> martial arts tend to be always fracturing and in danger of dying out.
Makes me wonder how many we’ve already lost that aren’t documented
Makes me wonder how many we’ve already lost that aren’t documented
So anything that's "lost" is just as easily replaced by someone else coming up with another ritualized choreography.
Take aikido. Why are there so many people doing that? It's not because it has anything to do with actual fighting. It's like why panda bears are still alive - if it were to be left to nature, they'd die out soon, the main reason we have so many is because they look cute to humans and we protect and encourage their existence.
Edit: As a concrete example, he grew up with Wing Chun. But he realized that the static stance was a huge detriment in real fights, so he took the boxing footwork from Ali, which was a lot of moving around and staying mobile and not standing in one spot.
Realistically, hybrid martial arts have been around for a long time. When I was a kid (long before the MMA hype train), I did Karate, but it also involved learning ~30 judo throws, a lot of jujitsu, as well as a wide variety of weapons (bo, nunchucku, kama, eiku, sai, tonfa) as all of the instructors also were black belts in some Okinawan weapons art. It was a lot of fun and better than any martial arts training I had previously (made the years I spent on Taekwondo feel embarrassing), but still nearly useless against a mediocre Muay Thai and BJJ fighter.
Problem back then was information. Pre internet and stuff happening really far away from each other (Brazil and Hong Kong/USA).
UFC and the internet really helped to spread information on what actually works to a much wider audience (and from there to a group of practitioners) and thus sped up the development of the techniques a lot.
UFC also made it possible to make a living from actually fighting instead of teaching others which is/was the “traditional” way of making money from martial arts which allows the fighters to fully concentrate on their own skills.
Apart from that, I do take issue with the for some reason increasingly popular notion of Bruce Lee's fighthing being some sort of proto-MMA. MMA is not just taking something from various sources and calling it "<first name>-fu" or "<first name> tang doo". The essence of (old school) MMA/Vale Tudo is about finding out what works and what doesn't through literal trial by combat, it's not about the mix and match aspect.
I honestly don't understand why you're so eager to criticize what he did when you don't seem to know much about what he actually did and what his thoughts were about martial arts.
Every grappler knows pulling guard in a real fight is dumb, with the best position being knee on belly b/c it gives control and the ability to assess the situation for more attackers.
The reason for the lack of small joint manipulation is that it doesn't really work in a true self-defense/life or death situation (and who wants broken fingers for sport?). Heck, I've read of people get their arms broken or shoulders dislocated and keep attacking. You think a finger or toe is going to stop them? LOL.
With all that said, the biggest advantage of training MMA or BJJ is learning to stay relaxed and make good decisions when a self-defense situation does occur. I might have 30+ simulated fight situations per week (with people who know what they are doing attacking me), how many fights in their lifetime has the person been in who may attack me?
My point was more about MMA not being the pinnacle of fighting. There's much that an MMA fighter would never learn. But this isn't a criticism, it's just a reality. There's no such thing as the "perfect" fighting style.
Incidentally, the reason for banning small joint manipulation is the same reason for banning ballistic joint strikes: avoiding serious injury. I'm certainly not suggesting that breaking someone's finger in a competitive fight would stop them. However, in a mugging/rape situation, breaking fingers and gouging eyes would absolutely be on the cards.
Having said all that, I'd most definitely recommend a good MMA class to someone interested in self-defence. I'd probably suggest augmenting it with classes at a good club that has some element of street awareness, or whatever is appropriate to the local context. That might be mugging awareness and avoidance, or what have you
For multiple opponents, I could certainly see that changing the optimal strategy, but it seems like the odds of winning would still mainly be a function of how strong a fighter is one-on-one, since the only hope is to quickly neutralize the additional opponent(s).
The effective techniques in MMA are just as defined by the ground rules as any other martial art. Real “anything goes” fighting would be as different from MMA as MMA is from kickboxing.
I guess someone could try to kick someone's groin and maybe get one through. An MMA fighter is already trained to check kicks down so again unlikely. And if you think someone is going to drop their hands to get to someone's groin...ok.
