Has MMA popularity helped or hurt the MA Community?

[Dave Leverich]

While I've seen some "MMA" guys who were jerks, I've seen many TMA's that were as well. It simply goes with the territory. Most of the people I've met that study what everyone is calling 'Mixed Martial Arts', have been great guys. One locally has asked via a friend about some help in the striking arena (as that's my thing) and I've found him to be extremely respectful, humble and an all around great guy. He came from a wrestling background (shocking I know hehe).

I think everyone has said it a few times now though, broad generalizations are lame. It's a kind of prejudice against people of a certain 'something' be that an art, color, language or what have you. And while I DO put violent criminals into one large group, that's my own perhaps... shortcoming.

I've seen the arts in general increase in visibility and public awareness, as well as public understanding, greatly over the last few decades. I think the UFC/K1/IFL/Pride/WCL etc... those are simply showing another aspect of them in a form that people accept. Boxing has been popular for millennia, this is just a few variations of a very old theme.

So for me? I think it has helped a great deal, granted there are few tools in the shed, but most seem to be good guys/gals from what I've personally met.

 

[tradrockrat]

Anyone who refuses to see how MMA has helped TMA's shed their recent complacency (as a whole - I'm sure your TMA never got complacent ) and provide a much needed spark to get other arts to re-evaluate some of their practices, is in denial.

Do I believe that MMA's are the best? At what? No I don't.

Do I believe that MMa's have created division and controversy? Yes.

Do I believe that some people on both sides of the argument are morons and egomaniacs? Yes.

Do I believe that MMa's have hurt TMA's? No - not unless there was already something seriously wrong with a particular school.

It's cyclical (we TMa practitioners should be familiar with this concept, shouldn't we?) TMA's were at first thought esoteric and mystical, then Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris (and Bill Wallace, etc etc etc) showed us how they could really kick butt for real - suddenly it was combat that counted. We were most recently back into the mindset of "Learn the technique = kick ***". The philosophy had once again usurped the practical. MMA's showed us just how important live training and physical fitness was to a successful practitioner of sport. This has caught on in the mainstream and people are once again thinking greatness is determined by win / loss records. I have always believed that the truth was in the middle.

I think we can all admit that if you are in great shape, you have a better chance of surviving a violent encounter - as a whole. Yeah sure, the grand master of 65 years old may be able to kick but on a very fit 20 year old with basic skills, but that fit 20 year old will beat the other 20 year old who watches movies when he should be sparing. And when those two 20 year olds are 65, the one who stayed fit will be a master, the other one won't.

JMHO.

 

[exile]

I think Tradrockrat has made some great points. My own take on it is, there are MMAists who pursue an aggressive and negative agenda when they talk about TMAs, but that's not the fault of MMA, or the MMA community per se. There are aggressive and negative individuals all over the map, and advocates of one TMA against another can be just as arrogantly dismissive as any MMA fan's wholesale putdowns of the TMAs as a group. But the existence of the MMA scene has thrown into relief a problem that the TMAs have been saddled with for quite a while, and that can only be a good thing.

What I'm getting at is that the TMAs were created in one cultural/historical context and have been transplanted to a radically different one, and in effect have had to reinvent themselves on North American and European soil, something which I don't think has been at all easy.

There have been a lot of comments on other threads about the differences in the levels of, on the one hand, everyday danger and vulnerbility that led to the original creation of these unromaniticized, brutal, all-business fighting systems in Asian societies, and on the other hand, their spread to prosperous, largely middle-class, privileged Western clienteles; the upshot is, these arts just do not have the same essential relevance to survival here, now that they did there, then. Increasingly, the basis for TMAs in the West has become sport competition, part of the larger entertainment economy, which something we do big-time. So you have Olympic TKD and sport karate (the two are almost indistinguishable) as the defaults for how these TMAs are presented to their First World clientele. And as people have noted, on MT and elsewhere, over and over, these martial sport developments are governed by scoring systems which are highly artificial and specialized, leading to serious changes—my own description would be `distortions'—in technical content.

