My New Opinion on Combat Sports

[Freestyler777]

Muay Thai (kickboxing) and MMA (kickboxing with submission grappling) works fine and dandy.

To enter the realm of sophistry, punching is still the main thing, whether you are a stand up guy or a ground n pounder, or a guard expert who has to deal with the aforementioned combatants.

But Wrestling and Judo by themselves are just combat sports. I will relate two wise sayings my first instructor (shootfighting) said to me:

"If it is just throwing and grappling its a match, if it includes striking, it's a fight"

"I'd expect a good shootfighter to do well in kickboxing, or kickboxing with grappling (alluding to mixed martial arts)."

I was stupid to say boxing is the only good combat sport. Kickboxing and Muay Thai is essentially boxing with added techniques, so what difference does it make?! And MMA is muay thai with grappling, so it adds another element of complexity. Please ignore all my previous posts.

 

[exile]

I was stupid to say boxing is the only good combat sport. Kickboxing and Muay Thai is essentially boxing with added techniques, so what difference does it make?! And MMA is muay thai with grappling, so it adds another element of complexity. Please ignore all my previous posts.

Freestyler, I think calling yourself `stupid' here is a bit excessive. Suppose you phrased it this way: you were taking boxing as the foundational martial sport. There are martial sports that I wouldn't want to make the technical basis of a combat system, but I think there would be general agreement that boxing is a very good candidate for a martial sport that you could use as the core of a fighting system to take to the street and survive with. From this point of view, Kickboxing and Muay Thai are Boxing Plus, and MMA, say is Boxing Double Plus. So it would hardly be stupid to say that boxing is the best `core' martial sport from a combat point of view, and the only other ones that are going to be practical for street defense are those which take boxing as their platform and add to it.

I think the problem with putting matters the way you did is more in the phrasing than in the content. Now that doesn't mean that a judo or wrestling advocate couldn't say, no, I think you're wrong, I think wrestling could also be an effective core martial sport, etc., but that then becomes a genuine discussion/debate, with evidence to be presented on both sides. But taking the position that boxing is the best core martial sport... it may be right, or may be wrong, but it's not a stupid position.


`Stupid' would be, e.g., saying that the best sport basis for a combat system would be, say, Olympic... figure skating! ... you know, those deadly triple toe loops to the assailant's throat....:lol:

 

[Jai]

Exile, I'll hand you the skates and I'll grab the camera, I want to see some fancy ninja like figure skating self defense.

Honestly I think boxing is a good combat style sport, and I think basic boxing should be taught along side almost any other style of MA, there are a few exceptions, mostly those that focus on hands. Having spent alot of my MA time in TKD, you would be surprised how many people have no idea how to use their hands in a fight. I remember talking to a friend that swore by TKD kicks as the ONLY way to fight. So I challenged him to a friendly. I closed in on him and he quit, swearing no one fought in close and I was just trying to make him look bad. I watched the same guy get laid out by a straight right hand a few weeks later because he refused to believe that boxing had any real use in a fight...

 

[FearlessFreep]

Exile, I'll hand you the skates and I'll grab the camera, I want to see some fancy ninja like figure skating self defense.

That would be Ranma and Akane vs Mikdo and Azusa with Ryoga/P-Chan/Charlotte's fate in the balance...

 

[exile]

Exile, I'll hand you the skates and I'll grab the camera, I want to see some fancy ninja like figure skating self defense.

Sounds good, Jai—but I'm not a skater... could show you some devastating Combat Mogul Skiing techs, though! We need a new forum, maybe—Winter Sports As Edged Weapon Fighting Systems, or something like that...

Honestly I think boxing is a good combat style sport, and I think basic boxing should be taught along side almost any other style of MA, there are a few exceptions, mostly those that focus on hands. Having spent alot of my MA time in TKD, you would be surprised how many people have no idea how to use their hands in a fight. I remember talking to a friend that swore by TKD kicks as the ONLY way to fight. So I challenged him to a friendly. I closed in on him and he quit, swearing no one fought in close and I was just trying to make him look bad. I watched the same guy get laid out by a straight right hand a few weeks later because he refused to believe that boxing had any real use in a fight...

:shakesheadslowly: .... no one fights close??? Has he ever seen a barfight or a bit of violence on a bus or subway? Where does he think fighting takes place?

I'm sorry your friend got hurt, but maybe he'll realize now that he has to prepare for close quarters if he wants what he knows about the MAs to be useful in (what claims to be) the Real World. This sounds like what you hear from a lot of people whose ideas about reality are based entirely on what they watch on televesion....

Exile, I'll hand you the skates and I'll grab the camera, I want to see some fancy ninja like figure skating self defense.

That would be Ranma and Akane vs Mikdo and Azusa with Ryoga/P-Chan/Charlotte's fate in the balance...

