Stop trashing styles

[JohnnyCache]

Monson lost because Sylvia has a great sprawl and forced him to stand up.

What I don't understand is where all these posters are where we say one style reigns supreme?

[sdave]

the answer I got was Chuck has a great sprawl and forces guys to stand up? ?? Why did Monson loose?

Chuck does seem to be unusually difficult to take/keep down.

I didn't see the Monson fight and know zilch about his game... dunno, maybe because he was a foot shorter?

Also, KempoFist, in Clyde's absence, would you consider adding "Have a great Kenpo day" to your sig? Believe it or not, I really miss that. It just seemed friendly...

[Boyd]

It seems to get worse.

Tournament fighting.

...against kickboxing

...against kyokushin.Their mortal rivals.


You knows ?Maybe I misspelled Isshin Ryu.

In Isshin Ryu's defense, it's a relatively obscure style that in all likelyhood would not appear on Youtube even if competition and sparring were a heavy part of its curriculum. In Isshin Ryu's offense, it's an absurdly political generic krotty offshoot that feverishly jerks itself off for being "progressive" because it uses a vertical fist and did away with horse stance in spite of having all the same irredeemable flaws of all other traditional karate styles.

Also Mark Radunz trains Isshin Ryu and he taught me how to punch people in the foot.

[wackamole]

Trashing styles should be absolutely mandatory. Not in the sense of trashing a style as an idealized thing, but in terms of "what they actually do." So in that case, even if someone were teaching an art they called "MMA" or "BJJ" but it was all about standing around with your fingers up your nose, then it would be bullshit no matter what they called it.

On the other hand, if someone taught a style called "aikido" that actually involved full contact fighting in all ranges (free, clinch, ground) , full contact weapon sparring and a rigorous conditioning program, then it would be awesome. Regardless of what they called it.

People must focus on what is ACTUALLY TRAINED as opposed to STUPID NAMES. Results count.

[MacWombat]

Nevermind

[Ke?poFist]

Chuck does seem to be unusually difficult to take/keep down.

I didn't see the Monson fight and know zilch about his game... dunno, maybe because he was a foot shorter?

Also, KempoFist, in Clyde's absence, would you consider adding "Have a great Kenpo day" to your sig? Believe it or not, I really miss that. It just seemed friendly...

But Clyde was still actively teaching Kenpo....

ugh...alright....for you Dave:

<insert vitriolic scathing commentary of a persons character, education, and moral fiber>

Have a great Kempo day! (I'll use my 'M' thank you very much!)

[waxteeth]

The reasons why this is a bad analogy is because while the first situation displays a fighter having his entire combat repetoire being restricted, the latter displays someone who trains in a martial art but cops out on the 5-10% of his training that actually utilizes such techniques. Where is the rest of the moves that they practice day in and day out that are actually legal in a MMA venue?

Good point.

Taking 95% of a guys game out of the ring to make a point is pretty excessive...I see what you are saying.

In closing, I also still have my offer standing to have anyone in the NY area that thinks they will drop me with goin kicking, pinching and other such to come down to our TD and show me in person on me.

Even the superman / flying pinch? :laughing7

Yeah, I would not put much weight in any of that but I did see a brazilian guy try some fishhooking in early UFC but I don't remember his name.

[Kungfoolss]

Other crappy things involving three:

The holy trinity
The three musketeers
Any third movie. (X-Men-3, Blade trinity etc.)

'The Three Amigos' rule!

The Three Amigos: "Tell us we will die like dogs."

El Guapo:"...you will die like dogs."

The Three Amigos: "No, we will not die like dogs, we will fight like lions!"

[Ke?poFist]

Trashing styles should be absolutely mandatory. Not in the sense of trashing a style as an idealized thing, but in terms of "what they actually do." So in that case, even if someone were teaching an art they called "MMA" or "BJJ" but it was all about standing around with your fingers up your nose, then it would be bullshit no matter what they called it.

On the other hand, if someone taught a style called "aikido" that actually involved full contact fighting in all ranges (free, clinch, ground) , full contact weapon sparring and a rigorous conditioning program, then it would be awesome. Regardless of what they called it.

People must focus on what is ACTUALLY TRAINED as opposed to STUPID NAMES. Results count.

Wouldn't that be trashing people and schools as opposed to trashing styles?

And Boyd, AWESOME description of Isshin Ryu. I found that exactly verbatim with the last Isshin ryu people I met at one of my little cousins point sparring and demo competitions.

[Ke?poFist]

Yeah, I would not put much weight in any of that but I did see a brazilian guy try some fishhooking in early UFC but I don't remember his name.

I own the first 6 UFC's. Got them purely for research purposes.....ok entertainment value too, but hey.

