You might disagree but I think this is great news
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dancingalone
Grandmaster
Just like chess or badminton or rhythmic gymnastics or curling: four other sports/competitions with near non-existent fan bases worldwide. If you have to be part of it to appreciate it, the sport is probably not worth following. On the other hand, do you have to play football (either the American type or the soccer type) in order to enjoy it? No, and both sports have huge popularity as spectator sports on both television and in person.
As I said Olympic TKD has turned a huge amount of people here off martial arts, not just TKD but martial arts. TF is correct when he says it's a laughing stock, I don't think some of you are seeing what we see when we get people talking scornfully about what they've seen on the Olympics, you didn't see the headlines in the newspapers. MMA is struggling with the perception that it's human cock fighting and TKD is struggling with the perception that it's a childish game.
Chess and badminton do actually have large fan bases around the world, badminton is a big sport here, in Europe and in Asia. It's world association membership is 159 countries. Chess is played by millions. However none of these sports can be confused with any other, you can turn the tele on and there's curling, so you are either going to watch it or or not, you aren't going to mistake it for anything else nor have pre conceived ideas about what it is. Non martial artists rightly or wrongly think they know what martial arts are, it's what they see in films and television programmes it's what they see in boxing and MMA.
There's certain criteria that people expect when they see two martial artists facing each other and bowing, they expect a fight, they expect full contact hands and feet, they expect kumite not a poor sort of shin kicking competition. and you can't tell people here that kicks to the head are exciting, thats the thing our competitor did to the Chinese girl, a roundhouse to the head that rocked her and it was ignored, she didn't get scored for it. It was a hit that any non martial artists could see. This sadly wasn't th only case either, another one of our competitors had the same thing happen. The British public turned their television on to support our competitors and then turned off martial arts and TKD in particular.
Fine, people watch Olympic TKD but the general public now has an idea that this is TKD, a pale imitation martial art which is a huge dis-service to the real TKD, thats the TKD that the MMAers and the K1 people appreciate not the drippy, self satisfied, blinkered, biased dross that is served up as TKD in the Olympic arena. All the TKD people I know can fight full contact more than competantly, to use the vernacular they 'kick ***'.
I for one, am tired of people these days when I say I do martial arts or the subject comes up, start bouncing around laughing pretending to be Olympic TKD. Keep your sport gentlemen but for goodness sake call it something else other than TKD and martial arts. 'Rythmic kicking' would be a good start.
Sorry if you don't like this view but I'm afraid it's a far more common one than you maybe think.
Chess and badminton do actually have large fan bases around the world, badminton is a big sport here, in Europe and in Asia. It's world association membership is 159 countries. Chess is played by millions. However none of these sports can be confused with any other, you can turn the tele on and there's curling, so you are either going to watch it or or not, you aren't going to mistake it for anything else nor have pre conceived ideas about what it is. Non martial artists rightly or wrongly think they know what martial arts are, it's what they see in films and television programmes it's what they see in boxing and MMA.
There's certain criteria that people expect when they see two martial artists facing each other and bowing, they expect a fight, they expect full contact hands and feet, they expect kumite not a poor sort of shin kicking competition. and you can't tell people here that kicks to the head are exciting, thats the thing our competitor did to the Chinese girl, a roundhouse to the head that rocked her and it was ignored, she didn't get scored for it. It was a hit that any non martial artists could see. This sadly wasn't th only case either, another one of our competitors had the same thing happen. The British public turned their television on to support our competitors and then turned off martial arts and TKD in particular.
Fine, people watch Olympic TKD but the general public now has an idea that this is TKD, a pale imitation martial art which is a huge dis-service to the real TKD, thats the TKD that the MMAers and the K1 people appreciate not the drippy, self satisfied, blinkered, biased dross that is served up as TKD in the Olympic arena. All the TKD people I know can fight full contact more than competantly, to use the vernacular they 'kick ***'.
I for one, am tired of people these days when I say I do martial arts or the subject comes up, start bouncing around laughing pretending to be Olympic TKD. Keep your sport gentlemen but for goodness sake call it something else other than TKD and martial arts. 'Rythmic kicking' would be a good start.
