Omar B
Senior Master
Its usually the other way around with the MMA on the front in big letters only to find out its a single style of martial arts.
I wouldnt care about affiliations. Affiliations are cool because they help make sure you are training with a qualified instructor of a system, but they are run like business, and cost like one too. When I joined my karate i was turned off that they werent part of the Kyokushin group, and didnt use the title Kyokushin, i did some research and found out that you cant carry Kyokushin or Oyama in your title if you arent part of the main groups, and the history of the politics and backstabbing between the groups made me no want to be affiliated with any of them anyway. So i came to terms with being in an unafiliated karate school, we are like lone wolves facing off with other unaffiliated kyokushin schools, and with skinkyokushin organisation (who are allowed to fight with other kyokushin outside their org.)
I had a similar experience in hapkido in queens. My friend was interested in training and I recommended hapkido, here are some of this instructors stupid comments.
"Do they teach you THAT!?" he says while teaching his class, he yelled this toward me after I revealed i trained in karate...
"Next time, you cant watch, i dont allow people to sit in and watch" Dumb thing to say considering theres large see thru windows, and chairs around the matt.
"they dont teach you this....", again, toward me... yet I was looking to join...
His sales pressure was really high. He had a beautiful dojang tho, but he only had two students.
I hear what you are saying man. Being part of an organization means something, lineage, organizational support, grade transferability (important for me who splits his time between NY and FL) among other things. But I won't scoff at a non-organization school if they are teaching the style properly.
My sensei is the same sensei I started with at 5-16 years, but I move around a lot and we lost touch. Now we train at his house on weekends when he's around or during the week, but I'm not officially apart of Seido. Doesn't mean I couldn't walk into an official school and what I'm doing jibes exactly with what they are doing.