Of course sir. Here's one of them that to me seemed much closer to the truth.
I attended a local tournament in Southern California hosted by a local well known Korean "master." In his instructions in the rules meeting for sparring he said,
"Punch to body, one point."
"Kick to body, one point."
"Punch to head, one point."
"Kick to head TWO points."
When he was queried as to why a kick to the head was worth two points, he replied;
"Kick much better."
Someone asked, "What about punches to the head?"
He said, with a serious expression on his face,
"PUNCHES TOO DANGEROUS!"
I smiled, and went and sat down.
I wonder how much they would have given for one of those Karate Kid Crane kicks?
Seriously,
at least three generations (depending on how you count it) of people have learned martial arts based on the emphasis that they have been given due to the demands of either the tournaments or sportive needs. Back in the 60's it was all about the side kick, back fist and reverse punch. In the 70's everyone seemed to look like a kickboxer, and now MMA is in vogue with it's emphasis on the Muy Thai Roundhouse kick, Double Leg take-down, and the Ground-and-Pound.
While the martial art techniques can certainly be adapted for sportive purposes against other trained fighters, that was not their original intent.
They were designed, in some cases, to allow the average guy to protect himself against people who were perhaps experienced, but relatively untrained in hand to hand combat. They identified the major ways that someone would attack you and came up with ways to defend yourself by evading, re-directing or stopping the attack and countering by using strikes, locks or throws directed against the joints, nerves, soft tissue etc. that would thus render the attacker helpless. The helplessness of the attacker could mean anything from pain compliance to unconciousness, injury or death. They relied on the attacker not knowing what your training was until it was too late for him to do anything about it.
In other cases, they were designed for Field battle and were taught to soldiers and Samurai etc.
Still in other cases, they were designed for use by policemen, be it patrolmen or palace guards etc.
In Old-School Karate getting off the first strike was considered important.
However, Funakoshi liked to say "Karate ni sente nashi" meaning that there is no first strike in karate. To which Choki Motubu countered, "Karate IS sente." Meaning Karate IS the first strike. Motubu also said, "Fighting is based on strategic deception." and "Kicks are not all that effective in a real confrontation."
Funakoshi was trying to adapt the art to the Japanese ideology. Motobu, keeping with karate's original intent, had no use for such things preferring to stick with what he knew worked. One might not have agreed with him in all of his assertions, but they were nevertheless based on his real experience.
When one keeps the original purpose of the martial arts in mind, they can serve very well. When one tries to make it something it's not, then it begins to fail.
I always shake my head when someone says something like, "Karate isn't very effective against a boxer." What they have in mind is a pre-arranged bout where the opponents square off and fight. They conclude that karate doesn't hold up well in that situation and thus is a waste of time and one would be better off studying boxing. What they don't have in mind is the scenario where one is attacked in an elevator by an unkown assailant that knows nothing about your training until he's writhing on the floor in agony holding onto his now ruptured testicles.
A thing is what it is, and it's not something else. Concluding that a tractor is no good because it can't compete with a formula race car on a track, or that a formula race car is no good because it can't compete with a tractor at plowing fields is silly. Yet we see this constantly in the martial arts.
