if only WKF kumite was more like this... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grLosUI_TTk"]KARATE SHOTOKAN JKA Kumite - YouTube[/ame] edit: wrong video!
I'd love an international submission grappling event in the olympics. It would truly be an international event if you could balance the ruleset well, you'd have participating martial arts from China, Japan, US, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Brazil and Mongolia ideally.
As I said, I'm not an expert, but I've watched a lot of vids on both sides now and they seem quite similar to me. They're both stop-point rather than continuous, the reverse punch seems to be a primary scoring technique in both, takedowns with a follow-up "finishing" technique is a way to win, etc. If anything, I would need someone to explain to me the differences. Because the similarities seem obvious. If nothing else, they're definitely a lot more similar to each other than either is to knockdown rules. Well I think there are a lot of levels of contact between light contact and full contact. ITF TKD, for instance, is "semi-contact" but I've heard from a lot of people that at the dan-level it gets pretty close to full contact. And I've watched a lot of ITF matches and, to me, it seems kind of like "kickboxing lite," and I like it. I actually really want to do it, but as I've mentioned before, there are just no good ITF schools here.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you actually haven't watched a lot of MMA. . . Not a knock on you. Just a guess.
Is it bad if I'd say that I have actually watched and still watch mma regularly? Which part do you actually disagree with btw?
Well, the part that seemed suspect to me was the bit about most fights ending up on the ground. A lot of fights see some amount of ground time, but I think there's a pretty even split between how much time is spent on the feet and how much is spent on the ground. In fact, I might even be a little surprised if, on average, more time is spent on the ground than on the feet.
Maybe I should have worded it better. I meant to say that most fights end up going to the ground and normally it will also finish on the ground. Unless it is a decision or a surprise standing knock out. I was trying to give an objective opinion on how most other people would view it. Most of my friends think mma is too much naked male hugging, of course they don't know what they're talking about, but that is how they see it.
Well I think those decisions are a large fraction of the fights, and even many of the fights that end on the ground only do so because a fighter got knocked down with a punch or kick and finished. But in any case, I do understand your point, and I guess some people still look at it that way. That sort of attitude--naked male hugging--strikes me more as something that someone would've said a few years ago rather than today. MMA is so well-known and widely recognized now and I don't often meet anyone under 30 who has any sort of interest in martial arts but who also holds a negative opinion of MMA. I think the real obstacle would be the older crowd, the 40 or 50+ year olds who grew up on boxing and who think that "real men duke it out." Those people will eventually become a non-factor though because, quite frankly, they're going to die (just as we all will). Now's not the right time for something like MMA (or an MMA-esque product) to make it into the Olympics, but give it another 20 years or so and the situation will be different.
Well I suppose where I live does make a difference. In the Netherlands, our main martial arts competition is K1 by quite a large margin of popularity. MMA is actually on the rise here as well, but most regular people my age haven't caught up on the hype. Btw, I suppose I belong to that group of old men hung up on "duking it out". I only watch mma because of Ronda Rousey, so I'm not the best kind of mma enthusiast. But I would seriously be surprised if a mma like competition made it into the olympics, no matter how long it would take. It's the most brutal fighting competition and I don't think it's a good thing for kids to be watching it. Which they will, if it becomes an olympic sport.
But nobody has any frickin' clue what's happening in fencing and we're still Olympic! Anyway, I just don't think karate is a good fit for the Olympics. The Olympics are for sports, and most karateka I know are militantly proud that they do "a martial art, not a sport." Sure, there's competitive sparring, but "that's not the core of karate" and "our curriculum isn't built around just winning according to those rules," etc. Olympic karate would crush the non-sport-competition aspects out of most karate dojos just like Olympic fencing has squashed non-sport-oriented historical European martial arts content out of most fencing clubs. That, and I really think that if the Olympics were to offer up another martial sport, they really should go with Sanda. The Olympics has punching-based (boxing), kicking-based (TKD), grappling-based (wrestling), throwing-based (judo), and weapons-based (fencing), but no mixed-ranges martial sport. Sanda fills that gap better than karate in my opinion, while still being "clean" enough for the Olympics (unlike UFC-style MMA).
There's another problem with karate joining the Olympics. Right now, the five martial sports all come from different countries. Queensbury-rules boxing from the UK, wrestling from Greece, fencing from France/Italy, judo from Japan, and TKD from Korea. Politics are as important in the Olympics as the sports' rules themselves, and I'd be surprised if the IOC chose to feature a second Japanese martial sport instead of featuring something from another country, particularly China (which, despite being the world's largest country and having hosted the 2008 Olympics, hasn't gotten to add any sports of Chinese origin to the Olympics yet).
I actually wish that kickboxing was more popular here. Not muay Thai, mind you, but kickboxing either under K-1 rules or American full contact rules. It had a little period during the 80s and early 90s when people cared in America but that proved to be little more than a fad in terms of widespread interest. I do love MMA, though. I like how dynamic it is. All the different ranges of fighting that come into play make it really exciting. And here in the US it's overtaken boxing for the 35-and-under crowd in terms of popularity.
That is the truth! I try to watch it every time the Olympics come around but it always just seems like long pauses punctuated by occasional bursts of chaos. I think that would only be true for a certain faction of karate schools. There are always going to be those schools who have little or no interest in the sport side of martial arts (especially the Okinawan schools). And there are also going to be the full contact guys who want to just carry on with what they've always done. You have to remember that, despite the existence of Olympic TKD for over 2 decades now, here in the US at least you can easily still find three major TKD orgs, each with their own distinct patterns and competition formats. I would be down with some sanda for sure. I actually have looked for a local Sanda class, but alas, it's not to be.
Uh oh, looks like the IOC visited the WKF Championships last week. . . http://www.wkf.net/index.php/dummy-wkf-news/135-ioc-members-visit-the-41st-world-championship.html
I found that very hard to read, so I just skimmed it. If the point is that Okinawan guys are great tournament fighters, I wouldn't doubt it, but it seems that a lot of the Okinawan karateka that I talk to are of the "my karate is for self-defense, not sport!" variety. Especially the goju-ryu guys.
I think the point of the article was that "Okinawan karate" (in the sense of karate learned in Okinawa) is nowardays mainly typical commercial karate, not "old skool". However, I agree with your point that people who self-identify as studying "Okinawan karate" tend to be a bit more anti-sport than those who do Japanese karate.
I think the real question at least the American karateka should be asking themselves is if they want Nike designing their gis, just like Nike supplied socks and shoes that the US Olympic fencing team had to wear. Just a thought.