Sorry if you don't like this view but I'm afraid it's a far more common one than you maybe think.
ATC
Senior Master
Hhmmm...Chess, rhythmic gymnastics nor curling are sports in my opinion. Only badminton could be considered a sport. The others are all something different.
Chess is a game of wits. Rhythmic gymnastics is a dance that is then subjectively judged. Curling is an activity that requires no athletic abilities at all, like playing lawn darts or something. Anyone can do it and you need no one to train you nor do you have to condition for it at all. All three are separate classes of something other than a sport.
Now let the debate begin on what is a sport and what is not.
As for the football analogy you really cannot use it. Both sports are deeply rooted as a part of culture. American football is only really popular in America. Some like it in other countries but not the extent that they do in America.
Soccer is something that just about every kid in the world grows up playing regardless of training or being on a team. It is like tag. You don't need much to play it. They used a human head as the ball for the first game ever played, then a goat stomach after that.
However TKD is a cultural sport if you go to Korea. Just like American football it is hugely popular in its country of origin. Also the sport is still evolving. Just like American football, so American football will catch on in other countries once kids start playing the game and growing with it. It takes time for any sport to catch on and grow.
Basketball (American) needed time to do this, as well as Baseball (American also).
Hell Soccer still has not really caught on in America. Yes they have soccer leagues and kids play it all over America but as a TV sport and letĀs go to the game sport...nah.
TKD needs time to evolve and it also needs TV time. As it is now it is hugely popular and all that with no TV time or school time activity or anything really and look how popular it is around the world.
MMA has really been around for almost ever and it only just got big due to TV time. Come to think about it, every fight I have ever been in from a little kid to when I was in my 20's was an MMA style fight. Couple of punches here, a kick there and then on the ground and have someone give or get on top and ground and pound.
Some may not like it but there are plenty that do and more than enough that compete in it as well.
But to compare TKD to Football and Soccer is like comparing a baby to a full grown man. You just can't really do that.
myusername
Brown Belt
Maybe if they had TKD in the Olympics like the full contact pro-tkd I would get behind it. I think the no hand techniques of the current Olympic TKD is a real turn off spectator wise and for the outsider looks a little daft. However, even if they had more of an ITF version in the Olympics I would fear that people would still confuse the sport with the art.
In my humble opinion, I think that having only the sporting application on constant show drastically affects the credibility of the art. It annoys me that all anyone outside of TKD ever sees is either the riverdance like fighting of Olympic TKD or the flash and sparkle of a demo. We really do it to ourselves as, Olympic TKD aside, when ever you see a TKD demo it is generally all flashy spinning kicks and board breaking! I actually do genuinely enjoy watching these high flying spectacles myself but I also wonder why we can't demonstrate the brutal self defence applications of our style a little more often than we do alongside this! Is it any wonder TKD is widely ridiculed when we hardly ever show its more brutal side!
In my humble opinion, I think that having only the sporting application on constant show drastically affects the credibility of the art. It annoys me that all anyone outside of TKD ever sees is either the riverdance like fighting of Olympic TKD or the flash and sparkle of a demo. We really do it to ourselves as, Olympic TKD aside, when ever you see a TKD demo it is generally all flashy spinning kicks and board breaking! I actually do genuinely enjoy watching these high flying spectacles myself but I also wonder why we can't demonstrate the brutal self defence applications of our style a little more often than we do alongside this! Is it any wonder TKD is widely ridiculed when we hardly ever show its more brutal side!
There are many sports in the Olympics I have no interest in and several that i think are a total waste of time but they don't concern me because they don't impinge on what I do. Olympic TKD does, it gives what I do, what iIteach and what I practise. No one who watches synchronised swimming confuses it it with what i do, they don't think those young ladies with the strange smiles is anything like the stuff I teach but the Olympic TKd is. I teach TSD which gets confused often enough as it is with TKD, we fight full contact doing groundwork as well, our other style is MMA, spearate classes though as is the SD work. Yet all are martial arts and are getting tarred with this Riverdance thing that they do in the Olympics (nice one myusername, good analogy!)