What the MMA competitions have done is shove in the face of these TMA contests the spectacle of relatively open-ended fighting with minimum emphasis on artificial style and acrobatic glitz. From my own experience watching WTF-style TKD on the one hand, and UFC-style fighting on the other, I'd have to say that the latter looks way more unrestricted and hard-edged than the former. My own feeling is that Matsumura's bloody, violent street fights in 19th c. Shuri alleys were way nastier than what we've seen on the UFC circuit, but the two have much more in common than either has with modern sport karate competition. So this leaves karate in its Okinawan, Japanese and Korean variants with a big problem: what are they going to be in the 21st century? Are they going to continue to go more and more in the direction of artificial, stylized competition, whose artificiality becomes more and more highlighted by comparison with MMA competition? That's one possibility. But another is that the TMAs will recover their original purpose as combat arts, designed to use tried-and-true, completely unconstrained techniques to damage a violent, untrained but aggressive attacker to the point where he has to leave the fight no matter how bad his original intentions were—return, in effect, to the karate that Matsumura developed and taught, and its subsequent offshoots. Some practitioners will go with the first possibility and some with the second, but the existence of MMA-style competitions helps force TMA practitioners to face the problem of deciding whether they want their art to take the form of a clearly unrealistic arena sport, on the one hand, or... something else, on the other. To me this is a good outcome....

 

[Xue Sheng]

The only effects I see that MMA has had on TMA are

It gives a whole lot of people reason to discuss, argue fight over what is better Ad nauseam and it always comes down to “yes it is” “no its not” (repeat) :deadhorse

And it does point out that many in TMA no longer train as hard as they use to. Face it guys the MMA folks train very hard. This does not however prove anything is more effective that another. If this were the case then in the winter snow shoveling would by far be a better year round exercise than swimming because you can’t swim in winter. This is of course talking about exercising outside and in places that get snow in the winter.

If a TMA person trains like they should they are very effective. If an MMA person trains as the majority does then they are very effective. And as far as what works on the street, I hope neither ever has to find out.

 

[Andrew Green]

It gives a whole lot of people reason to discuss, argue fight over what is better Ad nauseam and it always comes down to “yes it is” “no its not” (repeat) :deadhorse

Nah, that was getting done long before MMA came into the spotlight.

"Shotokan is watered down Okinawan Karate"

"Karate lacks the depth of Kung Fu"

"TKD is a butchered up copy of Shotokan"

Remember those?

Or how about the fun that followed Bruce Lee? Crosstraining vs not? Or JKD concepts vs Original JKD?

Boxing vs Karate was a fun one as well.

And of course Judo vs Karate.

Kendo vs Olympic Fencing.

Judo vs Jujitsu.

These fights are not a reult of MMA, they're a result of people being people.

 

[Xue Sheng]

OK

It gives a whole lot of people a new reason to discuss, argue fight over what is better Ad nauseam and it always comes down to “yes it is” “no its not” (repeat) :deadhorse

 

[bigfootsquatch]

OK

It gives a whole lot of people a new reason to discuss, argue fight over what is better Ad nauseam and it always comes down to “yes it is” “no its not” (repeat) :deadhorse

And its almost as fun as talking about Ashida Kim!

 

[SageGhost83]

MMA has brought more visibility to martial arts period, and I certainly think that making Martial Arts as a whole more visible is a good thing. The bad thing is the combination of noobs who swear by it without even having taken the time to truly explore the wider world of the martial arts and the Taekwondo Mcdojangs that are starting to advertise themselves as being MMA schools or having MMA programs when they are little more than korean footsy parlors with crappling (crappy grappling, not the good stuff) thrown in for good measure. Of course, mcdojangs do that with reality based self defense too, so this is no surprise. I wouldn't want to learn that roundhouse gun disarm, neither would I want anyone else to learn it and have false confidence/stupidity from it. The martial arts can be so absurd at times .

 

[rabbit]

that 23 year old hothead who kept hurting all his training partners and insulting the women. he's over at an mma school these days.

Do you guys think there is people like that at the MMA schools? I was thinking of going to one of the MMA schools for some more realistic training, but not if the guys there are aggressive, drug using, and are the type that show zero sportsmanship.

Do you think the people at the MMA schools would train bad people? If I were an instructor I wouldn't ever want to train someone who would use what he learned in my class for something bad.

 

[Andrew Green]

Do you guys think there is people like that at the MMA schools? I was thinking of going to one of the MMA schools for some more realistic training, but not if the guys there are aggressive, drug using, and are the type that show zero sportsmanship.

