Should martial arts always keep changing or be kept in traditional ways?

This thread is about traditions. They can talk about the modern sport of boxing all they want, it doesn't really apply to what I'm talking about. Talk about dogmatic, they are stuck on what they watch on Showtime as "boxing". I'm posting a lot of links to things like encyclopedic content and archeological stuff showing just how far back boxing traditions go and how they are part of the DNA of modern sport versions. And, how they are also part of basic human DNA, as can be seen in how our primate ancestors "square up" and box. Apes box, watch them.

Nobody is posting about other traditions. No Chinese, African, Brazilian, or English ones. Just the transmission of Greek Olympic boxing through the aeons. It's like I shook a hornet's nest by claiming that Roman boxers in 0AD and boxers in 2019 would probably totally synch up. Which is of course based on the everything I've ever read about boxing.

Does no one else here empathize with that dude memorialized with the statue? We're not talking about some lost age. The age of Roman and Greek boxing is well documented, sculpted, painted. The Greek classics stand on their own....why should I need to produce more "evidence" than that?

 

Let me give you an analogy of how your point is coming across:

You can build houses out of bricks. You can build houses out of wood. Therefore, carpenters are bricklayers.

18th Century prize fights, out of which modern boxing came, did not come from a tradition spanning back to the ancient world. There is no "transmission of Greek Olympic boxing through the aeons". As a poetic, romantic notion, perhaps. As a fact of history... no.

Massive street fights were all the rage as sport before then in Europe.


Is that boxing? I'm guessing you'll say "yes".

What would happen if an ape entered a boxing match? If his corner team could get the gloves on without it ripping their faces off, the ape would be disqualified within a matter of seconds. Apes do not devise formal rules of competition when they fight.

Being able to empathise with bygone sportspeople is fine, but it doesn't mean you're participating in the same sport. If Wing Chun is boxing, why don't we see Wing Chun masters winning boxing matches?

If any form of fighting with the hands is boxing, regardless of rules, intent or species, how do you meaningfully discriminate that which is not boxing? How would you describe the difference between Ip Man and Mike Tyson?

 

Well if we're taking greek classics as reliable documents of veracity and reliability of off out to find a cyclops.

ALL historical sources (stories, documents, accounts, images, artwork, etc) need to be properly contextualised and examined. It's a gradual and tentative piecing together of a hazy idea of the past.
Writers and artists employed imagination, hyperbole, invention, exaggeration and flat out lying and misinformation as well as ignorance of the subjects they tackled.

In the fresco image posted earlier (showing people with eyes on the sides of their heads and terrible lumbar lordosis) you literally cannot tell if the person on the right has thrown a straight punch or a swinging haymaker. Or even if they are going for a headlock.
The only conclusion you can draw from it are that some form of pugilism/fisticuffs took place.
And thats the only conclusion i draw from it.
Whereas you are drawing a whole load of other conclusions that are simply not sufficiently supported to be certain about.

 

Correct.

I'll tell you that putting quotation marks around someone's title because you don't like what they're telling you is not an invalidation of their credentials, it just looks like you think you can attack someone's ego through their credentials because you're unhappy and trying to lash out at the only thing you have to latch on to. Failure.

No that was not my response. My response was:

See that? Claim made, supported with evidence which supports the thing I'm claiming?

And you keep trotting out objectively poor sources, sources fraught with issues, as has been pointed out by multiple people, as though they prove things which they in no way prove. When asked for evidence of specific claims you make, you ignore it because you have no such evidence. That's in no way going to convince anyone of your position. The fact is that you're making assertions without evidence. And then there's this:

It's not the ideas in your head, it's the evidence you can show. What you think and what you can show to be true are not necessarily the same things.

Burden of proof means that it's on you to provide evidence to support your claims, not on everyone else to disprove your claims. You claimed that "They had right crosses and left jabs in 10,000 BC" and that "Roman soldiers in 0 CE were boxing with each other using the same techniques people use today" so provide evidence for your claim that the biomechanics are the same now as 12,000 and 2000 years ago. Otherwise there is literally zero point in pretending to have a discussion with you because anyone can claim anything, that doesn't make it true. I could claim that people were fighting using the same techniques with stone blades as with steel but without evidence to support it an assertion means nothing. I would suggest you look up Russel's Teapot.

That is so far from what I claimed I'm honestly not sure if you trolling or not. After I pointed out that you did it earlier, you clearly didn't look up what Affirming the Consequent is because you're doing it again.

You started going on about hand to hand combat in a discussion about boxing.
Boxing is hand to hand combat.
Hand to hand combat is not boxing.
A→B does not mean B→A

I like to assume good faith, but you're not acquitting yourself very well.

 

In all due respect, whatever, "sifu". I don't have to "acquit" myself at all and you're clearly not acting in good faith. I don't have to respond to your constant accusations about education, training etc, and I don't see the value in continuing this discussion with you since you're basically using it as an opportunity to consistently take whatever I post, blockquote it into a mess of red herrings, trying to twist my words and question my sincerity, faith, and even my boxing experience and intelligence. Yes, you are guilty of all of these as far as this guy is concerned.

