Fight Science! Did anyone watch this?

[thaiboxerken]

Some things don't work in the ring which will work elsewhere, and some things work in the ring which wont work in other particular conditions.

Like what?

 

[Wudang]

Except that you've just contradicted yourself. In your example, just as when pushing a car, the vast majority of the power is coming from the leg muscles. The rest of the body, including arms, simply focus the power into a particular vector. It is still the leg muscles providing the power that moves the car. Leg muscles are indeed typically stronger than arm muscles. Try moving a car using just your arms.

So explain why that makes kicks stronger than punches or try re-reading what I wrote.

 

[Wudang]

Like what?

Intimidation tactics. Shock tactics. Pain, like Fred Ettish felts in the UFC.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

What are you talking about? Who said anything about not being able to beat a single unarmed person? Why the digression into absurdity? My point is simply that the best way for dealing with one type of situation is not necessarily always the best solution.

As I believe I said earlier, evidence that the people who pretend to be training to deal with multiple armed attackers can deal with a single unarmed attacker is almost completely anecdotal and contradicted by the available video evidence to the best of my knowledge.

I find the idea a bit on the silly side. It's akin to saying "I don't train to drive on suburban roads, I train to deal with car chases through a post-Holocaust wilderness where men in leather fire crossbows at me. So of course I can barely keep a car on the road in suburbia, what do you expect? I have faith however that if society collapses I will do better in the ensuing car chases than those silly people who train to drive in suburbia".

What evidence are you talking about? How would you even perform such an experiment? What, do you take different types of martial artists and see how they perform in bar fights or something?

There is a limited amount of footage available of "no rules" fights that genuinely had no or almost no rules, like Brazilian vale tudo bouts, dojo challenge matches, the Boztepe/Cheung scrap and so forth. In these fights just as in the ring, full contact training works and everything else is totally useless.

At this point if you want to believe that non-contact training magically starts working when the cameras aren't present it's up to you to present the evidence for that belief.

Where did you get the idea that I can't beat one unarmed person with "a bit of a clue"?

From the part where you avoided saying whether you personally had ever done unarmed full-contact training, as opposed to stating that it exists in the style you do "at the higher levels".

Again, you aren't even arguing against anything I've said here. The system I train in does use full-contact sparring as part of its training. My point is that what is most effective in a ring against a highly skilled unarmed opponant, does not include everything which is effective and useful in real fights. Full contact MMA competitions are not the be-all-end-all of martial arts.

Here's the challenge. I think this is a claim you have no good evidence for. Provide us some evidence that this stuff which is not effective and useful when the cameras are rolling works some other time. Anecdotes don't count because if anecdotes count every damned thing in every martial art works.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Yes, we all know the ghettos of Hawaii are famous for it's violence. Those people even juggle fire and wear hulas! It's definitely a hot spot of action in the USA.

You are out of your mind

Nowdays I work as an audio recording engineer. This means that no matter HOW SEEDY a part of town, or how nasty, Ive most likely been at the worst bar there dealing with a band. Nowhere, not any south side of the tracks dive in anywhereseville USA was even remotely close to the violence of O'ahu, Hawai'i

Almost every fight I saw across this great nation was one on one. One on one attacks in Hawaii are almost unheard of, its always a "mobbing"

I love how you bring up the stereotyped ghetto canard

As if an attack requiring you to fight was likely in a ghetto!

Attacks in the ghetto usually come in the form of a bullet, or a demand, backed by the threat of bullets.

I dont know what TV show youve been watching where people (besides MAYBE noob gangsters getting jumped in) in a ghetto are some radical fisticuff warriors

You are WAY WAY WAY more likely to get in a fistfight at a country bar than in any ghetto

I could be wrong, but it sounds as if you are very young and idealistic about your art (which I appluad), but there is so much more to the world, and to even the art you love than what youve seen so far. I wouldnt be so quick to dismiss those who have had glimpses of neighborhoods outside of yours

 

[thaiboxerken]

Nowhere, not any south side of the tracks dive in anywhereseville USA was even remotely close to the violence of O'ahu, Hawai'i

Feel free to provide evidence of this.

Almost every fight I saw across this great nation was one on one. One on one attacks in Hawaii are almost unheard of, its always a "mobbing"

You're kidding, right? I can only hope you are simply trolling now.

