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With all the traditional Asian martial arts and the newer mixed martial arts, its easy to forget or overlook Western arts, such as javeline, wrestling, boxing, archery, and fencing, as well as more obscure arts like savate and celtic wrestling. Now some of these arts, such as boxing and wrestling aren't particularly deadly, but then neither was Judo, but because it was full-contact (like boxing & wrestling) it was able to prevail over most forms of Jiu-Jitsu (except for Fusen Ryu). Now I'd say boxing and wrestling are fairly safe, but lets not forget the combat effectiveness, tradition, or sport of these arts.

I think its important to go for bigger targets. Coordination and seamless technique go down the drain in a real fight, plus the other guy will be moving.

I've noticed unarmed combat, particularly grappling can be terribly difficult to write about (pronouns start coming in {him, her} ) and soon you can't tell who grabbed whose arm or whatever.

Already an athlete, got that covered

Hmmm...Renzo Gracie sees the guard as neutral, but I won't argue because I'm sure all of you are way more experienced than me. Anybody else got an opinion here?

Makes sense

I may be mistaken, but Japanese JJ contains strikes and weapon techniques. Strikes are implied in BJJ by the positioning that makes them easier to perform, but are not regularly used in class, and certainly not in BJJ competition. Weapons are not at all part of BJJ. There are a lot more differences, some of the more experienced guys can enlighten you.

Thanks.

This is going to sound really really stupid, but I'm new to kickboxing. Uppercuts travel in a more or less upward direction, right? So how do you use them on bags? It doen't seem like you could land more than a glancing blow. Yeah, dumb question, but I wanna know anyway.

Thanks for starting this thread, Vito, you have some good points. Nice point, Gum, people do forget that, as well as the fact that they can strike from the mount. By the way, do you have a favorite strike from a dominant position?

WW said: What are you hoping to find? Evidence that a bjjer can receive brain damage by an improperly applied choke hold? Just the opposite. Before I start BJJ, I want to make sure its safe...realtively

Sry, should have had this in my last post... Will being choked out cause brain damage or any other injury if the choke is released promptly?

Anyone know anyone with brain damage from doing BJJ?

Thanks, but if theres anyone with actual TFT experience, I'd like to here it.

Well, I don't think you can really learn techniques without a true teacher to correct your mistakes. However, you can learn the core principles of your art which could have a profound effect on how you practice/spar/compete. Ex.: I can't perform a Judo throw all that well, but the basic principles of balance breaking, positioning and execution (which I learned from Jimmy Pedro's Judo book) have allowed me to take down several opponents with crude wrestling style techniques. Just my thoughts.