Listen, challenging someone else's education, training, intelligence, skill, or faith is not discussing the topic at hand and is never an act of good faith. It's actually thinly disguised tacky online pedant debate behavior, that happens all the time on social media and is glaringly obvious, especially when multiple people gang up to do it against a single person.

You started out by poisoning the entire 1:1 between us by going down that route from your first response, and the hole you've continued to dig yourself in the form of unabated block quotations is evidence you're not here to discuss the topic in a civil manner. And now, your latest suggestion that I'm in some sort of prosecutorial mixup is the final straw.

Readers will be careful to note I have never, ever questioned anyone else's education, training, intelligence, skill, or good faith on this website. That can't be said for some others. So, as far as assuming good faith, no, I won't assume anything going forward, other than that you refuse to accept tertiary sources like encyclopedias as factual, particularly articles on boxing.

If you want to have a good faith debate with me at any point going forward, you have some ground to make up Ben. It's up to you to start over and try again though.

 

I'm not drawing conclusions other than those of the scholars and historians who wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica article and others sources I've posted. So once again, your argument is with them, not me. I'm simply a boxer who read them and paraphrased what they say. Boxing from 0AD to 2000AD is not some Dark Ages mystery. From Greek Olympic times circa 600 BCE, boxing has been one of the most well documented sports in the history of man. The Greek and Roman classics describe BOXING, not some other thing! And the encyclopedia says exactly that. On top of that, it clearly ties back to our ancestor species, since they developed the "pugil" before the Latin came up with the word to describe the thumb and first two fingers used for striking by trained athletes going back at least to the Roman Coliseum and even ancient Crete. So I'm really dense I guess, or the encyclopedia is wrong.

I'm sorry Smit, but I have to bow out of this thread. It's getting way too frustrating for this old fart. I just think you're all being way too technical and overthinking this, quite frankly. Now that my GOOD FAITH has been questioned, after jumping all over my education and boxing knowledge, I guess I'm done with this thread. I have no time for juvenile social media interactions. This is what happens when someone who does act in good faith online gets mobbed anyway. They often don't want to return, and I am only human.

I'd rather explore my pugilism offline, thanks. You guys can keep arguing over this topic if you like, more power to you.

 

And in good faith: apologies ahead of time to everyone if I came across as too harsh just now. I've been under a lot of stress lately and it felt good to get that off my chest. I really dislike social media sometimes. My kids have ruined it for me, so now instead of getting into heated online debates, I tend to shut down, log off, and go train instead.

 

Always the correct option!

 

Honestly if i post something and loads of unconnected people "gang up" on it and point out where they think I'm wrong I tend to think that maybe...just maybe...what I'm saying may not be as spiffing as i initially thought.

It may seem like piling on but really its just multiple people disagreeing with what you're stating.

Which at the end of the day its what a discussion forum is all about right?

Lets face it..someone calling wing chun "boxing" (basically because kung fu was called chinese boxing as far as i can tell?) isn't on the same page as all the rest of that see it as something different.

It's like trying to debate the differences between apples and oranges with someone insisting that because they are both round fruit they are basically the same.

 

Of course apples and oranges are basically the same. That's why there's that famous saying about apples and oranges to describe two basically identical things.

 

Mmmm stretching it a bit.

 

Where are Bill and Ted when you need them ?


(Insert suitable meme here...)

 

I'm going to start with this because I think it's a really good starting place and I honestly think it's really good of you to be able to admit that. Kudos to you and I hope the stress lets up. I get that internet discussions can seem particularly brutal because it's only text and there's no human component via faces or body language. I don't have any emotional investment in this argument or anything against you personally. I deal with what can be shown objectively based on evidence.

Good faith is dealing honestly and fairly with others. I have done that. You don't have to respond to anything, but when you make logical mistakes, when you can't recognize biomechanics, etc. then your qualifications and education are highly suspect. And again, you putting sifu in quotes as though my qualifications are somehow illegitimate makes you look bad, not me, but like you said, stress. No worries on my end.

A red herring is a distraction. I have addressed everything you have posted directly, and not distracted from it or twisted it in any way. Faith is belief in the absence of evidence and has no place in a rational discussion. Boxing experience would let you recognize biomechanics and the difference between those biomechanics and those shown in the images. As for intelligence, you made a very basic logical error which I pointed out to you and you made it again almost immediately, and you mistook what I said when you could have just backtracked and read what I said. Can you see how that comes off?

Qualifications and ability in assessment are important to a discussion and, again, faith is nonsense. You can have faith in anything you want, it doesn't make it true, real, correct, just, or anything else.

Also Smitfire does an excellent job in reply to the "ganging up" bit so kudos to him.