I love how you bring up the stereotyped ghetto canard

As if an attack requiring you to fight was likely in a ghetto!

What you are describing is violence that happens in ghettos, where people are desperate for money and where gangs are rampant.

Attacks in the ghetto usually come in the form of a bullet, or a demand, backed by the threat of bullets.

They also come in the form of numbers of people and knives.

I dont know what TV show youve been watching where people (besides MAYBE noob gangsters getting jumped in) in a ghetto are some radical fisticuff warriors

I haven't. Of course, I haven't watched enough or "Hawaii Five O'" To realize how violent Hawaiian ghettos are.

I could be wrong, but it sounds as if you are very young and idealistic about your art (which I appluad),

I'm not. I don't train in any "art" for the "art's" sake. I train in any art that can provide realistic value. Hence, I do MMA in the true-est sense of the word.

 

[pipelineaudio]

What you are describing is violence that happens in ghettos, where people are desperate for money and where gangs are rampant..

gangs?

GANGS???

hello 1980 is calling you

 

[thaiboxerken]

GANGS???

hello 1980 is calling you

Gangs are still a major part of ghetto activity. However, since you are from Malibu's most Wanted maybe you know more about this than I do.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ken,

Some things don't work in the ring which will work elsewhere, and some things work in the ring which wont work in other particular conditions.

Like what?

Like any technique which is primarily intended to deal with the types of attacks that untrained people tend to make. Consider, for example, the knife defense techniques typically tought to police officers. None of that is going to work against a competent trained martial artist. And then there are things which are only going to be useful in certain types of situations. For example, there are techniques which are extremely effective with blades, which are useless otherwise.

Like I said before, one size does not fit all.


Kevin,

As I believe I said earlier, evidence that the people who pretend to be training to deal with multiple armed attackers can deal with a single unarmed attacker is almost completely anecdotal and contradicted by the available video evidence to the best of my knowledge.

Well, I am not going to attempt to comment on evidence which I am not familiar with. Suffice it to say that what you are claiming does not match up with my experience and observations.

I find the idea a bit on the silly side. It's akin to saying "I don't train to drive on suburban roads, I train to deal with car chases through a post-Holocaust wilderness where men in leather fire crossbows at me. So of course I can barely keep a car on the road in suburbia, what do you expect? I have faith however that if society collapses I will do better in the ensuing car chases than those silly people who train to drive in suburbia".

What is silly is this ridiculous characterization of what I have said. First of all, I never said anything about not training to fight a single unarmed opponent. Of course you have to be able to do that before you can even consider anything more advanced. My point, once again, is that just because a particular technique is not the optimal way for dealing with an unarmed, trained martial artist in a competition ring, does not mean that there are no real world situations where it might be optimal, or at least more suitable than the techniques which are optimal for ring competetions.

Going back to the example which sparked all of this: You said that you thought that in the conditions where a so-called 1-inch punch is effective, other grapling techniques would be better enough of the time so as to render the 1-inch punch useless. My point was that while this may be the case in MMA competitions, that does not mean that it is going to be the case in other types of fights.

Likewise for limb destruction. I would not find it at all surprising that in unarmed competition with other trained martial artists, limb destruction techniques tend to not be very helpful. But there are all sorts of real-world situations where they are useful.

There is a limited amount of footage available of "no rules" fights that genuinely had no or almost no rules, like Brazilian vale tudo bouts, dojo challenge matches, the Boztepe/Cheung scrap and so forth. In these fights just as in the ring, full contact training works and everything else is totally useless.

Again, I never said anything about not needing full contact training. And I would never expect somebody to hasn't done full contact training to be better prepared than somebody who has. But believe it or not, competing in an MMA ring is not the only form of full-contact training out there. And I would not go so far as to say that "everything else is totally useless". I would just say that it is not enough, because a critical part of the training is missing. Unfortunately, what many modern martial arts schools call there "training", is nothing more than the basics that you would learn to prepare you for sparring, but then they never take that next step. That isn't martial arts, it's dancing.

At this point if you want to believe that non-contact training magically starts working when the cameras aren't present it's up to you to present the evidence for that belief.

I never claimed anything of the sort. Just because I disagree with you on some specific points does not mean that my position is diametrically opposed to yours.