Do you think the people at the MMA schools would train bad people? If I were an instructor I wouldn't ever want to train someone who would use what he learned in my class for something bad.

No.

Things like this depend on the instructor(s) more then the school. There are good and bad people in more traditional arts, RBSD systems, Boxing, Muay thai, MMA, you name it.

If you wanted a comparison I'd say MMA is more like a football team or a hockey team, where traditional arts are more like a academic class. It's not a perfect comparison, but I think as a generalization it will work.

There will be different demographics, but not in the sense of one being bad and the other good. Both can be either, but they do it in different ways.

 

[Tez3]

Do you guys think there is people like that at the MMA schools? I was thinking of going to one of the MMA schools for some more realistic training, but not if the guys there are aggressive, drug using, and are the type that show zero sportsmanship.

Do you think the people at the MMA schools would train bad people? If I were an instructor I wouldn't ever want to train someone who would use what he learned in my class for something bad.

The 23 year old who beats up on people and insults women would not be welcome at any MMA club/class I know. He would be shown the door PDQ.
Training in an MMA class is surprisingly not much different from training in a TMA class. It may seem more informal but good manners and care for others is very much the order of the day. Techniques are practised only to the point where you feel the lock/choke whatever coming on never to the point of pain. MMAers don't feel they have to prove in a class how tough they are. It may even surprise you to know that there are women training too lol.
MMA classes teach MMA here rarely do they teach SD, that's a different class so if you want to learn to defend yourself go somewhere that does specifically SD. MMA classes very rarely aggressive, they are intense and hard working. We don't fight in class, we train and spar. The sportsmanship is of a very high level in the class as it is on the fights themselves. They may be trying to knock each others block off in the ring/cage but afterwards they are showing each other moves they've done!
Most fighters I know over here come from a TMA background, I knew at least four who are TKD blackbelts (Rosi Sexton who fights in Bodog is one), one I know, Sami Berik comes from a CMA background.
As with all martial arts, there are good schools and bad, good instructors and bad , good students and bad students. The art they practice doesn't make them that way, they do so don't blame MMA or TMA, it's the way of the world.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

No.

Things like this depend on the instructor(s) more then the school. There are good and bad people in more traditional arts, RBSD systems, Boxing, Muay thai, MMA, you name it.

If you wanted a comparison I'd say MMA is more like a football team or a hockey team, where traditional arts are more like a academic class. It's not a perfect comparison, but I think as a generalization it will work.

There will be different demographics, but not in the sense of one being bad and the other good. Both can be either, but they do it in different ways.

Nicely put Andrew! I have met some great friends through BJJ and MMA training. Great people and true friends. I have also met a few jerks but no more than where I have trained in any other system.

 

[bigfootsquatch]

The 23 year old who beats up on people and insults women would not be welcome at any MMA club/class I know. He would be shown the door PDQ.
Training in an MMA class is surprisingly not much different from training in a TMA class. It may seem more informal but good manners and care for others is very much the order of the day. Techniques are practised only to the point where you feel the lock/choke whatever coming on never to the point of pain. MMAers don't feel they have to prove in a class how tough they are. It may even surprise you to know that there are women training too lol.
MMA classes teach MMA here rarely do they teach SD, that's a different class so if you want to learn to defend yourself go somewhere that does specifically SD. MMA classes very rarely aggressive, they are intense and hard working. We don't fight in class, we train and spar. The sportsmanship is of a very high level in the class as it is on the fights themselves. They may be trying to knock each others block off in the ring/cage but afterwards they are showing each other moves they've done!
Most fighters I know over here come from a TMA background, I knew at least four who are TKD blackbelts (Rosi Sexton who fights in Bodog is one), one I know, Sami Berik comes from a CMA background.
As with all martial arts, there are good schools and bad, good instructors and bad , good students and bad students. The art they practice doesn't make them that way, they do so don't blame MMA or TMA, it's the way of the world.

Exactly, alot of mma people may be more intimidating due to what people read about mma on the web so on. The guys can sometimes get a little cocky, but its no different than in traditional schools. One benefit of MMA schools IMO is that the training can is serious, and there isn't many there that are halfassing it like you find at those wonderful mcdojos that have so degraded tma.

 

[Andrew Green]

A lot of the internet loudmouths don't actually train in anything, they just are Ultimate Fighter fans, which is a step below WWE fans. Some might start, but few people with that attitude last long in any class.

