DokterVet

Here's something that I don't think has been brought up: Someone I work with is the co-owner of a nightclub in the heart of the clubbing district of Toronto (Richmond St.) This area is known for being absolutely packed with drunk people on the street (you wouldn't believe how many if you haven't been there). He sees more than one fight on the street every single night. Up to maybe four or five. That's hundreds, maybe up to a thousand street fights per year. According to him, a few years ago, most people fought like hockey fighters (grabbing the collar and punching, trying to pull the shirt over the head), or went for a side headlock and punched from there. In the past few years, he says, that has completely changed. In virtually every fight at least one fighter's strategy is to shoot in for a takedown, go straight to mount and punch from there. The popularity of MMA has effected self-defense, because it has affected the way a typical street fighter will attack you. So even if you didn't think grappling was necessary for self-defense in 1992, you cannot deny that it is an absolute must now.

I think you have your positions mixed up. An armbar (juji gatame) can be set up from many positions, but underneath mount is not one of them. You need to gain a better position first to be able to apply it (such as full guard, top mount, or back mount.)

As Bushido_man96 pointed out, the UFC heavyweight champion, Randy Couture, is 44 years old. Dan Severn is 53 and has already fought 7 times in 2007, winning 6 of those fights. There are several other 40+ fighters out there competing as well. Of course, not everyone can fight into middle age like these guys do. In fact, most people probably couldn't. But age definitely wouldn't keep every 40+ karate master from competing. So far I only know of only one to take up the challenge -- Ron Van Clief, who I mentioned earlier in the thread.

Small joints are fingers and toes, not wrists and ankles. Damaging a large joint is much more debilitating to your opponent and can put an attacker into shock. Attacking small joints uses fine motor movements, which tend to be severely impeded during an adrenaline rush as in a real fight. On the other hand, large joint locks can be applied with gross motor movements. Finger locks can not be practiced as safely as locks on larger joints in a full-resistence, competitive environment, which is the biggest predictor for the successful application of a technique in a fight. Professional fighters would simply not tap out to a finger lock, and they would just be stuck with a medical suspension. This last one is a personal anecdote: some people are not affected by finger locks. One of my friends used to hand me his fingers and I'd try all the small joint locks I had learned through karate or seminars in other martial arts, and he would just laugh at me. I could grab his fingers with one hand and try to bend them straight back with the other hand and he would still just laugh at me. Now imagine him on an adrenaline rush as in a fight. He would pound my face in while I was fiddling with his fingers.

Randy Couture's background is in wrestling, especially Greco-Roman. That is why his style revolves much more around the standing clinch, as opposed to freestyle/folkstyle wrestlers like Sean Sherk and Josh Koshcheck, who tend to shoot in for the legs from outside. I believe Tim Sylvia started training MMA from the start. Not sure about Griffin's background.

I would also like gi matches to be included. Why don't you think it is martial arts? Why do you need a belt to do a martial art? What is not martial about two combatants fighting each other within a ruleset that is as close to a real unarmed fight as possible while considering the safety of the combatants? As for art, the word can refer to a skill or craft, such as the art of cooking or the art of selling. The fighters are experts in several fields of combative skills. In other words, they are well versed in martial arts.

It seems like a lot of people posting in this thread haven't actually watched UFC in quite a while. Tank Abbott hasn't fought in the UFC since 2003 and hasn't won in the UFC since 1998, so he hasn't been relevant to this discussion for nearly a decade. As for it being only a competition of submission holds? The sprawl and brawl style of fighting developed in the late 1990s with the rise of fighters like Maurice Smith and Bas Rutten, and continues to be a very successful strategy employed by top fighters like Chuck Liddell, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic, Wanderlei Silva, Tim Sylvia, etc. These fighters win primarily by stopping takedowns and using strikes to score a knockout. To those posters who claim there are no style vs. style matchups anymore, you are wrong. They just aren't the traditional styles that you see in the yellow pages. There are still lots of compelling style matchups. Ground and Pound is a style used primarily by wrestlers who use their takedowns and positional control to gain a good position from which to punch, kick, elbow and knee their opponents. Noteable GNPers are Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture, Yushin Okami, and Matt Hughes. There are submission specialists, who use their BJJ, sub wrestling, shootwrestling, judo, sambo or catch wrestling to try to submit their opponents. Antonio Roderigo Nogueira and Jason McDonald are good examples of this style. I mentioned Sprawl and Brawl a few paragraphs above. There are well-rounded fighters who can do everything like Georges St. Pierre, Fedor Emilianenko and B.J. Penn. There are also variations on all these styles. Matt Hughes is more accurately a GnPer/submission wrestler. Noguiera and Penn are jiu-jitsu and boxing specialists, able to punch well standing up and submit you from the ground. The excitement from watching comes from analyzing the style matchup to see who has the advantage (there can be a rock-paper-scissors effect), following individual fighters whose personality or fighting style has made them a favourite of yours, watching the rise of new stars and new fighting styles, etc. Azmyth, what you are suggesting -- one sport for grappling and one for striking -- already exists. Submission Grappling is a competition ground for all grapplers (the ADCC is the top competition arena) and Kickboxing allows for pure striking competition (K1 is the top competition). The whole point of MMA is to see who can apply their style (striking, grappling or both) in a situation (like real life) where both striking and grappling are allowed. Guys who are exceptional at applying striking to a freestyle environment have shown that they can be effective. However, many fail to apply them to a situation where they can be taken down. As a striking practitioner, shouldn't you be interested in how to apply kicks against an opponent who, like a real attacker, can grab your leg and take you down? Check out fights by Georges St. Pierre, Cung Le, and Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic to see kicks used effectively in MMA. And I don't know about you, but when I see a super slick half-guard pass from Sean Sherk, a clean-landing spinning back kick from St. Pierre, a devastating Judo throw from Karo Parysian, a gogoplata from Nick Diaz, a flying knee by Spencer Fisher or an armbar from Minotauro, I see art. Also, Matt Hughes trains in Miletich Fighting Systems, an MMA school. His background and main strength is wrestling. He is also a very good submission wrestler.