Where did you get the idea that I can't beat one unarmed person with "a bit of a clue"?

From the part where you avoided saying whether you personally had ever done unarmed full-contact training, as opposed to stating that it exists in the style you do "at the higher levels".

I did not avoid anything at all. I have not yet done full-contact unarmed training in my style, because I have not advanced that far yet. I have done full contact training with weapons. That said, I do not hold any illusions about my being able to beat a more experienced fighter in unarmed combat, but I am confident that I can beat somebody with "a bit of a clue".

Again, you aren't even arguing against anything I've said here. The system I train in does use full-contact sparring as part of its training. My point is that what is most effective in a ring against a highly skilled unarmed opponant, does not include everything which is effective and useful in real fights. Full contact MMA competitions are not the be-all-end-all of martial arts.

Here's the challenge. I think this is a claim you have no good evidence for. Provide us some evidence that this stuff which is not effective and useful when the cameras are rolling works some other time. Anecdotes don't count because if anecdotes count every damned thing in every martial art works.

Well, I don't have any videos for you to watch, so please, feel free to completely ignore everything I have said. But this works both ways. If you want to claim that there are no conditions under which techniques which are not particularly helpful in MMA competitions, would be useful, then you need more than examples of MMA competitors fighting against so-called martial artists who don't do any full-contact training at all.

Just to reiterate, the claim of yours which I opposed is not that MMA competitors consistently do better outside of the ring than people who don't do full-contact training. I would be amazed if they did not. What I oppose is the claim that training for MMA competitions is the only useful form of full-contact training, or that something which is not particularly useful in a competition ring, is never going to be useful. I haven't seen any evidence to support those claims.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Kevin,
Well, I am not going to attempt to comment on evidence which I am not familiar with. Suffice it to say that what you are claiming does not match up with my experience and observations.

Lots of people before the UFC came along drew similarly incorrect conclusions from their experience and observations. They were all wrong too.

What is silly is this ridiculous characterization of what I have said. First of all, I never said anything about not training to fight a single unarmed opponent. Of course you have to be able to do that before you can even consider anything more advanced. My point, once again, is that just because a particular technique is not the optimal way for dealing with an unarmed, trained martial artist in a competition ring, does not mean that there are no real world situations where it might be optimal, or at least more suitable than the techniques which are optimal for ring competetions.

I repeat, as far the evidence I am aware of goes, unarmed combat training which is not full contact does not work. If you are not training full contact you do not have any functional fighting skills.

Now as to whether wrist locks and limb destruction and such things are useful anyway if you encounter a total scrub, there's a degree of unfalsifiability in the claim that they are useful. However the question you should be asking is not "Is it conceivable that a whipping limb destruction blow could work on a scrub?" but "Would a sane person train a technique which might or might not work on a total scrub, when they could put the same time into a technique which has been proven to work on the best around?".

Do you really think you are better off training a party trick that might, maybe, work on a total idiot than you are training to duck and cross?

Going back to the example which sparked all of this: You said that you thought that in the conditions where a so-called 1-inch punch is effective, other grapling techniques would be better enough of the time so as to render the 1-inch punch useless. My point was that while this may be the case in MMA competitions, that does not mean that it is going to be the case in other types of fights.

Likewise for limb destruction. I would not find it at all surprising that in unarmed competition with other trained martial artists, limb destruction techniques tend to not be very helpful. But there are all sorts of real-world situations where they are useful.

A minor correction, I said I suspected grappling techniques eat the one inch punch's lunch. It might turn out that they do not, I cannot say for certain.

As for these "real world" situations where party tricks are better than bread and butter MMA, evidence?

Again, I never said anything about not needing full contact training. And I would never expect somebody to hasn't done full contact training to be better prepared than somebody who has. But believe it or not, competing in an MMA ring is not the only form of full-contact training out there.

Straw man, I never said it was. The ring is just the laboratory where we do the testing to find out what works. What works, works everywhere, in or out of the lab.

And I would not go so far as to say that "everything else is totally useless". I would just say that it is not enough, because a critical part of the training is missing. Unfortunately, what many modern martial arts schools call there "training", is nothing more than the basics that you would learn to prepare you for sparring, but then they never take that next step. That isn't martial arts, it's dancing.

