Why do TMAers hate on MMA? (stereotypes you've heard about combat sports)

[W. Rabbit]

And I completely disagree that MMA and boxing are devoid of martial content. They're chock full of martial content but it's martial content that Asiaphiles are reluctant to acknowledge because it doesn't fit their narrow picture of what martial arts and martial artists should look like.

I agree with your first point but not your second. Boxing has as rich a tradition in the West (and I'm guessing, North and South) as it does in the Sinosphere. So I don't believe it's really a factor of people liking or not liking Asia, but more of being realistic about the goal of martial art training, and if you happen to both appreciate Asia and the martial arts, there are two wildly different "archetypes" you could consider.

There is "Karate Kid" Asiaphile, who loves the story about dorky hero kid who learns some Crane style, wins the trophy and his girl's heart. Then, he gets his ass wrecked again by Okinawan teens in the second movie. Ah so, all that house fixing didn't accomplish much more than get him in the door.

Then there is "Enter the Dragon" Asiaphile, whose version of fighter is the bloodied and ripped up hero who overcomes his fears and emerges from the underworld enlightened, after thoroughly wrecking the place and murdering their leader, on behalf of the government.

That seems to be the big difference between the old school and new school of TMA itself.

The old school seemed to appreciate fighting, getting dirty, bloody, breaking things, etc in order to learn combat. That was important stuff to them back in the day.

The new school of TMA was/is all about self-esteem, servitude as payment for secret knowledge, vengeance, and other self-serving behaviors, forgetting the whole point of being there is to train to stop someone from murdering you with their bare hands or at a minimum, delaying it.

[BKR]

I just can't agree here. A mat or a ring or a cage is not a battlefield and I see no value in viewing it as such. I don't see what you gain from that. There are customs that happen in sport that certainly apply to real fighting, like "protect yourself at all times." But those things are something everybody who competes must practice, whether they view the competition area as a symbolic battlefield or not.

Well, you don't have to use the word "battlefield" if you like. How, when would you suggest developing and practicing some sort of combative mindset ? When does it start and end ? How much should it pervade one's life in general, outside of training ? You have to be able to turn it on and off to some degree ?

And I completely disagree that MMA and boxing are devoid of martial content. They're chock full of martial content but it's martial content that Asia-philes are reluctant to acknowledge because it doesn't fit their narrow picture of what martial arts and martial artists should look like.

I do not think that MMA and boxing are devoid of martial content, however, you and I have a different mindset than perhaps normal fans of entertainment. I'm making a extreme statement to try to tease that out. I may well be putting too fine a point on it.

As an example, I can practically guarantee that most people who do modern Judo are not really thinking about self defense, or any sort of conflict outside of a Judo randori or shiai,particularly the competitors. I mean, no striking training, nothing approaching realistic scenario training for self defense ? Just glorified pajama wrasslin... And that's in a "martial art" admired and recommended here on Bullshido.net

Asia-philes that do not train full contact are threatened by any sort of combatives/conflict that involves real physical contact and the chance of "losing". Because they don't engage in it, don't get to meet the elephant on the tatami or in the ring. The elephant being all those nasty, "I wanna hurt that guy" feelings, being scared shitless (tough to reconcile with being a "master" or "expert" fighter, that are not socially acceptable, let alone really carry out those feelings/intentions for real, even if it's not a "death match".

I mean, how many willingly enter into any sort of "game" where they can be strangled unconscious, be punched into conscussion-land, or have joints dislocated ? Much better to avoid that, call it barbaric, not budo, or whatever.

It's not asia-philic, it's human nature, as watered down by the pretty much total lack of need to use physical violence to protect yourself, or fight in a war, on a regular basis.

[Permalost]

Sure, I get that. I'm struggling to put this succinctly.

If combat sports is the model/training method for becoming proficient at "real fighting" (or at least part of it), then the emotional control aspects that may save your life/limb in a "real encounter" are important.

So the question becomes, when is it OK to celebrate, leaving out considerations of sportsmanship or budo standards of symbolic death. When is the "match" symbolic of a "real fight", over ?

