There are plenty of systems with multiple schools all over the US. I can name at least five in my local area alone, our own being one of them. On a larger scale, perhaps you are unfamiliar with Jhoon Rhee, who has more schools under a single man's name than anyone else in the world. By your logic, taekwondo; his method in particular, is superior to all other arts (Frankly, I don't believe than any art is inherently superior to any other). Before you go making such an uninformed statement, check your facts.
You believe in your system and the quality of teaching that you and your students receive. That is good. But don't be arrogant and naive. You believe that your students will prevail against any students in the country. That is a very tall order. Arrogant because you have no real foundation besides confidence in your own system upon which to base this statement. Naive because to "put [your] students against any students in the country" you need to either have a street fight, which you claim you don't train your students to engage in, or a rule set agreed upon by both competing teams. If you issue the challenge, then to back up that claim, your students would be competing under quite a few sparring rule sets with which they will be unfamiliar with or unaccustomed to competing under. No matter how good you are, if you're stuck in someone else's rule set, you're at a very serious disadvantage.
And you base this statement on what? Those tournaments have credibility as local tournaments within a given style. If a school has made the achievements then it is well within their rights to mention them in their literature or to potential students. And since your system has multiple schools, you're certainly luring students in with something as well. Again, nothing wrong with that, but don't criticize others for making use of their credentials and achievements to bring in students when you do the exact same thing; you use whatever credentials and achievements of your school and style in order to market to customers.
First, saying that teaching people tofight only supports violence and not protection and then saying that you teach your students to fight, but that you somehow are completely expiated from your first statement is the sort of nonsense that polititians do to justify voting in a way counter to their stated platforms.
I'm not offended, and I do not mean any offense to you.
I've made no statements to this effect. Yes, you have every right to defend your school/system, and I do respect you for doing so. But in doing so you have made some very unfounded statements.
Early on, he did, but he has way too many schools to put in a personal presence in each one at this point. My point in bringing him up was that he has multiple schools. Your comment implied that having multiple schools is a testament to the effectiveness of the system, in which case the presence, or lack there of, of a GM shouldn't make a difference anyway, assuming that masters didn't merely purchase their rank (an all too common occurance in many organizations).
Some McDojos are like this. Others are just schools set up by well meaning people who may or may not be competent using a profitable business model and generally having a greater focus on the business side than on the MA side.
100% agree. I never assume anything about another school.
Okay, if this is what you meant, then this is what you should have said. I'm glad that you are proud of and apparently well served in the training you receive and, again, I respect you for promoting your school. But your original statement didn't read this way.
Agree and disagree: 100% agree that championships don't make a martial artist.
Twas I who posted said link
Given how upset Youn Hwa Man was about people degrading his school by calling it a McDojo, I found it rather hypocritical of him to pick out some California taekwondo dojang, seemingly at random, then post a link to their website on the taekwondo section and label them as the "Definition of a McDojo." He provided no particular reason for his picking them out and was asked several times through the course of eight pages by several people (yourself included) to explain why, but has yet to do so.
Twas I who posted said link
I posted the link to this thread for that reason. Hey, maybe he trained there and has some insight as to why he labeled them so, but he never elaborated. And even if his assertion is correct, there is no reason to badmouth the school on the web. In all, I thought the thread was in poor taste. I will say that is sparked a lot of good conversation, however.
In any case, I watched the video and it was pretty good, though I didn't see anything particularly unusual. The sparring looked like WTF sparring, and while there were more hand techniques than I normally see in WTF, they were all within WTF rules. The sequences in the dojang looked like taekwondo and the first form that Master Shaw performed was Koryo. Is your school a KKW school or do you simply use the taegeuk forms?
Daniel