We advertise our club, we get people phoning up asking if the dancing stuff they did in Beijing is what we do, our younger students think now that TKD is funny, I've tried to explain but they've seen it on the tele, what can I say and frankly why should I have to defend it?
ATC, curling is indeed a sport and does require some stamina I can assure you, it's widely played in Scotland, has been since the 16th century if not longer. To hoick a heavy granite stone (44 lbs) and chase it up a rink 150 feet long does require some fitness. It's a very skilful game requiring a good deal of coaching, no you can't just pick a stone up and chuck it down a rink!
http://www.fentonsrink.co.uk/what.html
We advertise our club, we get people phoning up asking if the dancing stuff they did in Beijing is what we do, our younger students think now that TKD is funny, I've tried to explain but they've seen it on the tele, what can I say and frankly why should I have to defend it?
ATC, curling is indeed a sport and does require some stamina I can assure you, it's widely played in Scotland, has been since the 16th century if not longer. To hoick a heavy granite stone (44 lbs) and chase it up a rink 150 feet long does require some fitness. It's a very skilful game requiring a good deal of coaching, no you can't just pick a stone up and chuck it down a rink!
http://www.fentonsrink.co.uk/what.html
dancingalone
Grandmaster
I disagree with many of the points you make, but these points take a side seat to the main argument I made, namely that a sport isn't much of a sport if you have to participate in it yourself to be a fan. In that context, why shouldn't I compare football to sport TKD? If sport TKD was such a great product, either the Olympic or the point sparring type, it would be on TV somewhere getting good ratings and viewership. Out of the hundreds of channels available now, you'd think something would wind up on TV even out of desperation from a TV executive to show some cheap programming. It speaks volumes that there's nothing, nada, zilch.
Do they have 6 year old 2nd Dans? I expect they'll be delighted, though they still won't be old enough to compete in 2016.
Sport TKD gives TKD a bad name and it give Martial Arts a Bad name in general. This notion is laughable. If you polled the American population only 1 in 100 would have ever seen a TKD match. You have to make a great effort to watch sport TKD in the Olympics. I can name the non demo sport Olympians. Steven Lopez, Dianne Lopez, Mark Lopez, Nia Abdullah, Charlotte Craig, Barb Kunkel and Juan Moreno. Your chance of going to the Olympics are slim at best only 7 have gone from the USA since 2000. Tkd has no affect on anything its is a minor sport with a small following outside of Asia. Saying that Sport TKD is bad for Martial Arts is crazy. If you don't like it OK most people don't!!!
granfire
Sr. Grandmaster
Then again, it might just be a vocal minority. (aside from the fact that much has come to light in the last 10-20 years to scrape the luster of anything olympic)
Sadly this is very true, I say sadly because I have good friends who do TKD and they are excellent fighters and instructors. To be bracketed with the dancers of Olympic TKD is mortifying for them.
Gorilla, as I said before, twice I think now, TKD made the headlines in the media here when our competitors lost out due to biased officials, hell it made all the major news programmes on the television as well as on the front pages on the newspapers. The majority of the UK now thinks what they saw at the Olympics is TKD. This pattern was repeated all across Europe as their fighters also suffered. Martial arts hardly has a 'small following' outside Europe, taken as a whole it has a huge following around the world so the fact that Olympic TKD is a laughing stock affects us all. For crying out loud look at the page Wikipedia has on it! Oh and look at the different countries competing in it, hardly a 'small following outside Asia' is it? And if all the people in all those countries think this is TKD.......?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taekwondo_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics
ATC
Senior Master
Your point makes no sense. Most Olympic sports are only seen during the Olympics. Notice I said most, there are some that are mainstream sports like Soccer, baseball, Boxing and a few others but if you look at a list of sports that make up the Olympics, most are never watched at all on TV and have very few that follow it at all out side of the people that do the sport.
