Please point me to any other relatively no-holds-barred type of contest that has "traditional" martial arts finishing strongly.
If eye-gouging, ear-biting, headbutts, groin-tearing, etc. were allowed, most of BJJ's techniques would be rendered moot, just like allowing grappling obsoletes most of boxing's techniques.
Completely not true. In the UFC if a person sits guard the standing practitioner can force the ref to stand the guard player up. (Heavily favors a striking based martial art). If there is a temporary lull in action on the ground the ref has the discretion to stand the fighters back up (also favors strikers)
In the early days of the UFC headbutts were allowed so those didn’t really seem to get in the way (they are allowed and practiced in Sambo as well) and finally try to the gouge the eyes of a BJJ black belt (or blue belt for that matter). Bas Ruten actually answers this rebuttal hilariously in an interview I watched years ago.
I’m confident krav-maga gurus would still get mollywhopped if the UFC completely threw out their rule book.
Also, not "no holds barred," whatever that means, but you can call boxing a traditional martial art if not an Eastern one, and Floyd Mayweather absolutely dominated Conor McGregor in their one matchup. Naturally, Floyd would have gotten killed in an MMA match with McGregor, but that's another answer.
Every single UFC tournament has been won by wrestlers, sambo fighters, and bjj fighters, with the exception for UFC 3 where Steve Jennum (Ninjitsu) was an alternate and fought in the finals, where he won by a sloppy armbar.
The upperweights are similar. Historically dominated by wrestlers and grapplers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UFC_champions#Lightwei...
Ever heard of confirmation bias? Well, you're engaging in it right now. If winning an early UFC is "evidence" of MA effectiveness (which I don't think it is) then Steve Jennum's victory should be accepted as "evidence" that Ninjitsu is effective. But you've just offhandedly dismissed it.
This a common pattern. Often, when a practitioner of traditional martial arts wins an MMA fight of any sort, MMA fans proclaim it "doesn't count" because of one of the following:
- It supposedly didn't look like their style of fighting.
- They cross-trained in other martial arts.
- The opponent wasn't "good enough" or the match wasn't high-level enough.
On the flip side, the same fans don't seem to care at all whether BJJ people or wrestlers cross-train, whether their actual performance "looks" like their style, or which techniques they used to win. Again, confirmation bias all around.
If you don't have good evidence to support your claims, the onus is on you to find better evidence, not on everyone else to provide evidence to the contrary.
He literally gave reasonable evidence to support his claim. The reply made a conflicting claim with no evidence, OP simply, respectfully, asked for evidence.
Yeah, the early UFCs were a commercial for the Gracie's BJJ, but there is no sign or credible claim that it was rigged. Royce Gracie won UFC 1, 2, and 4 over the course of 13 months. After that it was mainly wrestlers.
This isn't antagonistic, I would also like to see if there was a similar competition where 'traditional' martial arts fared better.
But after getting my clock cleaned in a few friendly-ish matches with local boxers and judoka - and after seeing the same results with the far-superior practitioners in the early UFC - I was forced to admit that I had been absolutely wrong about the practicality of my art. My fellow kung fu practitioner (who participated in some of these matches) sparred a boxer, got destroyed, and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I could totally pulled off some really sweet palm strikes if he hadn't kept punching me in the face for, like, the entire match."
An art practiced in a live manner with a resisting opponent seems to _always_ be more effective in real life, even if it's somewhat handicapped by rules of sport.
Specifically, about six months into studying judo (after switching from kung fu), I got into an altercation outside of a bar. A larger man threw a punch at me, and I instinctively clinched. I was scared shitless and exactly zero of the fancy kung fu techniques of the previous three years came to mind. Instead, the judo techniques I'd trained for much less time - but under conditions of resistance and fatigue - basically activated themselves and my panicked mind just observed as my body dropped the guy onto pavement with a simple drop-knee shoulder throw. Fight over.
It remains one of the most important lessons I've learned about martial arts and the human mind in general: the unconscious mind is in control. And it's less flexible than the thinking mind, but when it's trained appropriately for the situation at hand, it will respond with a speed and certainty (especially when fueled with adrenaline) that feels preternatural.
If the ridiculously small sample size, questionable sampling technique and the fact that one of the participants was part of the school/family that organized the whole event doesn't disqualify early UFCs as "evidence" in your eyes, then it's pretty clear you are simply want to confirm your biases.
>This isn't antagonistic, I would also like to see if there was a similar competition where 'traditional' martial arts fared better.
What's stopping you? Search for "open martial arts tournament". Good luck verifying whether participants are actually proficient in the art they claim to represent, though.