There's your problem.

Voluntarily shaking hands, touching gloves and hugging after a fight is a much more genuine show of respect than being forced to bow when the head referee yells at you to bow.

Also, besides just eye gauges we practice throat strikes (illegal in mma), spine attacks (illegal in mma) small joint locks (illegal in mma), and of course kicks, and knees to grounded opponents (illegal in mma). I would have to agree with Montana, it IS apples and oranges. Two totally different things with training geared towards completley different objectives. Okay, but both the fights I mentioned occured before MMA was sanctioned, back when it was no holds barred/vale tudo fighting. At that point, only one thing you mentioned (eye gouges) were illegal, and those still happened, and were not as effective as claimed by most TMAists nowadays (please watch yuki nakai go on to win 2 fights on the same night AFTER his eye was gouged out by Gerard Gordeau). Those other illegal techniques never came into play in early NHB/Vale Tudo in karate's favour. Chute Box fighters have used knees to a ground opponent to great effect, but they don't train them the same way that karateka do (if at all -- I never did). I've never seen anyone lose a fight by a finger or toe lock, so there's no reason to think that is unfairly holding anyone back in modern MMA. Any techniques that weren't frequently practiced against full resistance failed in NHB, no matter how much deadlier they were than the safe-to-practice variety. Jigoro Kano's genius is evident in every NHB, Vale Tudo and MMA match. Make the techniques safe to practice with full resistance, and your skill with them will eventually outclasses anyone's skill with "deadly" techniques by such a wider margin that the deadly techniques are rendered moot. The proof of this is in all of the unsanctioned anything-goes matches that demonstrated it over and over again when all of those currently-illegal moves were legal. My point is that it's not apples and oranges. In the arena that the karateka trains for (the street, in a house, school, etc), he will always be facing real, moving, reacting opponents, so the fundamental difference between techniques that work (practiced constantly with real distance against a fully resisting, moving opponent) and those that don't ("deadly", not safe to practice against a fully resisting, moving opponent, "pretended" more than trained) is still the greatest determining factor of the success of a technique. That's why it's not apples and oranges. It's more like apples on a tree vs apples on a plate.

Jason Delucia posts on the sherdog.net forums, if you want to talk to him directly.

I disagree with this and think it is a cop-out. I earned a black belt and trained in karate for over 8 years. At least 90% of our time was spent training techniques that are compeltely legal in the ring. Every once in a while someone would mention an eye-gauge or something, but most classes were punches, kicks, blocks, backfists, hammerfists, shutos, haitos, nukites, some takedowns, etc. Almost all of it is legal in MMA. Additionally, the illegal techniques that we did learn were not trained with full resistance, and full contact competition has shown that martial techniques not trained with full motion and resistence are almost never successfully applied against a real resisting opponent. Finally, consider this: if the reason for karate's lack of success in the ring is because some of its techniques are outlawed, then if a particular karateka decided to spend 100% of his training time training the ring-legal karate techniques (using karate's training methods) wouldn't he be just as good at fighting in the ring as an MMAist who trains 100% in MMA's ring-legal techniques? So why hasn't that happened?

Wado kai karate - over 8 years Shootwrestling - 2 years

I'd say the bridge, followed by the shrimp, the shoulder roll and the wrestler's switch.

You make a good point about robot fighting, but I don't think this is really the same. People are always going to train martial arts, and MMA will always be the ultimate competition ground for martial artists. While its popularity might peak and die down among the casual fans/general public, it won't go away.