What aspects of FMA empty hands are transferable to a competitive MMA environment?

Hi guys,

I got asked a really good question today: What aspects/techniques unique to Filipino Martial Arts can be directly applied to a competitive MMA format? Can the study of Panantukan/Pangamot be beneficial to MMA fighters?

My response was that much of it depends on the ruleset they fight in - some of the things we do won't be allowed in some formats of MMA. However, in trapping or close-quarters range, the limb-destruction, elbow strikes, and bolo punches (hammerfists) of FMA are handy resources to have. Also, the emphasis in angling off and limiting an opponent's capacity to counterattack - although not entirely unique to FMA - are still important tactics that have a place in ring-fighting.

I would be interested to hear input from other FMA practitioners - particularly those who have applied their FMA knowledge to a ring-fighting context.

 

This is kind of a tough one because I feel like so much pangamot is culled from other sources that are already feeding into MMA. I mean, I'm tempted to say "the low-line kicking characteristic of sikaran or pananjakman." But low-line kicking has been a staple of MMA for quite a while already, drawn from muay thai largely. But Marco Ruas also used a lot of foot stomping, which is bog standard martial arts "self-defense," but also very characteristic of FMA footwork/kicking. I guess I wonder why you don't see more of what we called "sipa" in my school and savateurs call "coup de pied."

I do wonder, also, why we don't see more kneeing to the thigh rather than the ribs. And the sort of defenses where you meet the opponent's incoming fist with the point of your elbow ("siko"). I'm not sure whether deliberately doing that violates some rule about threatening the fingers of an opponent (the way that small joint manipulations might). I'd be very interested to see someone try and make use of "gunting." I'm not certain, honestly, whether any of those would work as described on the box. But I feel like any of those limb destruction methods don't carry a huge amount of risk to try out. I feel like, if you can slip an opponent's cross, you can at least attempt an inside gunting without undue risk to your structure.

To me, though, the big thing would be the footwork. I do wish that someone would try using what we called "retrada" to contend with leg kicks to the lead leg. Let me see if I can describe it (because I know that term gets used differently by different people): You pull your lead leg back behind your rear leg momentarily, without really shifting your upper body at all. It's to clear the leg as you're passing a weapon through that space, etc. But I'd love to see it attempted against leg kicks, as it seems to evade the leg kick without actually changing your fighting distance with the opponent, so that you're quickly in position to answer with punching. I'm often frustrated by people moving backward to evade something and then not being able to switch directions quickly enough to capitalize on the other guy being open.

What I'd dearly love to see is someone trying to use reverse triangular footwork versus the shoot. In my head, it would leave the footworker almost behind the shooter and in a good position. The potential pitfall being that both the retrada and the reverse triangle involve bringing both feet close together, albeit momentarily. Prime opportunity for a double leg.

Those are my ideas anyway. And here's the heavy disclaimer: I'm not a big believer in positing that movement x from style y would dramatically change the course of MMA. To my mind, a few brave souls need to be willing to try it out. And then it'll either be proven to work or to be more fanciful than we'd all hoped. We needed a Maurice Smith to show us that high kicks could actually be applied in MMA, for instance. So none of this is intended to suggest that pangamot is some sort of secret weapon for MMA domination.

That said, one of the greatest values (to me) of MMA is as a laboratory. I couldn't care less about competition, except in so far that it provides an intense, structured setting for testing conclusions. So, while I'd like to see whether various elements of pangamot would work in MMA, I'm trying to keep an open mind to either possible outcome.

 

i wondered this as well.
good post!

 

I practice MMA and FMA. I'm trying to use things like split entries and dumog techniques. Although tbh I see split entries in MMA anyway.

I too want to see more gunting, intercepting, and elbow smashes in MMA.

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFPO1zdZb08"]Dog Brothers - Kali Tudo - YouTube[/ame]

I've done some friendly sparring with Guro Marc and Benjamin in the Kali Tudo sub-system. LOTS of Kali material that translates to MMA.

 

Personally I've had a lot of material from this clip work well for me in MMA sparring:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT49Ne_x6bY"]Kali Tudo(tm) 2 - The Running Dog Game vs. The Guard - YouTube[/ame]

 

AND, not being a crazy isolated Kali-man, Guro Marc managed to team up with Kenny Johnson (wrestling coach to the likes of BJ Penn, Anderson Silva, etc). Kenny is a direct fella, and if he thinks something is BS he will label it as such.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgocx5C-Cpg"]Kali Tudo 3: The Striking Game - Trailer - YouTube[/ame]

 

I speculated in a thread last year or the year before (I can't really remember) that we would be seeing a lot more use of elbow strikes used as limb destructions in MMA. The jury is still out on whether I'm right or not.

The reason I believe so is that currently I see a lot of success in MMA by two types of tactics. One is what I will call the "sharpshooter" who keeps out of range mostly and basically tries to land a good long ranged punch or kick as the opponent is leaning into it. The other is the close in fighter that tends to go towards grounding/grappling the opponent.

So I'm seeing a tendacy for success for those using long ranged striking and short-ranged grappling. I think people in MMA will start to use elbow strikes to the limbs as that missing piece between sharpshooting and grappling, IMHO.

 

On Randy Couture's old video series he taught clinch entries after spiking your opponent's punch with an elbow.