I would go precisely that far. Evidence that anyone who does not train full contact can fight worth a bean is totally absent despite extensive research.

I did not avoid anything at all. I have not yet done full-contact unarmed training in my style, because I have not advanced that far yet. I have done full contact training with weapons. That said, I do not hold any illusions about my being able to beat a more experienced fighter in unarmed combat, but I am confident that I can beat somebody with "a bit of a clue".

That is what every Fred Ettish in the world has always said. We now know they were just wrong.

Well, I don't have any videos for you to watch, so please, feel free to completely ignore everything I have said. But this works both ways. If you want to claim that there are no conditions under which techniques which are not particularly helpful in MMA competitions, would be useful, then you need more than examples of MMA competitors fighting against so-called martial artists who don't do any full-contact training at all.

Instead of asking me to prove a negative, ask yourself why the sport arts that engage in continual competition have discarded those silly techniques.

Ask yourself if you really believe that you have an advantage against a scrub if you can get them to walk into your silly technique of choice as opposed to getting them to walk into a cross, a hook, a takedown or a submission. Ask yourself which you think is easier to accomplish.

Just to reiterate, the claim of yours which I opposed is not that MMA competitors consistently do better outside of the ring than people who don't do full-contact training. I would be amazed if they did not. What I oppose is the claim that training for MMA competitions is the only useful form of full-contact training, or that something which is not particularly useful in a competition ring, is never going to be useful. I haven't seen any evidence to support those claims.

That would be because I never made them.

The first claim is a very silly reversal of cause and effect. MMA bouts in a ring do not exert a magical force backwards in time to bless the previous training with efficacity. Rather, MMAers train in whatever way they think will best prepare them for a real fight, because unlike woo-MAers they are preparing for a real fight.

If you are preparing for a real fight too, you are best advised to train like the MMAers do.

As for the claim that party trick techniques work on the clueless it's up to you to find evidence of that, not up to me to disprove it. I think the idea that you will be better off using a fiddly and possibly utterly useless move on a scrub rather than using a simple, direct and provably useable move on a scrub is ridiculous on the face of it, but if you show me the evidence I will believe.

 

[pipelineaudio]

the UFC strategy of tackle as soon as possible, would be WORSE than useless against multiple opponents in the real world

it would get you killed while the untackled opponents stomped you at their leisure with no risk to themselves

 

[thaiboxerken]

the UFC strategy of tackle as soon as possible, would be WORSE than useless against multiple opponents in the real world

The TMA strategy of doing a kata would be worse than that.

psst... Tackle ASAP is not "UFC" strategy, just the strategy used by the grapplers.

it would get you killed while the untackled opponents stomped you at their leisure with no risk to themselves

A decent ground fighter can use his opponent as a shield against such stomps, but don't let that bother you. Yes, grappling on the ground is not a good idea against multiple opponents. I don't think any MMA people advocate doing so.

However, doing a hard takedown on someone and getting back to the feet is a viable option. Other "MMA" techniques that can work against multiple opponents are as follows:

Punch
Kick
Push
Push kick
Clinch and swing

For some reason, you are trying to equate MMA with grappling and that makes your arguments empty.

 

[pipelineaudio]

For some reason, you are trying to equate MMA with grappling and that makes your arguments empty.

No, I was responding to KL's UFC comments

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Kevin,

Lots of people before the UFC came along drew similarly incorrect conclusions from their experience and observations. They were all wrong too.

So let me get this straight. All those people throughout history whose skills were proven in real combat don't amount to jack squat?

I repeat, as far the evidence I am aware of goes, unarmed combat training which is not full contact does not work. If you are not training full contact you do not have any functional fighting skills.

Well, since I have never argued against this point, I don't see why you keep repeating it. Like I said before, the system I do does have full contact sparring as part of its training. But it is not MMA, and it is not all the same stuff you are going to see in the ring at an MMA competition.

Lots of martial arts do full contact as part of their training. It is just the vast proliferation of ones that don't, which give the impression that full contact sparring somehow isn't present in so-called "traditional martial arts".