The reality is BJJ and MMA is basically how most street fight/self-defense situations go down. Untrained people wildly throw some punches and end up on the ground.
The only caveat, which every grapplers knows, is pulling guard is a competition only thing. In a 'real' fight you never want to be on the bottom.
If we're going to go down the imaginary perfect situation, we're back to day 1 MMA/self defense lessons now. In a situation you control distance, either too far away to be hit or close enough for a take down. The fight is over in 10 seconds because the grappler has shot a double leg, put the other person on their back and is beating the crap out of them before the other person even knows what's happened. The grappler also has hundreds or thousands of fights that are about as close to reality as one can get.
As the other responder said, there are numerous videos out there now showing that grappling (MMA, BJJ, wrestling) sports are superior in any real life situation because that's how a large majority of real life situations go down.
This happened not long ago, and the football almost lost their eye...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70UcLUPvotU
> only real winner in a fight is the one that walks away before it starts.
I 100% agree. After training BJJ for years, I've learned never to underestimate anyone. It's a bit counter intuitive, but the more someone learns to fight, the less they want to fight (outside of training of course).
I'd suggest there's a bit of us all "talking past reach other".
I have no doubt that anyone who thinks they can end a fight by a headbutt, finger break, or groin kick without learning to trade punches and kicks and to grapple, would be in serious trouble. I'd also say that anyone training only sporting, rule-governed elements of fighting is in a great position compared to someone who has zero experience, but will encounter some very unexpected situations when a bar brawl kicks off.
So how about this: we're all right and wrong in some measures, depending on the context? :)
(Edit: typo)
That said, given two otherwise equally skilled fighters, of course the one with more experience under the specific conditions would have an advantage.
I'd like to see what difference some decent strategic training would make in those fights.
There are quite a few team combat fights on YouTube now, often staged in Poland and Russia, from what I can see. Most seem to be groups of one-v-one, rather than mass melée.
There is a Chinese citizen that is a very mediocre MMA fighter who goes around and challenges so called "grand masters" to show how full of BS they are. He's beaten so many without any serious effort that the communist party got upset and downgraded his social credit to where he can no longer fly to the matches to go best more phonies.
It's the same thing in any dojo though and there is sadly a bit of a cult perception of thinking each styles grandmaster is some super powerful fighter when in reality they're okay, but could never make it even in a regional MMA match. I feel bad for the Chinese MMA fighter as he sounds like someone with a lot of character, determination, and morals. He believes that Kung Fu is holding his people back I think and that embracing modern techniques is the future of martial arts.
Aikido is done a lot now, becauae it adapted to current world. What people do is modern variant where not useful pieces got removed and useful pieces are pushed up. Useful here being fun engaging exercise - and in our world being sedentary is more of risk then having to go on the offensive against ennemy clan.
Same with aikido - it's fine when people do it as a form of exercise, like lots of Chinese do tai chi, but let's not kid ourselves on the efficacy. I used to train at a place where there was an aikido group before us, and the teacher would always be talking about "do this or that because of this specific thing the samurai did on the battlefield". I wasn't going to be That Guy challenging him in front of his students, but please - you're literally standing there in what actual samurai wore as underwear under their plate armor when going to war, and now you're going to claim that they used some hand-wavy wrist lock to disarm another guy in full armor charging them with a 3 foot sword? To each their own, but at least be honest to yourself and your students. And it's usually these people who have the most self-aggrandazing ideas about "bushido" and how their hocus pocus is somehow morally superior. How are straight up lies and deceit morally superior?
(I know you weren't claiming my last point, I'm just saying that those promoting their fight-like dance choreographies as "martial arts" need to be honest to be able to claim the moral high ground.)
Putting that aside, it is pretty similar to meditation. It’s not really physically taxing, the movements are intuitive, and it isn’t competitive, so your main opponent is your own mind and heart. It’s a realization that can help you out a lot in other sports or life in general.
One of the most physically gifted athletes I grew up with was fitter and could train harder than anyone I knew, but never amounted to anything in sports, combat or otherwise, because he always completely lost his cool under pressure. Maybe Aikido would have helped him out if he had thought to try it.
I blame Steven Seagal here.