I started by stating where you were wrong and why. My last response there has nothing to do with prosecution. That is a logical error called Affirming the Consequent which I was kindly explaining to you because that was the second time you made that basic error and the second time I was pointing it out to you.

Also you seem to weirdly have something against me quoting you. It's an internet forum and it's a more organized way for people to see what your'e replying to. It's normal.

You should. You should always question sources.

It has nothing to do with their ability to reproduce text and images, it has to do with their lack of completeness, lack of commentary and analysis, lack of original text in the source language, lack of commentary on translation, lack of commentary on the word choice in the original text and its cultural meanings, etc. etc. Encylopediae are not used in academia for many very good reasons. Now take the information I gave you on the issues around source material on boxing gloves in ancient Greece. It's from a paper by Dr. Steven Murray from U.C. Berkley whose academic focus is on sport in the ancient world with a particular focus on Greece and Rome. That is a good source. In hindsight I thought I had cited it in my post and hadn't. That's my bad.

If you want to have a discussion based on academic standards, rigour, and logic, I'm here any time.

 

And there you go lecturing me on what "good faith" means. Seriously dude, shut up. I mean that with love, by the way. Stick to martial arts traditions, man, you are acting way out of line. There's some good faith honesty I think you deserve at this point in the thread.

Block quotes, in my opinion, are for people trying to avoid the actual topic and instead just parse words and vomit them back at someone. If I'm right, you've done brilliantly, Ben. Yes, Kudos to you as well for shutting down the conversation with another wall of text. You know it's not science, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so far you owe the people reading this at least a few pictures to back up all of your extraordinary claims about boxing changing a lot between 0AD and 2000 AD, given all the historical evidence available.

Are you really arguing the jab, cross, hook, parry, bob, weave and other concepts are modern inventions??? Then I challenge you to find their creator. How about the mighty uppercut? Maybe if you'd stuck to logic, instead of trying to adjudicate me personally, we'd have gotten further by now.

Will you also argue that wrestling in 0AD is so different than wrestling in 2000AD? Let's switch topics, because admittedly, I am emotionally invested in boxing.

 

One final word on boxing traditions with respect to the thread topic (since it matters to me): The Aenid and Illiad are high school level material and contain some of the greatest epic descriptions of boxing ever recorded by man. They do not require some advanced degree to read. And I read their relation to boxing on the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Boxing, which anyone can read at their leisure: boxing | History, Rules, & Notable Fighters

 

How far is a bit? How far am I stretching the Olympian concept to the present day? Please use wrestling instead of boxing, I'm getting a little worked up about boxing and I admit that. But I see very little evolution since those times, in fact I've argued a few times already, there has been a devolution. I think people today box worse than ever, generally, and I think those that do with elite OR natural precision are increasingly rare. I even used Rocky IV, a great piece of art that points out that all the fancy gym machines in the world may not produce as great a champion fighter as some guy hauling tree trunks on some mountain, all fundamentals accounted for.

We're not machines, we're still just men and women.

 

Re boxing evolutions:

 

If there's only one thing this hilarious video demonstrates, it's the worst devolution in boxing history: Commentators. On this I have a hunch we can all agree and find common ground upon. They've probably been ruining the sport since at least the birth of Jesus. Virgil and Homer might be personally responsible, in a way.

 

No. And I think you'll find telling people to "shut up" to not be especially productive to discussion and certainly uncivil.

That wasn't me lecturing you, that was me pointing out that I have in fact operated in good faith.

You think discussing the subject matter is out of line? You think assessing the validity of sources and what they contain and don't contain is out of line? Really?

Well your opinion is wrong. This is a common format for replies across a variety of fora and is a way to reply to specific points. If you don't like it you're going to have a really hard time on the internet.

Myself and others have already pointed out changes in tactics and techniques based on the changes in technology. You can quite easily compare video from the earliest boxing matches and today, but I'm not going to post a wall of thirty videos, and it seems you've once again failed to pay attention to what I was actually saying because now you're staw-manning... again.

I don't think you have any idea what I'm arguing even though you could simply look back and read it.

I have stuck to logic and evidence based assessment, you have not. I've clearly pointed out you making the same logical mistake twice, why your evidence does not say what you think it says. Myself and others have pointed out why what you've posted are not good sources, and you've now started straw-manning. If you had any idea what constituted good evidence, or rather evidence at all then we'd all have saved a lot of time here. I've also been rather civil toward you whereas I can't say the same for you.

Well firstly "wrestling" includes many styles, and could include or disinclude weapons as evidenced from surviving medieval manuscripts. What we can say is that there have been no significant technological changes which alter the context of the bouts. We can see techniques which mirror modern techniques from surviving sculptural and pictorial evidence. We can also compare cross-culturally and see that relatively similar rulesets produce relatively similar techniques. What we can also say is that based on video evidence from the start of film recordings to today, athletes are in better shape, more technical, and are better able to carry out those techniques as a result, even where they remain the same as those used decades before.

 

Further boxing evolutions:

This is actually a really good video, ignore the clickbait title.