The problem is not Sport TKD but rather the jealous practitioners of the other arts that want to be in the Olympics. Just listen to the arguments made by others. "It makes my art look bad" How? Most people don't know what sport TKD is.
TKD does not get a bad name from the sport. The people at the top that you see in the Olympics could most likely kick the snot out of most people if they had to. TKD gets a bad name from other MA practitioners that don't even compete in the sport, but have so much to say.
We have had many cross over Martial Artist come to our dojang and each one (not some, not many, but all) have sucked at doing the sport. Even ITF practitioners that have joined our school took quite some time to understand the differences and get decent.
I made this challenge once before but I challenge anyone not doing the sport of TKD to do so. There are many open TKD tournaments where anyone can participate under the WTF rules.
I know I went off topic at the end so get back on topic; just about every Olympic sport needs people to have participated in it to appreciate it and be a fan of it.
Oh yeah and even the so called mainstream sports are the same. Everyone has played soccer, just like most Americans have played football or baseball. That is why they are cultural sports.
Twin Fist
Grandmaster
so sorry, i dont want to sound mean, but this just sounds like the typical teenager "they just hate me because they are jealous"
no, they hate you because you are not a nice person.
look, we get it, YOU think olympic style is cool, but i hang out with people OTHER thanTKD folks, and trust me, they LAUGH at us, and at TKD
I was at a seminal yesterday, with over 50 there, most were kenpo kajukenbo people
4 times yesterday, i told people I was a TKD BB, 4 times i got laughed at, or they just shook thier heads.
The 2 I asked why both said the same thing:
8 yr old BB's
Olympic style sparring
NO ONE is jealous of olympic style TKD
ATC
Senior Master
Who is they? And if you are apart of us then why are they laughing at you also? I have other friends outside of TKD that do and teach other MA, and they don't laugh at me or our school I can tell you that. So they are not laughing at TKD for sure. Maybe some specific TKD people or schools but not me or my school. They even want to come and cross train at our school from time to time.
So they said nothing about the art itself...hhhmmmmm. My point is strenghthend.
Just look at what you just stated. Guess I am reading between the lines.
I'm certainly not and the thought makes me laugh to be honest.
Trust me, no one in MMA or full contact karate both of which are my styles is in the slightest bit bothered by jealousy. I will say though I admire proper TKD people, good fighting skills, good kick and punches.
Perhaps the Olympic 'stars' could fight...if they revert to TKD instead of dancing. I know a fair few MMA fighters whose standup style is TKD and it's not the dancing type either.
I for one would campaign ferociously to keep my martial arts OUT of the Olympics, my other sport, eventing is in already and we have few problems with it so I'm happy.
I would 'suck' at your sport too, thats because I'm used to full contact (no headguards or body protectors) punching, kicking, sweeps and take downs, with shin blocking and use of elbows and knees. Would your guys 'suck' at my sport too do you think?
As for your challenge, I'll up the ante, any Olympic style TKDer in the UK (or a rich American lol) contact me and I will set up a match for them, same sex, same weight on our next show before Christmas, it's a show for Help For Heroes so it will do some good too. I will match an Olympic type TKDer with either a karate kumite fighter, a MT fighter or an MMAer standing, TKD competitors choice. We have videoing so all can see it.
ATC
Senior Master
WTF rules? That is my challenge. Since most think the Olympic game is so easy or a joke, the challenge is WTF rules. It is to show that the sport is not as easy as many think.
I have strong feeling that many have tried it and was not successful. Just like many people that don't do MA at all always says I'll just use a gun and shoot you, that MA stuff is no good. I think many in the MA world do the same. That stuff is no good it won't work in a real fight. Well no duh!!! No one said it would. Just like everyone knows a gun for the most part trumps all.
See the funny thing is you don't see people that actually play letĀs say American football put down rugby or baseball or any other pro sport for that matter. They understand that each are different and one does not translate well into the other. They respect what each other does.
Too bad the MA world is not the same. Each art has its sport, so why should anyone care what TKD does for its sport. Don't like it, don't do it.