The fighter should never celebrate, because after the fight, he still exists in a world full of other fighters and natural predators and violent criminals. The second a fighter wins and the ref raises his hand in victory, he should use an aikido wrist escape in case the ref is a secret enemy, then quickly exit the ring with his head on a swivel, dropping caltrops while running in a zigzag pattern to thwart potential snipers. He should immediately drive away from the fight to a secure location where he can sharpen his knives and practice marksmanship. While avoiding celebrating, he mails envelopes of deadly white powder to his opponent and their family, because in a "real fight", an opponent may take revenge well after you have defeated him. This is the True Budo.

[BKR]

The fighter should never celebrate, because after the fight, he still exists in a world full of other fighters and natural predators and violent criminals. The second a fighter wins and the ref raises his hand in victory, he should use an aikido wrist escape in case the ref is a secret enemy, then quickly exit the ring with his head on a swivel, dropping caltrops while running in a zigzag pattern to thwart potential snipers. He should immediately drive away from the fight to a secure location where he can sharpen his knives and practice marksmanship. While avoiding celebrating, he mails envelopes of deadly white powder to his opponent and their family, because in a "real fight", an opponent may take revenge well after you have defeated him. This is the True Budo.

Yes, exactly...

[BKR]

Well, here ya go...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b08cd3359cf1d9

[Holy Moment]

So, the whole "us vs them" concept is flawed, outdated, and for the most part an echo of past ego and stupidity (on the parts of both factions).

This. I member there were a metric fuckton of threads like these back ten years ago when I first joined. It was pre-Youtube and around the time TUF was starting to take off, so a lot of pussy TMA guys who missed the first UFC craze were chiming in to chest beat and give their excuses as to why they suck (It was a really, really fun time, even though I was a functional weetard back then). As the years went by, though, and we got to see guys like Lyoto MaStreeta make it in the UFC (And the TMA idiots migrated to Youtube), we saw less and less threads like these from both sides.

The MMA vs.TMA debate, as far as America goes, probably has its roots in the kickboxing craze of the 70's and 80's. A lot of pussy TMA guys were reluctant to accept "professional karate."

https://books.google.com/books?id=vt...page&q&f=false



Then the Gracie Challenge came along:

[W. Rabbit]

"In an effort to keep students not develop them" QFT.

It's the martial arts school business model, but it's anathema to developing a good martial artist.

[Holy Moment]

"In an effort to keep students not develop them" QFT.

It's the martial arts school business model, but it's anathema to developing a good martial artist.

And that was a letter written in the early 70's, mind you.

[Mr. Machette]

I thought it was because MMA would never work on the street? Let's face it...

Grapling is grab-ass-tic lavender nonsense that would get you killed in a back alley orgy. BJJ alone is responsible for countless aids and hepatitis outbreaks via naive students who dove butt first into the moras of drug debris and human efluvia found knee deep throughout America's heartland. They then spread their aquired wretchedness all over the matt in a missionary possition at the next roll.

Cage fighting is a barbaric death cult that wishes only to maim and disfigure their opponents unlike the honorable TMA which would easily dominate the ring if only they were allowed to tap their arsenal of babaric maiming and disfigurment techniques.

MMA is a breeding ground for I'll mannered classles hotentotes like GSP and Anderson Silva. Two rank egotists who would never win a real fight because they spend to much time perfecting the art of fighting. It's disgusting.

[DCS]

I think that all "martial arts" have degraded over time, mostly as methods of warfare changed from one on one fighting to mass engagements of men (with hand weapons), to firearms, and other weapons (artillery). This is related to the "TMA" vs "modern martial arts/combat sports" thing. Combat involved weapons, with unarmed methods being subsidiary to armed ones.

I happened in Japan, see the "bujutsu" to "budo" to post-meji sport oriented arts (Judo, Karate-do, to some extent Kendo).

If historian Karl Friday is correct, martial arts were never about developing battlefield skills. See interview. The "Off the Warpath" mentioned in it says:

Issai Chozan's eighteenth century martial art parable, Neko no myoojutsu ("The cat's eerie skill"), for example, portrayed a vision of ultimate martial prowess that entailed being in such perfect harmony with the natural order that one transcended any need or desire to fight.