 

locally hybrid yawyan has been a team to be reckoned with in the local mma scene.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPu4JeRWyHs"]"Jayvee "Bloody Fists" Caccam" Of Yawyan "MMA" (One Of My MMA Official Fight Vids) - YouTube[/ame]

 

Tito Ortiz was using a lot of elbow destructions in the later half of his career. And Machida, whilst coming from a Karate base, uses a ton of evasion and angular footwork (which we could also take from Kali).

 

It's also very similar to the "crazy monkey" defense of Rodney King. Not that he's an MMA figure specifically. But I think he's coming from the same basic perspective.

 

A lot of Rodney's material came from Muay Boran, which was the historical forerunner to the 'ring art' of Muay Thai.

I've worked a fair bit of the CM and find that it blends well with EH Kali.

 

doesn't any of the dog brothers fights answer many of these questions ? they always seem to get pretty mma when people get close enough to clinch or someone loses there stick and has to strike.

 

cool video, the DB never seem to stop wanting to improve there system, nor do they ever seem to shy away from questioning how what they do would work in a fight, lot of non combat sport martial artists would do well to follow there example.

 

The Dog Brothers are certainly doing for weapons sparring what MMA does for empty hand. And, as Freeform showed, they're definitely addressing the empty hand questions. Do they have empty hand sparring events, Freeform? Or people going empty hand at Gatherings?

 

Because of the idea of 'Be friends at the end of the day' we've tended to avoid having solely empty handed events. What would happen would be that talented MMA guys would turn up with a truely 'win at all costs mindset'. With the anything goes attitude we work with, you need the internal governer that will stop you from seriously damaging someone.

BUT... that hasn't stopped dubbed Dogs from having 'Kali Tudo' fights at Gatherings, Guro Rittiner has even hosted a Tribal Only Empty Handed Gathering on a couple of occasions.

And, it's happened (and happened to me) that both fighter lose their weapons and masks. If this happens we just keep going (and sometimes reacquire a weapon). It wouldn't be the first time that I saw something that looked like an MMA match suddenly change when one of the fighters started hitting the other with his own fencing mask (or on one occasion, his opponents shoe).

When I was assistant coaching MMA, I used to work some basic hubbud and integrate it into GnP training. Very applicable.

 

I have had guys and my wife fight Vale Tudo, the forerunner to MMA, and they have been quite successfull in using elbow and fist limb destructions as well as using empty hand translation from single stick basic strikes and bolo punches.

So yes it can be intergrated easily enough but when the majority are training from Muay Thai, BJJ, Boxing and Wrestling most fighters in the MMA have enough at their disposal for one thing and for another the majority of martial artists outside the FMA scene look upon FMA as being a soley weapons based fighting system and have not looked deeper into the fact that its empty hands side of the art is very effective and brutal, and thirdly a large portion of people who proclaim to do FMA actually only do the weapons aspect of the art and add in other arts to it or add in the weapons to other empty hand arts not actually realising that FMA has empty hands.

Until you get regular fighters from the FMA entering the MMA scene I beleive you will not see too many fighters using the wider variety of elbow strikes and limb destructions. I even have some of my guys who are also Boxers that are starting to sneak in limb destructions and sneaky elbows made to look like covering up in their boxing matches and they are finding them very effective.

All it takes is one MMA fighter who has an FMA background to get a name for themselves using those techniques and then you will see other fighters adopting them, but until then MMA has enough tools to do the job that is required.

 

hi i am doce pares eskrimadore under grand master danny guba and i would say all the empty hand "stuff" is easily transferrable to mma. the problem lies in its brutality as it wont be allowed however alot of it is used in todays more modern jkd.Grand Master Danny Guba would say that mma is too bound by rules and its not real enough i understand what he meant by that he meant its being watered down with all these rules and regs.

 

Bit of a thread necro here- to address Ap's concerns, passive limb destruction (placing a pointy part in the path of an incoming strike) is not considered "small joint manipulation", which by definition is grabbing and twisting fingers and toes.

Also, what I think of as "sipa"/CdPB might be hard to do without shoes. I think the danger in hitting with the softer arch of the foot compared to the harder heel might factor in. I know I tend to go with a stomping/thrusting version that works when it lands, as do some of my training partners, but I can never seem to land the swinging/sweeping version without wincing. Maybe the shins aren't the best target?

I have the first Kali Tudo vid (although it's unfortunately degraded somewhat) and look forward to picking up newer volumes soon. Based on that, and what I've seen of Paul Vunak's and Ron Balicki's stuff, I have no doubt that empty hand FMA has a place in MMA. Active limb destructions (gunting) is something I'm a bit wary about, as my mind goes, "why not either strike the head or shoot?", but the hammer fists, low-line kicks, off-balancing (dumog?), and footwork seem like they'd lend themselves well to an all-in contest. However, I think one would have to have a pretty solid boxing/kickboxing/MT arsenal to begin with before adding in such things. I'm sure if you showed Anderson Silva an FMA highlight vid he'd be using it in his next match, but he's also powered by magic, so...

I did an article once on arts that have yet to really be featured in MMA; the biggest obstacle for most of them was a lack of high-profile competitive events. At the least, that provides a large talent pool of fighters to chose from. I also think it provides a format for identifying the choice techniques for a match-fight; boxing, wrestling, Judo, TKD, etc look like they do because millions of athletes have competed in them for years, so there is, by and large, a working formula for competitive fighting, which FMA empty hand work lacks on a large scale.