Yes maybe they should go back to their original names, then we would have the International Taekwon-Do Federation & the World Tae Soo Do Federation & the KKW would be the World Tae Soo Do Academy & the new TKD Park could be even more inclusive by being the Korean Martial Arts & Sports Park!
There are many different forms of 'karate', they all have different names but are still considered karate. Maybe tkd should be similar, the word tkd has become way too broad a term these days. You see hardcore traditional schools and then you see olympic style, they are both great in their own right yet completely different, but to the average joe on the street they are both called tkd, no wonder its so confusing.
I agree, just because its an Olympic Sport does not mean thats all you do in WTF Tae Kwon DO. You do a variety of thing ultimately making it a martial art and can be used in self defense. I could say the same about almost any martial art though because many of them are used in MMA.
MMA is a good example. Its always funny how you hear people say "I saw the this tkd guy in the UFC and he got owned, he was useless, just goes to prove that by itself without knowing some other stuff its just a joke. BJJ or muay thai is where its at", and then they go and give examples of BJJ guys who kick *** but fail to mention that the BJJ or Muay thai guy has also cross trained in other arts so they dont get owned. It really is funny, and I still hear people say it all the time.
I have to agree with your statement that "most dont want a great mma fighter that is a tkd guy". I was watching the UFC a little while ago and this fighter came out and when they were introducing him and had his stats up on the screen it said "black belt BJJ" as his art. I watched the fight and he was good to watch so I went to wikipedia to get some background on him and it said he was a black belt BJJ and a 2nd dan tkd. I thought it was funny that at no point in the commentary was any mention made of his tkd background and yet they constantly talked about his BJJ black belt. You just have to laugh.
I find it helpful at times to just compare time trained instead of rank.
All things being equal, it is far less time consuming (in my opinion) to train a purely striking art with relatively simplisitc sparring rules than it is to train students in a grappling art with more complex sparring rules and a lot more partnered training required.
True, but still if someone has spent 4-5 years training in an art it is going to play some role in how they fight. I regularly hear the commentators say things like "this guy has had a little bit of muay thai training", surely if that rates a mention then so too should 4-5 years or more training in tkd. A 2nd dan would be 6 years training at our club and 6 years training in anything would be worth some sort of mention. It should also be irrelevent how long it took to get the black belt as far as their stats go that they put up on the screen. Surely the purpose of this is to give the viewer at home an insight into the fighter's background. So if they are bb bbj and bb tkd, then it is very misleading to only mention the one art. GSP is a 2nd or 3rd dan in karate and that sure gets a mention many times. And as I said, if a fighter does a little muay thai on the side it also gets a mention, so it does seem a little odd that I dont think Ive ever heard the word 'tkd' even mentioned in one of these broadcasts considering even the main commentator (joe rogan) is a tkd blackbelt, and avery successful one apparantly having won a few comps when he was younger. He even won the US open according to his bio, but even he will not credit any fighter with having a tkd background.
Or more. I took 7 years to get to 1st Dan, 21 years to get to 4th Dan and I'm still trying to "get it." I wasn't training daily, though, over that period. More like twice a week.