I dunno, FF... the sickness incarnate in those manga stories is far too extreme for any kind of combat winter sports to sort out... those pairings belong in the same neck of the woods as the grosser WWF tag-team acts... um, I mean, matches...

 

[still learning]

Hello, Natural way? ....If you watch kids or people who never were train in any type of fighting?

What would you see? ....just about everyone one of them swinging their arms like in "boxing" with NO controls!

Most of them "NEVER" use kicks unless they saw others doing it (movies,etc) or were taught to kick.......
-----------------------------------------------------------------------What does this mean? .....Boxing (very natural to do) is the bases of ALL martial arts....Do not underestimate "JUDO" either.....yes they have the sports side (just the throwing)....the combat side or street side? ....is another style to JUDO and they do throw punches too!

The way you are train to fight is the way most likely you will handle your-self......

On the streets...most martial artist fight in the boxing stances or fight like boxers first part of the fight....

NO matter the style or arts....everyone will look the same way when the fights is going on.....like boxers? .....WHY? ...because it is the smart thing and most common way to defend one self.........Aloha

 

[exile]

Hello, Natural way? ....If you watch kids or people who never were train in any type of fighting?

What would you see? ....just about everyone one of them swinging their arms like in "boxing" with NO controls!

Most of them "NEVER" use kicks unless they saw others doing it (movies,etc) or were taught to kick.......
-----------------------------------------------------------------------What does this mean? .....Boxing (very natural to do) is the bases of ALL martial arts....Do not underestimate "JUDO" either.....yes they have the sports side (just the throwing)....the combat side or street side? ....is another style to JUDO and they do throw punches too!

The way you are train to fight is the way most likely you will handle your-self......

On the streets...most martial artist fight in the boxing stances or fight like boxers first part of the fight....

NO matter the style or arts....everyone will look the same way when the fights is going on.....like boxers? .....WHY? ...because it is the smart thing and most common way to defend one self.........Aloha

S_L, I wonder if you're aware that you're trying to have it three different ways here?

The bit in red tells us that boxing is the most `natural' thing to do, therefore we should do it.

The bit in green tells us not to underestimate judo—which is largely pins and throws; punching is as incidental to Judo as throws would be to, say, Wing Chun—even though pins and throws are anything but `natural', require an understanding of skeletal structure and mechanics that very few people have, and are something you almost never see kids doing. Grabbing and grappling, sure, but the whole range of technical throws in Judo?? Nope. So you're telling us in red to go with boxing because it's the most natural way and you're telling us in green to go with judo (although it's anything but natural-reflexive) because... well, they also have a combat or street side. Do you not see the contradiction?

Finally, the blue passage tells us that you will fight the way you train. Very little looks to me as out and out bloody destructive as the Police Shotokan that the Japanese special forces train in and use as per the video offereed in the `Police Shotokan' thread we had here many months ago. It's still in the archives, in case you want to see how destructive applied karate can be. So if someone trains that way, then that's the way they'll fight—you're saying, right?—and that way looks pretty brutally effective to me, anyway! So that means that we don't actually need to do boxing if we train that kind of karate. Karate too has a sport side, but it's also a damaging combat system... so by your own account, if we train it. we'll fight like that (and do pretty well, judging by the Police Shotokan vid).

Put'em all together and you seem to have three separate stories here that seem to be difficult to reconcile with each other, yet you're advocating all of them!

 

[Xue Sheng]

:shakesheadslowly: .... no one fights close???

DAMN!! I better go tell my ex-Wing Chun sifu he has been wasiting his time all these years.... Oh and so have I and my Taiji sifu as well :uhyeah:

EDIT:
Sanshou is a pretty good combat sport too... but it also trains in close fighting

 

[MarkBarlow]

NO matter the style or arts....everyone will look the same way when the fights is going on.....like boxers? .....WHY? ...because it is the smart thing and most common way to defend one self.........Aloha

We've been watching very different fights. I've seen the quasi-boxers you mention but I've also seen stompers, biters, backyard wrestlers and big boys who just rush in, pick up and throw down. A small percentage of the fighters actually had some knowledge but they tend to be few and far between.

Assuming that everyone is going to turn into a boxer when stressed is poor strategy.

As for no one fighting close, 90% of my fight is close. I don't know of many Jujutsuka who don't like to fight close.

 

[redfang]

As to wrestling, one can gain excellent and useful skills wrestling. However, in my younger days (when I was surly and stupid enough to fight over the things young men will fight over.), I was in more than one fight with people who were excellent wrestlers but had never really trained in anything else. They relied almost exclusively on wrestling and rarely threw strikes. It turned out badly for them, because while I had wrestled as well and could avoid (usually) getting taken down, I realized that I was in a fight and kicked and punched and poked and grabbed hair and kneed and elbowed almost at will because of their singleminded approach.