So the best way to resemble shotokan kata would be to study Greco wrestling and boxing and g&p in an mma gym.......
What Ben's getting at (AFAICS) is that modern shotokan sparring style (going back decades) is an add-on to the style of fighting recorded in the kata. Sport karate sparring is long range sniping with oi zuki's, reverse punches and long kicks (generally). With the odd bit of grabbing and some sweeps from time to time. It has much more in common with Kendo and the ethos of Kendo competition than it does with the original civilian fighting and self protection art of okinawa. The style of fighting recorded in the kata is much closer range and involves indexing targets and clearing and controlling with one hand while bashing with the other limbs (as a crude overview of course). As such Couture's mauling style of Greco dirty boxing in that fight is more indicative of how shotokan (the kata bit) should look in a fight rather than the bouncy long range elusive "one shot one kill/ippon" sport sparring people associate with Lyoto Machida.
And yet we really don't know this for sure because no one can show this in action outside of compliant drills. The only shotokan we can see in action in mma looks completely different from the kata It's a bit like the wing chun argument's we see all over the place over what that should look like in a fight... Its why I was only half joking when I replied to Ben
What we know for sure is the competition format for Karate was a later add-on. The kata were established first and were designed for non-consensual social violence. We know that the competition format (at least the early ones like ippon kumite) borrowed from the same ethos and ideas as Judo and Kendo and the way Karate was taught in the school and university systems (when sport came along Karate was already different to its foundation). We can debate the why's and wherfore's of how kata could or should be used but I think it's a salient point that kata performance and fighting skill divorced years ago. Shotokan in competition looks different to the kata because kata (in 3k karate) is something people do as a side activity to get grades. The main "live" outlet is the back and forth hop in and out reverse punching sport sparring. The re-examining of Karate kata as something other than unrealistic "kick/punch/block" or "3k karate" is still very new. The people that study shotokan, where the only sparring outlet is sport style sparring, outnumber more pragmatic practiticioners by 100-1 (made up statistic alert!). And the people that study it more holistically are often more concerned with self defence and personal development than competing in MMA. And, it may seem like a cop-out, but what's taught in the kata is not always applicable to a consensual "start 10 foot apart" square go. Not because it's too deadly or can't be sparred but because the context is different. And as we can see in Ben's example of the Couture/Belfort fight ideas and concepts that should be taught in Karate (as they are there in the kata) can still be seen in MMA. Every time I seen someone in MMA in a clinch index a target with one hand and hit it with the other one (elbow, punch etc) I see kata in action.
No it doesn't. I've spent years working on Shotokan kata; if you don't mind me asking, what's your basis for making this connection? Both in terms of what specific kata you're referencing and when you trained in Shotokan; I didn't see any Shotokan in your account information list of styles practiced. Again, Randy Couture's fighting style most certainly doesn't look like Shotokan, and I've never once heard either a Shotokan practitioner or a Randy Couture fan make that assertion before this very thread. We don't have to speculate as to what karate MIGHT look like in full contact competition. We have Lyoto Machida, Chinzo Machida, Vitor Belfort, representing Shotokan karate in MMA and Chuck Liddell and others representing other types of karate in MMA...they have a distinctive style, and none of them look ANYTHING like Randy Couture in practice. Here's a couple of full fights of Chinzo Machida in MMA (legally posted by AXS and Bellator themselves). You want to talk about what Shotokan might look like in MMA? It'd look suspiciously like this.
Sounds to me like you're talking about Choki Motobu and late-19th-century Okinawan karate, not Gichin Funakoshi and Shotokan karate. Here's some early-20th-century footage of Funakoshi himself and his students...they're not demonstrating anything remotely like the hitting-from-the-clinch and extended groundfighting you're talking about. It looks a lot more like an ancestor of what the Machida brothers do (which, of course, it is): For contrast, here's some photos of Choki Motobu doing his thing:
Its a stretch to claim vitor a boxer from his youth as an example of shotokan in action, the best you can say he is a hybrid fighter, the same for Chuck his kempo is heavily influenced by the Chinese long arm styles popular in Hawaii in the 50s see below anyone from a CLF, lama or northern style will recognise it and his hook punches
Everyone in MMA nowadays is a "hybrid fighter." But I don't think it's that hard to claim that Vitor Belfort's stand-up game is heavily influenced by Shotokan. Like his gyaku-tsuki-to-bum-rush over Wanderlei Silva (jump to 0:15). I mean, the gyaku-tsuki is even complete with hikite! Much like Machida's gyaku-tsuki defeat of Rashad Evans: And yes, he trained in Shotokan karate. And this MMA blog (not karate blog, but MMA blog), listed his background in 2013 as follows: source
The kata that are part of shotokan pre-date shotokan as a style and, IIRC, Funakoshi didn't even call what he did 'shotokan'. That name came near or even after he died didn't it? His students called it that? Machida et al are obviously JKA shotokan influenced when they fight. But a style is not just what it looks like today imho. There's a legacy and history there too.
If you've spent years working on shotokan kata you'll know that the vast majority of the strikes therein make no appearance in the fighting in jka kumite or the way machida fights. Machida's quite funny actually. He'll do some kata in an open workout in order to look nice and karate-ish and then ditch all that for sport based footwork and lunge punching mixed with grappling and bjj. Like most karateka (and taekwondoin) the kata (patterns) and the fighting are two different things and as much as exponents have tried to mash them together they don't really inform each other.
Funakoshi had the pen name "Shoto" (meaning pine waves referencing the place he liked to go when writing poetry) , when his students built him a dojo , they named it "Shotokan" , shotos house , and the name stuck. Funakoshi is on record as saying he didn't want Karate to be fractured into styles or factions , he just wanted to spread what he loved.
According to Victor he trained karate in 2001 for the herring fight and his wanderli fight was 98 so I don't think that was a win for shotokan . So like I said a hybrid fighter
You know if you switched shotokan for wing chin you could transpose this whole debate to the kung fu forum seemlessly. I think all we can agree on is the machida family are very good athletes who have produced a style of fighting which works well for them based on their shotokan training
Thing is though, IIRC, Machida's father created a load of movement and footwork drills that are fairly unique to him and his family and not part of mainstream shotokan (if there is such a thing). People going along to a Shotokan dojo and expecting to be able to fight like Machida does in MMA (without doing those drills and the sumo, BJJ, cross training, etc) will be sorely mistaken IMHO.
Yep just as people popping into a lau gar school and expecting to fight like MVP might also be in for a shock
Problem with this argument is you’ve got a few examples of karate fighters- not exclusively karate but nobody is exclusively anything in MMA anymore- effectively using karate stand up technique in the cage. I’ve yet to see an example of Wing Chun technique being used in a cage.
Wing chun in mma Wing chun in boxing Wing chun again in boxing Of course the argument is it looks nothing like the forms ...which is exactly the argument going on here
The Machidas are particularly good at training tai sabaki, but it's certainly not unique to them. And the argument that the Machidas are the only Shotokan folks engaged in practical training for full contact competition is mighty ironic in a thread about a Bas-Rutten-created full-contact karate league that doesn't involve the Machidas. Sahinketen and Barbosa, for example, may not be the same caliber as Lyoto and Chinzo Machida, but they're using the same stand-up style, as evidenced by the video already linked in this thread (here is it again for people who don't want to go back). Kind of like how most wrestlers aren't as good as Randy Couture, but that doesn't mean that they're not also wrestlers. I think it's great that Sanda competition exists for CLF and other kung fu folks who want a full-contact competition format for their style. So I am surprised by the overwhelming negativity in this thread.