Others it is a case of "Internet annonymity + Otherwise normal person = Complete jackass"

But in order to safely train a contact sport you have to check your ego at the door, otherwise people get hurt. Anyone that can't do that won't last in a class.

 

[Grenadier]

Thugs come in all shapes and sizes, and can be found at a TMA or MMA school, depending on what the owner decides to accept.

I've known certain TMA schools that had a legitimate lineage back to the founder of their art, that didn't encourage sportsmanship or good behavior, and it was no surprise that most of the community thought of them as breeding grounds for thugs.

And yes, there are going to be some MMA schools out there that do the same thing. It just comes down to who's running the show, and what they decide to tolerate.

Most martial arts schools, whether they are TMA or MMA, aren't going to tolerate thuggery.

 

[Xue Sheng]

A lot of the internet loudmouths don't actually train in anything, they just are Ultimate Fighter fans, which is a step below WWE fans. Some might start, but few people with that attitude last long in any class.

Yup that is about it.

I have talked to online and in person quite a few MMA guys and I have the greatest respect for there dedication and attitude. It reminds me of TMA of the old in the old days actually

Thugs come in all shapes and sizes, and can be found at a TMA or MMA school, depending on what the owner decides to accept.

Very VERY true

 

[Sanchin-J]

When you think about the historical ties of each of the Martial Arts out there, and how the art was born into being, you can kind of see where I'm going with what I'm about to say. In a not so strange way, many of the martial arts we've come to know have similarities with one another, some in techniques as simple as the common round house kick or a simple leg sweep. When you think about it, a martial art is a living breathing creation that expands and grows over time, even some of the more traditional arts have adapted techniques not necessarily from their own cultural heritage. As controversial as this may sound, I can't help but wonder if every art in existence today isn't more or less an MMA art. Sure some arts cling to traditional training, but I don't think that many of them can deny either being either a branch of, or closely related to another form of martial art.

I don't know how many of you folks have ever really watched and studied the "Human Weapon" series that's currently being aired, but in just about every episode I see something that closely resembles a technique from another style. Even in studying a few different styles I've seen things that are a little too similar to be mere coincidence. I think the MMA popularity promotes open minds and is actually helping the entire MA and MMA community to grow. I won't deny that while I frown upon the MMA in general due to the brutality it exhibits, I do watch matches occasionally and enjoy seeing some of the techniques being used. To be really honest, its the schools that should probably be asked this question instead of the individuals, many schools teach self defense not how to pummel someone into paste in an octagon arena, so if anyone is offended or finds it to be unacceptable it would be the schools.

 

[Doc_Jude]

If you wanted a comparison I'd say MMA is more like a football team or a hockey team, where traditional arts are more like a academic class. It's not a perfect comparison, but I think as a generalization it will work.

There will be different demographics, but not in the sense of one being bad and the other good. Both can be either, but they do it in different ways.

I like this comparison. Of course, some academic classes have labs/fieldwork/clinicals, where you are required to demonstrate your knowledge. There are arts that are like this, too, that up the ante so to speak, with harder contact & pressure testing.

I'm hard pressed to say anything that hasn't already been said. MMA has done some good things for martial arts in general. It's increased the popularity of martial arts, certainly, or at least a few of them. It's also brought the import of contact and ground fighting back to the game TMA-ers. However, many folks have left perfectly good arts after watching a BJJ fighter submit someone, when a little basic ground training and takedown defenses added to their current art would have served them better.
Many now think that MMA represents reality when it is in all actuality a very sterile environment. Fight shorts, a clean floor that's softer than hardwood or concrete, and a completely one-on-one fight that you see coming, with no chance of friends or weapons coming into it.
(With this in mind, Pro Wrestling is more realistic!!!)
MMA is as far from reality as many non- or light contact TMAs, it's just at the other end of the spectrum. A happy medium is necessary.

 

[Cryozombie]

I don't think its hurt anything, but I do liken the MMA "phenomenon" to the song "Son of A Plunder" by Disturbed.

 

[Cirdan]

I voted no relevance to me. The clubs I train at (a traditional Wado school and a more modern Ju Jutsu place) probably wouldn`t be doing anything different if there were no UFC and I don`t really know anyone that is in the arts because of MMA popularity. Never really watched a fight myself for that matter.