Whats the REAL deal with martial arts today?

[Adonis]

You take two people.

1st one is a guy named Ricco

Ricco when he was 15 years old found a cool TMA style he likes. Ricco trains an average of 3 days a week. He does his forms/kata and techniques he learned. He does some mild sparring. His intructor talks about chi/dimak and all that wonderful stuff. He talks bout eye gouging, biting, and what ever else he has to do to when the fight. but his main focus as pretty much almost all tradional arts are on character building.

Ricco has learned some cool forms, some techniques he practices on an oppenent who steps in and punches and ricco performs his techniques he is so proud of on the opponent. cool wrist locks, striking techniques, chin na, and neat parrying, blocking sets. Ricco has been training for 10 years and is now 25. He has alot of tournaments when's his forms competion and places 2nd or 1st in his point sparring matches. He feels he can defend him self, no longer competes because he learns more of the deady aspects of the art feel to dangerous to learn.

His instructor has shown him great eye gouging techniques, throat chops, and aweome chin na (wrist locks and finger locks,) as well as nerve strikes and other pressure point stuff. He has learned cool neck break and some ki/chi practice. Ricco is proud of accomplishing on getting his black belt and feels confident that he learned some self defense moves to protect him self. feels he learned quite a bit about him self. found many friends and has enjoys the camdrie of his school. Enjoys the other aspects of martial arts, the theory and applicaon of his forms, the respect and courtsey, and teaching others martial arts making him feel good. Plus enjoys the accomplishment, hard work, and discipline of obtaining his black belt and continuing on his martial art journey.

2nd person. Now on the other side of town we have Antwon, who is the same age as ricco but stuided only for three years and started when he is 22. so ricco and and antwon are the same age. Just that antwon has stuied for the past 3 years compared to ricco's 10.

Antwon studies MMA styles, trains 5 times a week, does mauythai, boxing, wrestling, and bjj.

He spars with hard contact, has learned good balance from wrestling, foot mobility from boxing and head and body movement. Has had a lot of punches thrown at him with full speed and force and learned to slip them or block them. He has taken quite a few shots also. He has decent take downs, postioning and submission skills.

He works hard and trains 5 days a week.

well antwon and ricco both work together at the same same IT department both of them on break start talking and it comes talking about martial arts. ricco is appauled by the events saying " it not fighting, its sport. My art is to deadly for that. besides the arts for self defense not for some spectator enjoyment. and that those events have rules and my style can't do its techniques because of it. real fight it would be diffrent )

Antwon calls ricco on it and makes fun of ricco in front of the co workers by saying that "your style is unproven nonsense, and only thing you believe is that some ancient master you heard about in a history book was supposedly an awesome fighter and that your instructor said the knowlege was passed down from teacher to teacher then to him and that there style is deadly and not worth taking part to hurt some one or kill them in a spectar sport." antwon also says "your training methods are inferior and at best gets you to be mediocre at defending your self. that the emphasis of the traditional arts is on character buidling not fighting abiality. that your confidence in your self to defed your self is false confidence."

this bothers ricco so to defend his honor and his style the two people. antwon and ricco, agree to fight.

so based on what you heard who wins?

[Mr. Mike]

they both sound like adults, so my money is on theone who swallows his pride, bows, and walks away.

[Adonis]

interesting theory but no one is void of ego. ego gets the best of people at times. could be a game like foot ball your team vs some one else where you end up in a stupid argument.

could be chess game, card, game who's the best nascar driver.

or any thing for that matter.

[Adonis]

either way to are bound to fight so which one wins in your opinion?

[SubGrappler]

I think its pretty obvious, "Antwon" would have the upper hand. Hes had greater exposure to actual full contact fighting, whereas "Ricco" has only had exposure to point fighting.

Also, I noted that Ricco has no ground experience whatsoever. Antwon has experience on his feet, in the clinch, and on the ground.

[Lights Out]

Antwon by submission, maybe in 30 seconds or so (Tackel, armbar, scream of pain).

The saddest part is that there is just a "little flaw" in Ricco´s approach to MA: that he thought he could learn top fight without actually fighting. The rest is perfectly OK. He only needed to spar hard.

[Sam]

antwon - again not a big MMA advocate my self.... but even TMAs need to realise that full contact [in some situations] is necessary for training....

[italian_guy]

In a no-rules match I think antwon will win.

[Lights Out]

Another thing to consider is that MMA techniques all came out of some traditional art somewhere.

A common saying is that there is no MMA without TMA. The MMA guys have invented nothing. MMA is just a way of training, you train to be proficent in every range possible in unarmed combat (standup, clinch/close and ground).

Personally I feel that it is like comparing apples and oranges. A TMArtist trains to improve their life and develop survival skills and strategies they can use in life all the time. A MMArtist trains to improve their life and develop their specific cadre of skills so they can be victorious in the ring. That might lead to some of the same benefits that TMA's get, but through different means.

No matter wath you´re training in, you must ask yourself what is your purpose, that is, why you´re training.

If you´re doing MA to improve your general fitness condition, almost any style or training method would suffice.

But if you train to learn to fight (that is, defend yourself) you´ll have to fight.

You learn to write by writing, you learn to drive by driving, you learn to play guitar by playing guitar. So, if you wannna learn to fight, eventually you´ll have to.

Now, the sportive part of MMA needs to ensure a minimun safety environment for his practicioners. Thus, enter the gloves, enter the mouthguards, the cups, the mats, referees, etc.

But nonetheless, MMA is the closest approach to a real fight that exist nowadays.

[wingedsoldier]

it's true, mma practitioners are tough, especially the ufc guys. they're all highly trained fighters who are "extrememly well conditioned". but don't let that convince you not to take tma because they can be extremely useful in combat. it all depends what you're looking for. if i were making the choice it would be kenpo karate or jeet kune do, because they are really well rounded combat styles. but remember, it's not the style, but the fighter. if you want to become a great fighter, take an art and become good at it. learn to adapt to your opponent and the situation, condition yourself, and study the techniques and how to apply them (you might want to get especially good in "grafting" your techniques together). if you can perfect these, than you can never go wrong as a fighter.