Now as to whether wrist locks and limb destruction and such things are useful anyway if you encounter a total scrub, there's a degree of unfalsifiability in the claim that they are useful. However the question you should be asking is not "Is it conceivable that a whipping limb destruction blow could work on a scrub?" but "Would a sane person train a technique which might or might not work on a total scrub, when they could put the same time into a technique which has been proven to work on the best around?".

Do you really think you are better off training a party trick that might, maybe, work on a total idiot than you are training to duck and cross?

Again, you are twisting what I said to the point of absurdity. The fact of the matter is that the techniques you are referring to here have been proven to work in real combat time and time again. The fact that a bunch of "dojo potatoes" with no actual fighting experience can't make them work, is utterly irrelevant. They can't make "duck and cross" work either. They can't fight.

Again, I never said anything about not needing full contact training. And I would never expect somebody to hasn't done full contact training to be better prepared than somebody who has. But believe it or not, competing in an MMA ring is not the only form of full-contact training out there.

Straw man, I never said it was. The ring is just the laboratory where we do the testing to find out what works. What works, works everywhere, in or out of the lab.

That's just plain wrong. What works under one set of conditions does not always work under all conditions. Your "lab" does not cover all situations. It doesn't even cover typical situations. There are plenty of other "labs" that stuff can be, and is, tested in. I absolutely agree with you that a fighter needs to practice his skills under full contact to be really effective, and that techniques need to be proven under realistic conditions to be accepted as legitimate, useful techniques. I just disagree with your notion that an MMA competition is always going to be a good way to test everything, or that no other good ways to test it exist.

I did not avoid anything at all. I have not yet done full-contact unarmed training in my style, because I have not advanced that far yet. I have done full contact training with weapons. That said, I do not hold any illusions about my being able to beat a more experienced fighter in unarmed combat, but I am confident that I can beat somebody with "a bit of a clue".

That is what every Fred Ettish in the world has always said. We now know they were just wrong.

I have no idea who Fred Ettish is, but I am puzzled as to how you can assert that I am wrong about being able to beat somebody with "a bit of a clue", without knowing anything at all about my skills.

I also find it odd that you seem to think that full-contact training in MMA will benefit you in other types of fights (such as fighting with weapons), but reject the idea that my full-contact training with weapons would be of benefit enough for me to be able to unarmed beat somebody with a bit of a clue. In my experience, translating from weapons to empty hand is actually easier that going the other way. But I guess my experience doesn't count for anything, since I am not an MMA competitor?

Instead of asking me to prove a negative, ask yourself why the sport arts that engage in continual competition have discarded those silly techniques.

Because they aren't particularly useful withing the confines of those competitions. The Dog Brothers use all sorts of techniques you won't find in an MMA competition (an obvious example being whipping strikes). Are they just being silly?

Ask yourself if you really believe that you have an advantage against a scrub if you can get them to walk into your silly technique of choice as opposed to getting them to walk into a cross, a hook, a takedown or a submission. Ask yourself which you think is easier to accomplish.

Actually, a number of the techniques you seem to think are silly, are takedowns. Anyway, I don't have to speculate on it. The stuff I am learning has been demonstrated to work in real combat. Whether you see it in MMA competitions is completely irrelevant.

The first claim is a very silly reversal of cause and effect. MMA bouts in a ring do not exert a magical force backwards in time to bless the previous training with efficacity. Rather, MMAers train in whatever way they think will best prepare them for a real fight, because unlike woo-MAers they are preparing for a real fight.

That's what anybody training to fight is going to do. If you are preparing for a certain type of fight, you train what you will find most useful for that type of fight. If the type of fight changes, than will or will not be optimal changes too. The idea that what you find best prepares you for competing in a ring against other MMA competitors, is also going to be what best prepares a police officer from defending against an attacker on the street, or bouncer for best preparing for dealing with drunken attackers in a bar, or a woman for defending against a mugger on the street, or any of the other real-world situations that people are faced with, simply isn't realistic.

If you are preparing for a real fight too, you are best advised to train like the MMAers do.

Really? What if the fighting I am preparing for is something like what the Dog Brothers do? I think I can pretty safely say that in a sword, or even stick fight, I would tear apart pretty much anybody who hasn't done some fairly extensive weapon training. I don't care how good they are at their style. If they don't have experience with weapons, they are going to lose. Likewise I would get my ass handed to me in an unarmed fight by somebody who has a lot of experience with that type of fighting.