Dirty stuff I saw work:
-Gracie pulling Kimo's hair
-Gordeau kicking Tuli's face in while grounded
-Rosier stomping Frazier to submission while grounded
-Hackney punching Joe Son numerous times in the groin while both were on the ground. Joe Son only lasted so long due to his wearing a cup, but it ended with my last entry which was..
-Joe son submitting to a finger grab to the throat to Keith Hackney

In the end it's what we've been saying all along....they're a great icing to the cake of your game, but without your bread and butter you're just not making enough cooking and food references.

[wackamole]

Kempofist: I happen to think that no style exists as an idealized thing. Styles only exist as taught. I think it's important to remember this because otherwise its too easy to get caught up in arguing over who is "most faithful" to the "tenets of the founder."

You see this a lot with aikido and some of the styles like Shotokan. Both of those styles attract lots of Japanophiles who love to scream about tradition, even though their styles are not as old as American folkstyle wrestling. Someone's training system sucks, and therefore the 4 year students can't hang against a kickboxer with 6 months of training? Well that's because it's supposed to suck, because sucking at technique teaches us the universe is blah blah blah, peace, blah blah blah, love, blah blah blah, granola. Of course they neglect to realize that their "tradition" is only one stream of a lot of different traditions in Japan, some of which , in the case of aikido, involved a lot of things that just didn't make it to America. Those would be things like having most of the early aikido students coming out of a competitive judo and/or kendo background. In karate, there were a lot of things happening in Japan post war that resulted in things like Kyokushin and Nippon Kempo. Both are hard to explain if a person clings to the idea of a single "tradition" of karate that believes that point sparring is the guarantee of good technique. Some of the early Shotokan guys in the states actually DID spar with bogu (I know this because I met some guys that did it as young men, and guess what, they were pretty effective) but they dropped it as they got older, and because the Shotokan tournaments only had point sparring. Rulesets drive training.


I think a lot of people attracted to JMA come in with a giant void in their lives that they want to fill up with the idea of an unchanging "traditional Japanese culture." Since a lot of them are professionals in their ft job, and relatively well spoken, they managed to dominate alot of the dialogue in the days when the hardcopy print world set the standard. I am very envious of the guys coming up now-- when I was just starting out in the 90s I only got exposed to that stuff because I had a Japanese expatriate friend who was a hard core karate practitioner, and he had his cousins tape stuff off NHK and send it to him in the states. Now with the internet, we get to find out about the cool stuff, like Daidojuku karate. Aaaaand we find out there may be more to koryu than dressing up and LARPing.

Also, you can apply the same things to CMA, with respect to the massive idiocy that is attached to the taiji , excuse me "tai chi" community, and by extension to CMA. This is of course changing, since the many of the current generation of teachers from the mainland have sanda experience. Even the Shaolin monks.

I mean really, the "we can't be actually effective against resistance because it's against the core beliefs of our style" is the last refuge of the bullshidoist. The "too deadly to spar" thing isn't going to fly anymore, at least beyond the truly deluded. So instead, the smart (but misguided) guys with 20 years in the art have to convince themselves that it's making them better people, by sucking, and clutching some ridiculously out of context quotes in support of their suckage.

I'd be fully okay with that, except for the fact that
1) there's some weirdo fetishistic stuff going on, that's racist and stupid.
2) they shove it down the throats of their students.

Sites like Bullshido do a lot of good work to expose this kind of bullshit, and I think it's generally great...which is why I post here.

[Cassius]

Orange is definitely my favorite flavor of camel.

[Ke?poFist]

good post wackamole. I'll have to get back to you tomorrow though...too tired to make a coherent point.

[Epicurus]

I've seen some very good replies here (translation; repllies which are rephrasings of what i would have said) so I'll keep it brief:

Even if all styles improve the fighting ability of individuals, they can be said to be more or less efficient at it. The Person is very important: so is the Style. Many styles consistently fail to attract/produce good fighters. Excusing crappy styles by saying they are constrained by rules against dirty tactics ("kid fighting" as I call it, the ususal bite-claw-fellate trinity) is such a bad and overused argument that you can just PM me if you seriously want to debate that. Your Iranian was a tough guy - sure. He got even tougher after studying shotokan - sure. How does this prove that Shotokan is not worthy of criticism? All that proves is that in this case shotokan had a net positive effect. Perhaps if your friend had trained in a real, manly martial art like Savate, he'd have three heads and shit fireballs by now. And a the end of the day, that's what wins fights.

[Virus]

Those guys that did stuff like white-crane and karate in the early UFC didn't use it at all. They used bad kickboxing. Most martial arts don't even exist in a real fight.