DarthPenguin

I totally missed that - sorry, my fault! 100% agree with you. eg at my judo club the main coach is a 1st dan but he was an international competitor for years, just recently retiring. There are several higher graded people in the class that train under him! Completely agree here and hope it didn't come across as i was being disrespectful to anyone, genuinely wasn't my intention!

Currently i am reading the Bladeborn saga by T C Edge. Was very pleasantly surprised by this and it was also available on Kindle Unlimited which makes things a lot more accessible

As a Scot i can wholeheartedly recommend Still Game though in the interests of fairness i am not sure how well the humour will translate to some other countries! When i lived in England they didn't understand it at all!

Also, at the risk of sounding slightly rude (if it is then i apologise) can i ask what level you have gotten to in Kyokushin and / or Shotokan? I am much junior rank wise to a lot of the people on here (people don't usually make comments here based on rank which is refreshing) but some of the sentiments i am hearing are similar to ones i have heard before from newer students / members who have not trained enough to work out why some things are as they are. Sorry if this embarasses them but @Wastelander has multiple dan ranks in a variety of styles (including practical karate ones) and @bushido_man96 is a 5th dan in TKD plus works as a LEO (so will have real hands on experience of defence situations) and they both have laid out cogent points as to why body only striking as you espouse may not work for self defence. If you are equally as credentialled / skilled then fair enough but it is possible that this is a case of "you don't know what you don't know".

Surely that is the same for any attack though : if you are unprepared the consequences will be worse. Another point i would make is that often people call out exceptions to a general rule to demonstrate they are outliers / unusual. There are a few fighters i can think of who were known for body level strikes: Ricky Hatton and Michael Nunn are two boxers i immediately think of when i think of a body attack; Bas Rutten and Giga Chikadze for mma. They stand out as they were unusual (to my eyes) for their ability to finish fights with body strikes. It is a common statement that pressure testing exposes flaws and brings out the best aspects of things too: if body punching was so much more effective than anything else then professional fighters whose living (and health!) literally depends on being able to damage their opponents as much as possible whilst taking minimum impacts would focus on it a lot more. How many MMA fighters do you see try to win a fight with mainly a body attack? They use body strikes to wear out their opponent and vary their targets to be less predictable. If they could finish fights quicker, with less damage and could then fight again faster and get paid more often they would definitely go to the body all the time if that would help them.

Congrats, though is this meant to say December 2024??

Also good to have someone infinitely better than me at bjj join the forum who i can ask questions of and pester for knowledge!! (just joking about the pestering!). What lineage / school is it you are under? Are you mainly a gi or nogi guy? I very much prefer gi so fingers crossed i get to pick your brains on that!

Yeah to chime in here too: I can understand your reasoning for proposing removing safety equipment but what i would say is more people would not say that boxers and thai boxers are weak and unconditioned, or unable to deliver powerful blows, but both of these styles do train with protective equipment. Plus when you train or figh full contact you perform very differently to lesser contact - from personal experience i remember years ago when i trained in a taekwondo offshoot and a much smaller friend of mine was talking nonsense about weight classes not being needed due to superior technique etc. etc. He then proposed we sparred full contact with some gloves and headgear (more like kickboxing). He stopped the round after a few minutes of being hit in the head (i wasn't unpleasant enough to go full power) to complain at me for only throwing straight punches with front or read hand and front kicks to the stomach, since there were so many more techniques and he didn't think i was utilising the style. My response was i can beat you up with almost zero risk to myself at a range you can't hit me at using these three things: why on earth would i use more? Full contact training is (obviously) extremely valuable but i personally think it, by it's very nature, restricts the techniques you can practice or use either as the technique is too potentially harmful (you won't just snap someones arm) or you rule it out due to riskiness, so some lesser contact can be useful too to build muscle memory for additional techniques. Only training to the body also means you really only build muscle memory for body level strikes. While you would be practising the other levels and ranges in technique practice you wouldn't have them dialled in as much. It is a problem that some kyokushin fighters find in the transition to mma: they are fantastically skilled and very talented but they have to break the habit or not punching to the face. I would also agree with @Wastelander that your message seems to read that the thing you dislike about karate is in essence the karate itself! Which is a totally valid viewpoint, since everyone has their own preferences! Not trying to be insulting there! Maybe boxing training but going to a gym renowned for it's body punching would work better for you? Though your idea does kinda sound like both the "low kick championship" and "power slap" that i have seen online! Maybe it would work as a style similar to that and then the training for it would be an you envisage!