I would only be best advised to train like the MMAers do, if that is what I want to do. If you want to learn how to fight under different conditions, then your choice of what is and is not useful is going to be different. A complete martial arts system, such as Inayan Escrima or Inasonto Kali, preserves techniques and skills for all types of fighting. No one person, not even a master, is going to actually use all of it when fighting. They do exactly what you do. They pick what is useful for the fight in question, and use that. Of course if you focus entirely on one type of fighting, you are going to be better at it that somebody who is more general, but that is simply a question of what your goals and priorities are.

the UFC strategy of tackle as soon as possible, would be WORSE than useless against multiple opponents in the real world

The TMA strategy of doing a kata would be worse than that.

This is just ridiculous. Katas are for training, not fighting. Any style that just does kata, without advancing into things like reaction drills, and eventually sparring, isn't even a martial art. It is dancing. To refer to this as a TMA strategy is nothing more than to lump in all traditional martial arts with the crap floating around that doesn't even diserve to be called "martial arts".


Dr. Stupid

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Listen folks. Just take some kung fu or TKD and do some meditation and strengthen your Chi and you'll be set to go. Lifting weights just produces big bulky muscles that slow you down so don't lift weights. Be sure to practice lots of Kata and never engage in full contact sparring because that doesn't help one bit. Meditate and watch lots of Anime for more techniques. And remember that UFC fighters wouldn't stand a chance against any 80 year old kung fu grand masters who would destroy them with their chi.

On another note, Always listen to random people on message boards who preach about their fighting experience because they aren't really armchair fighters but are real warriors who know what they are talking about.

 

[T'ai Chi]

The person(who ducked a friendly offer from me, a lil' non-intimadating t'aichi-er, some years back, then made excuses)'s comments about kata just shows one doesn't really know what the word 'kata' means. One just believes it only means doing movements and postures in patterns, like a typical taekwondo form, for example. However, people in judo practice kata all the time, and they are highly effective, for example. TMAs who use weapons (say a sword) necessarily practice kata all the time- what, they cannot really cut?

I'd enjoy to see video evidence for one's claim about (mostly grapplers) using attackers as shields against other attackers in a real life situation. Maybe bigfoot will be in the video using a unicorn as a shield against a leprechaun and a decent UPN show?

People that refer to UFC-ish events as proving something grand or "best" about the martial arts are making big logical errors:

For one, they never get to see any contracts, and fixes/works/cans/steroids have happened before in sports history, and early in UFC, for example, the Gracie family was partly in charge- which somewhat biases if they controlled the matches. And such people are professional athletes which do not represent the general population. Michael Jordan's bball abilities have nothing to do with the general person I'd find at the basketball court up the street. Tailoring my game to one day find Michael Jordan at the basketball court up the street is engaging in improbable fantasy. -I'd probably overtrain and injure myself... much like I read MMAers do, or people that engage in contests do.

Two, they tend to infer from silly samples (ie. if they inferred from the first few UFCs with minimal rules they'd conclude that groin strikes are useless, small joint manipulations are useless, eye gouges are useless, BJJ can defeat anything, etc.).

Three, there are dozens of rules and the environment is totally safe- relatively cushy landing area, a referee, guaranteed no weapons, guaranteed 1:1 situation, doctors at ringside, $, etc.

Fourth, it is using the results of sport/entertainment as an excuse to be historical revisionists/deniers, ultimately saying that pre-UFC-ish events or pre "alive" training or pre-video cameras that no one in history could really defend themself. And what do we really care if a person from martial art X can defeat a person from martial art Y? Do you train to fight or expect to fight other martial artists in real life self defense situations?

Fifth, "MMA" originally referred to many different styles fighting against each other in the same contest (ie. the picture on http://www.ufc.com/index.cfm?fa=LearnUFC.Styles). Now it means many different styles existing in individuals. So when they say "MMA training is best", which MMA are they talking about? If the latter, then they are only saying cross-training is desirable, which is well known and trivial. If the former, then they are saying TMA are effective.

Sixth, they've never really understood that it is always about the person more than the style (even with things like age, height, and weight right in front of their face!). Most white belts understand this point.

