No-Gi, where the difference between a clean escape to standing and another two minutes spent being flattened is often the entire round.
The timing suits the moment. The modern No-Gi meta has been drifting toward wrestle-ups, standing escapes, and re-wrestling for years. Guard players and leg-lock specialists increasingly need an answer for the instant they concede a bad spot or have their guard crushed. An escape system that turns a lost exchange into a neutral scramble — or a reversal into top position — plugs a gap that a lot of instructionals skip over in favour of more exotic offence.
Who Exactly Is Frank “Gorilla Hulk” Molinaro?
As a member of the USA wrestling national team, he has shown wrestlers what it takes to win world and Olympic medals. He’s been there and done that at all levels.
– Zeke Jones, Arizona State head coach –
Molinaro’s credentials on this exact topic are about as strong as they come. A native of Barnegat, New Jersey, he was a two-time Big Ten champion and a four-time All-American at Penn State, where he went a perfect 33-0 as a senior and claimed the 2012 NCAA title at 149 pounds, closing his college career at 121-29. He was named Big Ten Most Outstanding Wrestler in 2012 and became just the fifth four-time All-American in Penn State history.
Internationally, he ran the table as the No. 9 seed at the 2016 Olympic Trials, beating Brent Metcalf, Logan Stieber, and Aaron Pico to reach the Rio Games, where he won five of six matches and placed fifth at 65 kg. He added a Pan American Championships gold and a World Cup title in 2016, and later a 2017 US Open championship and a bronze at the Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix.
Coaching has been Frank Molinaro’s second career. He has held roles at Rutgers, Penn State, and Virginia Tech, and has been at Arizona State since 2020, earning a promotion to associate head coach in April 2026. The escapes in this series are the same mechanics he drilled at the sport’s highest levels, and the same ones he has used to build ASU middleweights such as Kyle Parco and Jacori Teemer into four-time All-Americans.
Inside the Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD
The series splits into two volumes and 27 chapters. The first volume builds the foundation; the second layers the escapes and chains them together. Molinaro’s teaching is compact, wrestling-room direct, and — as you would expect from a coach of his background — built around drilling rather than theory.
Volume 1 — Foundations and Stand-Ups
Volume one opens with a personal intro, a short framing chapter, and a “bottom wrestling philosophy” that sets the tone: in wrestling, bottom is a position you escape, not a place you hang around. It then moves through warm-up drills and base-building, followed by a cross pommel drill that teaches hand-fighting and wrist control from underneath.
The meat of the volume is the stand-up progression: a basic wall stand-up, a quarter-turn stand-up drill, and a quarter-turn stand-up combined with the cross pommel. Molinaro also covers a neutral standing “break the lock,” how to strip an opponent’s grip off the ankle, and how to beat the drop-down — the moment a top wrestler tries to cut the corner and kill the escape. The volume closes with the standing switch, the classic reversal that punishes an opponent who drives in too hard.
Volume 2 — Tripods, Changeovers, and Chain Escapes
Volume two is where the system gets genuinely useful for grapplers. It opens with tripod fundamentals — building a three-point base from bottom — and a tripod stand-up against a partner who has sealed off under the arms. Then come the changeovers: a basic changeover, a changeover into a tripod escape, and an elevator into a changeover, the same knee-slide motions No-Gi players use to escape side control and back exposure.
Molinaro chains these together in a dedicated chapter on chain wrestling from the bottom, then adds specific counters: a pivot knee-slide changeover, a pivot knee slide to an over-hook, an ankle-hook counter to a reversal, a chicken-wing “get low” escape, and a “change sides, clear the hips” sequence for when the top player jumps sides. The final chapter, a double foot grab escape, handles the flattened, leg-ridden scenario.
What stands out across both volumes is how complete the system is. Nothing is left as a single escape; every technique has a follow-up, an answer to the common reaction, and a chained continuation. That is the signature of a folkstyle system taught by someone who has drilled these exact sequences for two decades.
Making Sense of Bottom Escapes
This is a drill-and-apply instructional, not a watch-once-and-archive one. The warm-up and base-building work is meant to be done daily, and the stand-up and tripod sequences are compact enough to add to a No-Gi wrestling round inside a few weeks. The changeover chains and reversal counters take longer, because they require a live partner who knows how to apply real top pressure.
The material slots most naturally into No-Gi wrestling rounds, wrestle-up drilling, and any session where a grappler spends time escaping bad positions. Gi players can absolutely use the base, stand-up, and reversal concepts, but the hand-fighting chapters assume bare wrists and no collar, so the 2-on-1 and wrist-tilt details do not map cleanly to sleeve-and-lapel grips.
Get Here: Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD by Frank Molinaro
Who Is This For?
The Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD is aimed squarely at No-Gi grapplers who end up on bottom and want out. White through purple belts will get the most from it, as will wrestlers crossing into Jiu-Jitsu who already know the positions but want the sequences organised and chained. Anyone building a wrestle-up game, or anyone who concedes bottom position easily and struggles to recover, will find immediate value.
It is not for everyone. Pure Gi guard players, grapplers who want guard retention and sweep instruction, and anyone hunting bottom submissions should look elsewhere. The same goes for viewers expecting a Jiu-Jitsu black belt’s take on the position — Molinaro is a wrestler, and this is wrestling, expertly taught but not filtered through Jiu-Jitsu scoring or Gi-specific logic. Absolute beginners with no wrestling base may also find the pace brisk.
Pros & Potential Drawbacks
Pros:
- Elite, verifiable coaching pedigree — an NCAA champion, Olympian, and longtime Division I coach teaching the exact positions he built his career on.
- A complete, chained system — every escape has a follow-up and a counter to the common reaction, rather than a list of isolated moves.
- Directly transferable to No-Gi — the stand-ups, tripods, changeovers, and reversals map almost one-to-one onto escaping bad positions in live grappling.
- Fills a real gap — escape-and-rebuild from bottom is under-served compared with guard retention and offence.
- Concise and well-sequenced — 27 chapters in two volumes, with a clear foundation-to-application progression.
- Wrestling-specific detail most BJJ instructionals skip — ankle stripping, beating the drop-down, and base-building from underneath.
Potential Drawbacks:
- Narrow scope by design — no Gi work, no guard retention, and no bottom submissions; it is escape material and nothing else.
- No Jiu-Jitsu-specific integration — the marketing calls Molinaro a BJJ expert, but the content leaves BJJ rules, scoring, and grips to the viewer to figure out.
- Only two volumes — the escape positions are wrestling-bottom positions, so viewers expecting mount or side-control escapes in the traditional Jiu-Jitsu sense will need to adapt the concepts themselves.
Building an Elite Escape Game
How to Build an Elite Escape Game from the Bottom DVD is a genuinely valuable, well-organised system that does one thing and does it exceptionally well. Frank Molinaro is one of the most credentialed people to ever teach bottom-position escapes on a BJJ platform, and it shows in the completeness of the sequences and the quality of the details. The trade-off is scope: this is wrestling-first escape material with no Gi content, no guard work, and no Jiu-Jitsu-specific scaffolding around it.
