Mixed Martial Arts

[Jaakko]

I prefer the fighting style of Heckler & Koch.

"Pistols or fists at dawn?"

"Fists."

"Fine, I'll take the pistols then."

[Urban Ranger]

W00t? Not "my friends and I?"

"Your friends?"

"Smith, Wesson, and I."

[Jaakko]

[Pekka]

Wow hey Saint Marcus, thanks for the heads up! unfortunately I'm not able to watch K-1 tonight, but tomorrow as the finals start, I'll be on it like a mad man!
Popcorn.. few beers.. oh yes, tomorrow will be the night.
Any idea of the fighters participating? Hoost? Sapp? LeBanner? Crocop?..... ??

[David Floyd]

I need to dispute that. If any of these standard martial arts are really not good for self-defense, why have them been in use, in the case of Kung Fu, for thousands of years just for that purpose?

Well, they are all very flawed systems. No one developed anything better in those thousands of years. There is something much better now, which is basically crosstraining with Muay Thai and BJJ and Valetudo.

Have you seen Jackie Chan fight? That's Kung Fu, and he's just pulling his punches in movies.

And between Jackie Chan and, say, Pedro Rizzo, who do you think would win? I'm about 100% sure Jackie Chan would get his ass kicked.

Now, you might argue that traditional martial arts will be effective in a lot of street fights against untrained opponents, and I'd agree. The problem is this. Traditional martial arts take a long time to learn, and if you try to use them for self defense early in training, you will likely get hurt. One of the reasons for the long training period is that they focus so much on flashy techniques, all kinds of high-flexibility kicking, and lots of kata. All of this stuff is essentially useless in a street fight, and that time could be much better spent working with a heavy bag or a sparring partner.

Further, traditional martial arts are not nearly as effective against larger opponents as are fighting styles such as Muay Thai and Vale Tudo. I used to take traditional martial arts (TKD, Kenpo Karate) and I couldn't defend myself even against untrained fighters. Now that I take real fighting styles, I can take black belts out.

Finally, by taking a traditional martial art, you are gambling that you will never be in a fight with, say, a trained wrestler or a trained kickboxer. Now, in China that might be true (or it might not) but in the US, that's a stupid gamble. Almost everyone I run into has some sort of wrestling experience, and decent wrestlers can generally take you down no matter what.

If a Kung Fu fighter gets taken down by someone with good wrestling skills, it's unlikely that the Kung Fu grappling forms will help them too much. If a wrestler takes down a BJJ fighter, the wrestler just made a big mistake, and will probably get their arm broken or something similarly nasty.

So my point is this. While traditional martial arts might be effective in some situations, why not just train in a fighting style that is effective a much larger percentage of the time?

[David Floyd]

Graag,

I've been curious for a looong time: in a real fighting situation, who does win between eastern martial arts types and western street-brawling types?

Generally the western street brawler. I mean, if you put Tank Abbot up against your average Kung Fu sifu or Karate or TKD master, I guarantee you that Tank will win. And Tank isn't (and even in his prime, wasn't) even close to being the best fighter out there. Replace Tank in that sentence with Chuck Liddell, or Pedro Rizzo, or CroCop, or Vanderlai Silva, or Vitor Belfort, or Frank Shamrock, or Tito Ortiz, and the ass kicking will be even worse.

[Solly]

Martial arts won't help you in self-defence. You won't prepare for unexpected ways of attacking.

[Saint Marcus]

Any idea of the fighters participating?

LeBanner, Hoost, Sefo, Musashi, Leko , Aerts, Hunt, Sapp...

[David Floyd]

Martial arts won't help you in self-defence. You won't prepare for unexpected ways of attacking.

Not in traditional martial arts, no. But some styles train with scenario-based self defense. For example, one person is designated the attacker, everyone else in the room are defenders, but no one knows who is who. In this example, everyone basically just mills around, talks, whatever. The attacker picks someone - anyone - to attack at random at any time, basically guaranteeing him a first strike. Once he does that, the fight goes from there.

But you're right, Boddington - most martial arts are not incredibly effective in real fight situations.

[David Floyd]

SM,

Who's Sapp fighting this time?

[Pekka]

Oh K-1 sounds awesome if those are fighting! Except that I might know the winner already, it's not live broadcast and I saw some results like a week ago.. too bad. But still, it's a must see!

I don't know about traditional martial arts, since I've never trained them, but I believe they don't do that much hard sparring and fighting? Mostly techniques and maybe light sparring, right? And the rules come in the way also.. It must be a big disadvantage not to know what it's like to get punched and kicked around hard. It might come as a surprise, maybe paralize you a bit.. I think. But if you train with good sparring and good partners.. and get beaten a bit too, then it's not a surprise and you won't freeze up. And you won't be so afraid to get hit either. Most likely the streetguy has nothing new to bring you, so that would work for you. Of course the street guy might have something new .

Also with good tough sparring you might develop some kind of instincts what to do even if you're little rocked.. defend yourself what ever, but not just cover face and wish you won't get bad hits.
They say, that you know you are in a good school if you get more beaten in training than in fights.. meaning you train hard, do hard sparring so fighting the opponent is not as hard as being in the gym.

[Graag]

Not that I have any experience (other than doing Karate when I was 11) and watching a lot of martial arts films I always thought Ninjutsu was the ****.
The idea as I understand it is to be as adaptable as possible, and that no two ninja are trained the same way - you learn a personal style based around the ninjustu system.

For example, if a ninja faced an opponent trained in Judo (or I suppose wrestling) s/he would simply start on the floor. That would confuse the balls off some 7 foot 400 lbs wrestling hard-ass. I don't know what the ninja does after that, but you get the idea.

[Pekka]

Wasn't Scot Morris some kind of ninja too? I can't remember, but he got his butt kicked so hard .

[Pekka]

But in general, and this is my opinion only, would be that going for ground game with Judo guy is extremely bad idea, if you're not well trained in it. Even if you're ninja .

Ninjutsu has also been represented in UFC for example, and many other disciplines too. The fights has proved these arts otherwise, that they are not the best alone. They're not all rounded so well. Somehow these guys just don't win these fights. When I see them dominating the sports, I'll change my view of them, but as long as they don't do good at all and they're getting they butts kicked, I'll put my money on a guy with BJJ and Muay Thai backround. Or just plain wrestling .

[Saint Marcus]

no idea who Sapp's fighting.


anyway, I still think that modern JKD (if mastered) is the most effective form of fighting. It was designed for street fighting, but can also be practiced in a ring. Sadly, there are very few JKD masters out there.