Seventh, they are denying that MMAs are merely a combination of TMAs? They mock TMA, but wrestling, for example, is probably the oldest TMA out there. Muay Thai is another TMA. TMA that use weapons are still TMA. What such people really seem to rant against is karate, aikido, taijiquan, and probably tradition in general, and/or silly board breaking and then paint everything with a big brush to try some guilt by association. Unfortunately for them, aikido is taught to police, for example, in many places, to great effect, and there are regular news articles, even on troll pits like bullshido.com (which Phrost erroneously claimed is the largest martial arts board out there), of people using TMA to defend themselves in real (ie. non sport/entertainment) self defense situations.

Last, they do silly things like hype fighters based on one event. For example, saying Royce Gracie fought 3 times in a night, etc. Well, DeLucia has more losses than Gracie has total fights. To me, that is even more impressive because it means he has stepped up more and won more against more varied competition for a longer time in more events than Gracie has, without a whole clan and industry backing him, and using gongfu/aikido to boot: Royce: 13 - 3 - 3, DeLucia: 33 - 20 - 1. But some unthinking MMAers will just show a picture of Royce armbarring DeLucia, focusing on one or two snapshots instead of the big picture.

IMO the future will probably not appreciate the present teaching of aggression to a young male audience.

 

[T'ai Chi]

In addition, there are non-fighting aspects, personal development, health, etc., that are very important for real life but completely irrelevant for sport/entertainment, that many TMA make an important part of their cirriculum but many MMA types ignore.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Listen folks. Just take some kung fu or TKD and do some meditation and strengthen your Chi and you'll be set to go. Lifting weights just produces big bulky muscles that slow you down so don't lift weights. Be sure to practice lots of Kata and never engage in full contact sparring because that doesn't help one bit. Meditate and watch lots of Anime for more techniques. And remember that UFC fighters wouldn't stand a chance against any 80 year old kung fu grand masters who would destroy them with their chi.

On another note, Always listen to random people on message boards who preach about their fighting experience because they aren't really armchair fighters but are real warriors who know what they are talking about.

Its been pointed out, I dont know ten times on this thread already that noone is saying contact training is useless

 

[Megalodon]

On another note, Always listen to random people on message boards who preach about their fighting experience because they aren't really armchair fighters but are real warriors who know what they are talking about.

Yes, specially the ones who claim to have boxing experience while claiming that the most important muscles in a punch are the pectorals...

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So let me get this straight. All those people throughout history whose skills were proven in real combat don't amount to jack squat?

You should be aware that this is exactly the argument Tai Chi is reduced to in the other thread. You aren't in good company here.

I think if you unpacked this argument for yourself and tried to name examples of "people throughout history whose skills were proven in real combat" that proved your point, you would realise quickly that it just doesn't work.

What you need are examples of people who never trained full contact yet could win real fights. Not people who fought a lot and were good at fighting.

Well, since I have never argued against this point, I don't see why you keep repeating it. Like I said before, the system I do does have full contact sparring as part of its training. But it is not MMA, and it is not all the same stuff you are going to see in the ring at an MMA competition.

The point I am making is that you have no full-contact unarmed training, thus you have no advantage over a scrub of equivalent physicality in an unarmed bout. Unless your weapon skills translate, which is possible although it strikes me as unlikely. The fact that some senior people in your system do have real unarmed skills does not magically imbue you with them.

If you think you do, I'm sorry, but as far as the evidence I am aware of goes you are just wrong.

Again, you are twisting what I said to the point of absurdity. The fact of the matter is that the techniques you are referring to here have been proven to work in real combat time and time again. The fact that a bunch of "dojo potatoes" with no actual fighting experience can't make them work, is utterly irrelevant. They can't make "duck and cross" work either. They can't fight.

Oh really? Who proved them to work, on whom, when, and where is the video?

That's just plain wrong. What works under one set of conditions does not always work under all conditions. Your "lab" does not cover all situations. It doesn't even cover typical situations. There are plenty of other "labs" that stuff can be, and is, tested in. I absolutely agree with you that a fighter needs to practice his skills under full contact to be really effective, and that techniques need to be proven under realistic conditions to be accepted as legitimate, useful techniques. I just disagree with your notion that an MMA competition is always going to be a good way to test everything, or that no other good ways to test it exist.