But Issai and his mid-Tokugawa contemporaries were scarcely the first to contend that martial training can and should reach beyond physical skills and technical expertise. Sixteenth century instructional writings, as well as early 17th century texts...suggest that this notion was already well established during the late Sengoku era. Careful consideration of the circumstances, under which the ryuuha bugei first appeared, moreover, strongly suggests that these arts were never meant to the straightforward tools of war—that, visions of martial art as a vehicle to broad personal education shaped and characterized this phenomenon from it's nascence.

It is clear, first of all, that ryuuha bugei could not have accounted for more than a tiny portion of 16th century military training. Estimates based on surviving documentation from the period suggest that there were at most a few dozen ryuuha around during the 16th Century. Armies of that era, however, regularly mobilized tens of thousands of men….

Ryuuha bugei must, therefore, have been a specialized activity pursued by only a minute percentage of Sengoku warriors.

Nor did the skills that late medieval bugeisha concentrated on developing have a great deal of direct applicability to 16th century warfare. In fact, even the earliest ryuuha bugei were, at best, anachronistic in this regard….

Thus, ryuuha bugei, which focused on developing prowess and personal combat, emerged and flourished in almost inverse proportion to the value of skilled individual fighters on the battlefield. Moreover, the weapon that played the most prominent role in this new phenomenon--the Sword--played a decidedly minor role in medieval warfare. Swords never became a key battlefield armament in Japan. They were, rather, supplementary weapons analogous to the side arms worn by modern soldiers. While they were also employed in combat, they were used far more often in street fights, robberies, assassinations and other (off battlefield) civil disturbances. Missile weapons--arrows, rocks and later bullets—dominated battles throughout the medieval period. Scholars and popular audiences alike have shown a remarkable reluctance to accept this reality and have attended instead to confound the symbolic importance of the sword to early modern bushi identity with prominence in medieval battles….

Why did ryuuha bugei emerge when they did--at a time when generalship, the ability to organize and direct large forces was rapidly coming to overshadow personal martial skills as the decisive element in battle, and the key to a successful military career? Why were there so few ryuuha bugei around during the Sengoku period and why did they proliferate so rapidly during the early Tokugawa period after the age of wars had passed?....

All these questions become much easier to answer if one sets aside the premise that ryuuha bugei originated as instruments for teaching workaday techniques of the battlefield. And indeed, there is little basis for that hoary assumption, beyond the fact that war was endemic in Japan when the first martial art schools appeared. The received wisdom rests, in other words, on post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy.

A growing body of evidence, on the other hand, points to the conclusion that ryuuha bugei and the pedagogical devices associated with it aimed from the start at conveying more abstract ideals of self-development and enlightenment. That is, there was no fundamental shift of purpose in martial art education between the late 16th and mid 17th centuries. Tokugawa period Budoo represented not a metamorphosis of late medieval martial art, but the maturation of it. Ryuuha bugei itself constituted a new phenomenon--a derivative, not a linear improvement, of earlier, more prosaic military training….

More importantly, however, the martial and other arts also shared a sense of ultimate—true—purpose defined in the medieval Japanese concept of michi or path. This construct, born of implications drawn from a world view common to Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, saw expertise in activities of all sorts--from games and sports to fine arts, from practical endeavors to religious factors--as possessing a universality deriving from its relationship to a common ultimate goal. It held concentrated specialization in any activity to be an equally valid route to attainment of universal truth asserting that all true paths must lead eventually to the same place and therefore complete mastery of even the most the trivial pursuits must yield the same rewards as can be found through the most profound. Ryuuha bugei, emerging in this cultural and most philosophically milieu, took its place alongside poetry, composition, incense judging, Noh drama, the tea ceremony, and numerous other michi….

It fostered character traits and tactical acumen that made those who practice it better warriors, but it's goals and ideals were more akin to those of liberal education than vocational training. That is, bugeisha, even in the Sengoku period had more in common with Olympic marksmanship competitors--training with specialized weapons to develop a esoteric levels of skill under particularized conditions--than with Marine riflemen. They also had as much—perhaps more--in common with Tokugawa period and modern martial artists than with the ordinary warriors of their own day.

Viewed in this light, the prominent role of the sword in medieval ryuuha bugei is much easier to understand. For, their secondary role in battlefield combat notwithstanding, swords achieved a singular status as heirlooms and symbols of power war, military skill and warrior identity….