Congrats!

The steroid era is a tough one tbh as it is almost impossible to know how many people were on them. It isn't guaranteed that you become massive when you are on steroids (ala the change in Bonds over time) with different substances having different results - just need to look at Tour De France cyclists using steroids / performance enhancing drugs to improve other aspects of fitness. Just because someone was not massive doesn't mean they didn't take something to avoid injury / increase stamina etc. My personal solution would be to have a "steroid era wing" (not labelled as this but with the years instead) and have the players in that and some exhibits for context. I just keep coming back to the fact that all the players had to compete in the same environment: yes they may have been stronger and able to hit further but defenders may have been faster and able to chase down more hits / jump higher for an above the wall catch; pitchers may have been throwing harder or had more break due to ability to grip harder and impart more spin. In my head it is kinda like baseball having to lower the mound after the absolute domination from Bob Gibson - the mound obviously benefitted him but does it invalidate his numbers ? For me it doesn't. I do take the argument though that it was self inflicted! Plus it is nice to have halls of fame: it isn't something that we really have over here - plenty of footballers who are club legends and legends of the game but there isn't a museum dedicated to them etc.

Welcome, nice to (virtually) meet you

He is one of those where you can see both sides really. Also comes down to your perspective on what the Hall of Fame is / what it stands for. If you view it as the shrine to the best players ever where people can remember them / a museum dedicated to the best players ever then i personally think guys like Rose, Bonds, Clemens. McGwire, A-Rod all need to be in as historically speaking they were amongst the best players to have ever played (museums still include exhibits / information on horrendous people and times in history). If you view it as a shrine to the best examples of baseball then those players maybe dont make the cut. Personally, when people like Ty Cobb are in then you have kinda already removed the moral argument, and with the other players who are in an used corked bats etc. you have removed the cheating argument too, but i can see how some people come down on the other side of the fence. The ambiguity sorta reminds me of the NBA MVP debate : is it the best player or the most important player to the teams success? Under the former criteria MJ should have basically won it every year in the 90s but using the latter criteria Karl Malone got one etc. Personally i much prefer the way baseball does the CY Young : best pitcher or the way that football does the Ballon Dor : best player. Lot less ambiguity as to what the award means.

Will be interesting to see - though i am wondering if there are a few red flags appearing now: flaming out in WWE and NFL; getting beaten at NCAA (while i am sure his opponent is excellent he is still the olympic champ!)

Also, i am very much looking forward to the season starting in anger soon! Go Mariners!! Though i will be visiting Toronto this summer and fingers crossed i manage to catch Scherzer pitching whilst there!

100% agree on all of that. There are always a few players who midway / nearer the end of their career everyone talks about as "surefire first ballot HoFer", even cases like (ignoring the steroids issue) ones like Barry Bonds where the comments were "clear first ballor HoFer, definite inner circle player up there with Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth etc." Players like that, where it is so so so obvious that they should be in should basically always be unanimous in my opinion. When it comes to the voters i can see the argument for it not being the writers but then unfortunately you run the risk of personal bias amongst players creeping in even more. Using another sport, football, as an example: the Spanish football team used to have an issue in the past where the Barcelona players and Real Madrid players would flatly refuse to pass to each other during games due to rivalries; i live in Glasgow and the rivalry between Rangers and Celtic is rather well known and would lead to similar issues. Journalists seem like the least bad option to me tbh unless it becomes a set of statistical criteria which them removes some of the mystique (eg if it became need to average 2 standard deviations more home runs over a ten year span that players from comparative sample A, plus have metric B plus metric C).