I think it's virtually certain that details matter at the high end of performance. A MMA puncher would probably do better on a slippery surface in street shoes than an MMA kicker, and a grappler would probably do better against a weapon than a puncher, and I'm sure we could speculate further in this vein at length.

However if a given class of training systems (everything but full contact) fails utterly to function in a ring, even when there is no reason why most of its techniques should not work perfectly well in a ring, then you have to think that maybe it is going to utterly fail everywhere else too.

I have no idea who Fred Ettish is, but I am puzzled as to how you can assert that I am wrong about being able to beat somebody with "a bit of a clue", without knowing anything at all about my skills.

Fred Ettish was a 5th Dan in kenpo karate who entered UFC 2. To his credit he entered on very short notice to replace someone who pulled out with an injury. However, the point is that he got beaten down shamefully while curling up into a fetal position because, not having trained full-contact, he had no idea how to deal with full contact.

Now maybe you're thinking "Yes, well, maybe he was a 5th dan, but my style is the real deal and that would never happen to me". If so it's highly likely that you're wrong. I'm sure kenpo karate has just as many amazing anecdotes of effectiveness as your style does.

I also find it odd that you seem to think that full-contact training in MMA will benefit you in other types of fights (such as fighting with weapons), but reject the idea that my full-contact training with weapons would be of benefit enough for me to be able to unarmed beat somebody with a bit of a clue. In my experience, translating from weapons to empty hand is actually easier that going the other way. But I guess my experience doesn't count for anything, since I am not an MMA competitor?

On this point I cheerfully admit that I am guessing. I guess that the correct responses to unarmed attacks are sufficiently different to those for armed attacks that your trained responses won't be much use. I could of course be wrong, and I look forward to any video of people whose sole full-contact experience is with sticks engaging in unarmed combat that may show up.

Because they aren't particularly useful withing the confines of those competitions. The Dog Brothers use all sorts of techniques you won't find in an MMA competition (an obvious example being whipping strikes). Are they just being silly?

No, because strikes that would be ineffectual with an empty hand are dangerous or deadly with a stick or a knife.

Actually, a number of the techniques you seem to think are silly, are takedowns. Anyway, I don't have to speculate on it. The stuff I am learning has been demonstrated to work in real combat. Whether you see it in MMA competitions is completely irrelevant.

Who demonstrated this, on whom, when, and where is the video?

That's what anybody training to fight is going to do. If you are preparing for a certain type of fight, you train what you will find most useful for that type of fight. If the type of fight changes, than will or will not be optimal changes too. The idea that what you find best prepares you for competing in a ring against other MMA competitors, is also going to be what best prepares a police officer from defending against an attacker on the street, or bouncer for best preparing for dealing with drunken attackers in a bar, or a woman for defending against a mugger on the street, or any of the other real-world situations that people are faced with, simply isn't realistic.

Show us the proof these techniques work in the situations you describe better than bread and butter MMA techniques.

Really? What if the fighting I am preparing for is something like what the Dog Brothers do? I think I can pretty safely say that in a sword, or even stick fight, I would tear apart pretty much anybody who hasn't done some fairly extensive weapon training. I don't care how good they are at their style. If they don't have experience with weapons, they are going to lose.

No kidding. Relevant full contact experience is a necessary condition for any fighting skill at all.

Likewise I would get my ass handed to me in an unarmed fight by somebody who has a lot of experience with that type of fighting.

I would only be best advised to train like the MMAers do, if that is what I want to do. If you want to learn how to fight under different conditions, then your choice of what is and is not useful is going to be different. A complete martial arts system, such as Inayan Escrima or Inasonto Kali, preserves techniques and skills for all types of fighting. No one person, not even a master, is going to actually use all of it when fighting. They do exactly what you do. They pick what is useful for the fight in question, and use that. Of course if you focus entirely on one type of fighting, you are going to be better at it that somebody who is more general, but that is simply a question of what your goals and priorities are.

If by "train like MMAers do" you mean train with full contact, then if you want to learn how to fight under any conditions whatsoever then you need to train like MMAers do. The idea that training without a significant full contact component gives you any fighting skills at all has been comprehensively debunked.

You might train different techniques than the MMAers use. In practise I think you'd quickly discover that the techniques MMAers use are the ones that work, but I'm willing to be surprised on that point.