This representational functional reflected in the popularization of the term hyoohoo (or heihoo)--which until late medieval times designated military science or martial arts in the broad sense—as a synonym for kenjutsu….

Specialization, formalization, and idealization of ryuuha bugei were not inherently deleterious to military preparedness, because this form of martial training had never been about readying troops for war. Military science writ large continued in the guise of Gungaku, while hyoohoo continued to focus on personal development ....

By the 18th century, bushi who had not made and even trained seriously for war in generations, had lost sight of any separation between martial art and military training. Indeed ryuuha bugei had long since overshadowed and supplanted other kinds of soldierly drill. For the bushi of the mid Tokugawa period and later, there was but one form of sophisticated combative training: the individual-centered, self-development oriented arts of the various ryuuha....

[This resulted in] the conviction that swordsmanship and other martial arts of the day descended directly from instruments of war, and that ryuuha bugei originated as vehicles to train warriors for battle….

Ironically, the martial arts today are closer in role and character--particular in their perceived role and character--to their remote medieval progenitors than to their late Tokugawa parents.

Also, at least regarding modern japanese martial ars like Judo, Karate, Kendo or Aikido and due to their roles in the militaristic education system of Imperial Japan these had to abandon their martial aspacts to survive in post war Japan and to became exportable commodities.

[NeilG]

Why do TMAers hate on MMA? (stereotypes you've heard about combat sports)

When you think about it, studying the sword for a decade or more makes no sense when you are training soldiers. "Stick the pointy end in the other guy" is pretty much what they need. As Friday points out, spear and bow were the primary battlefield weapons anyway.

[DCS]

Until they were substituted as primary battlefield weapons by firearms around mid 16th century.

[Ulsteryank]

I think a lot of the traditionalists don't like the attitudes and the showboating of the MMA athletes you see on TV. It goes against the "walk softly but carry a big stick" ideals of many in traditional JMA, not to mention Japanese culture in general. I have had 7th dan kendoka apologize for their inadequacies as part of their closing remarks at seminars where they have instructed.

In kendo you can get a point nullified by celebrating it in any way including a little fist pump, and I agree with that. I'm also not happy with the current state of judo with its lack of etiquette and over-the-top celebrating. I find this hard to reconcile with my enjoyment of watching MMA, but I rationalize it this way: I view kendo and judo as budo, but MMA is just fighting.

I sympathise coming from a JMA background. I left Karate I think my sophmore year of high school as a shodan in shito-ryu. As much as I hated katas and stuff at the time, I did actually take Japanese language throughout high school, and maintained an affinity for the culture, along with those traditionalist aspects and rituals that lack in a lot of modern MMA gyms...

However a lot of this is limited to what we see on tv with athletes trying to make a name for themselves, paying bills by hyping up fights trash talking on twitter, e.t.c. In our actual gym, and a lot of others being that the community is close knit and it's easy to get a bad reputation, we try to uphold a "No-egos" policy. We're a non-profit club, and have told people that act a fool not to bother coming back as they're not welcome to train with us. Some do get a warning, a good thrashing, and do come back more humble with a changed attitude. With the money making entertainment forces that be that are in the public eye of MMA, I guess it's easy to forget the many that do care about the professionalism of the sport.....that guys like Dana&co. once claimed to be about.

[BKR]

If historian Karl Friday is correct, martial arts were never about developing battlefield skills. See interview. The "Off the Warpath" mentioned in it says:



Also, at least regarding modern japanese martial ars like Judo, Karate, Kendo or Aikido and due to their roles in the militaristic education system of Imperial Japan these had to abandon their martial aspacts to survive in post war Japan and to became exportable commodities.

Yes, I'm sure that is one of the articles/writings from which I drew my thoughts on the matter, one of many.

[BKR]

When you think about it, studying the sword for a decade or more makes no sense when you are training soldiers. "Stick the pointy end in the other guy" is pretty much what they need. As Friday points out, spear and bow were the primary battlefield weapons anyway.

Some sort of training of soldier happened, though, regardless of weapon type, there is ample evidence of that (not just writing of Japan).

Back on topic, if one is mostly interested in personal development via "martial arts" training, then the logical conclusion is that effectiveness in a real conflict is not of the utmost importance.

For example, Aikido...