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Comment by YorickPeterse | Hacker News Reader

Something not being used in MMA doesn't necessarily mean it's completely useless, it just means it doesn't fit MMA. The sport isn't static, instead it changes as new ideas and techniques come and go.

If my memory serves me right, Jiu-Jitsu wasn't used in the professional (western) fighting scene for quite a while. Today it's pretty much a must-have for MMA.

The same goes the other way around. Being an expert in Jiu-Jitsu means squat when your opponent is holding a gun, and standing 10m away from you. In other words: different flavours of martial arts/self-defence have different applications, though I would certainly consider some to be very ineffective in most situations.

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> Something not being used in MMA doesn't necessarily mean it's completely useless, it just means it doesn't fit MMA. The sport isn't static, instead it changes as new ideas and techniques come and go.

We agree about that. The thing is, if Aikido could deliver what it promises, namely that you are able to effortlessly throw people to the ground when they try to strike you, then you could be sure fighters would use those techniques.

This is a good point. Again I think it speaks more to the cosy contrived environment of the Octagon vs a real world situation.

You throw a hardened fighter through the air and he'll hit the fence or the canvas and bounce back up.

This is precisely what you don't want to do, Aikidoka or otherwise. You want to gain control and retain it for the full 5 minutes.

> You throw a hardened fighter through the air and he'll hit the fence or the canvas and bounce back up.

> This is precisely what you don't want to do, Aikidoka or otherwise.

I'm sorry, but are you joking? I don't think you have even watched 5 minutes of MMA (and I'm certain you've never trained) if you actually believe that.

I'm not sure what you mean? You said it yourself you never see a fighter doing this ...

There wasn’t really any MMA-style professional western fighting scene before jiu jitsu. Boxing is strikes only, and (traditional, non-WWE) wresting is very close to jiu jitsu in a lot of key ways. MMA as we know it was literally invented by one of the pioneers of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a venue to promote BJJ by showing its effectiveness against other martial arts.

Thing is, given a number of actual fighting contexts, jiujitsu is super effective. Not so much with aikido, it's like the air guitar of the martial arts world. The gun argument is meaningless. Anything of any use and effectiveness can always be imagined in a context where it wouldn't be useful.

it's like the air guitar

I think dulcimer would be a more appropriate analogy.

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