Whats the REAL deal with martial arts today?

[SubGrappler]

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.

Its not so much the style that you base yourself on, but rather the way with which you practice those techniques. For instance, if all you do is point spar, then you'll get good at point sparring. If you practice your forms, you'll get good at forms.

Kempo is fine. Tae Kwon Do is fine. Karate is fine. As long as you attempt to practice in realistic situations (the fewer rules, the better) once in awhile, whatever you do is fine. Chuck Liddel, current Light Heavyweight UFC Champion, has trained in Kempo.

The thing that marks the styles made popular by Mixed Martial Arts is their training methods. All styles of standup fighting have a basic front and roundhouse kick, but Muay Thai guys are known for being devestating with them, and thats due to their training methods.

but remember, it's not the style, but the fighter.

That is not a true statement- to say that is to ignore all the differences that seperate all the different martial arts.

You can be the most athletically gifted person in the world- that doesnt make you a good fighter. Everyone has to be trained, and it depends on whos training you and what it is you're exposed to.

Royce Gracie wasnt fast, he wasnt strong, and he was by no means a menancing person. Everyone else he fought was.

In today's mixed martial arts venue, that statement holds true, because the fighters are all trained in the same things in all ranges of combat.

[goshinman]

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?

Antwon wins. Problem is, that isn't the only scenario. How about if Ricco loses to Antwon, who is a highly trained martial artist, but beats the crap out of an untrained or semi-trained attacker on the streets? Does that take away from the validity of his chosen art? The answer of course is unequivocally NO!!! you see the truth is that MMA is not the gold standard of what is to be considered effective, the streets are. And if you can do it on the street then your cool with me.

[goshinman]

Oh and by the way it works both ways. If Ricco gets his butt kicked on the street by an untrained attacker then maybe he should look into more effective methods of self protection.

[Sam]

I always think [now talking in real terms] that so long as you understand the effectiveness of your art and aren't blinded by your training, then there is no problem with training in any art..... so long as you understand your limits and the limits imposed on you by the way you train....

A lot of effectiveness is simply doewn to training methods rather than style, [given some styles are mnore effective than others]

[Adonis]

Thats the idea of my post. It comes down to the training methods. Pushing and testing your abilities and techniques. IF you reversed the scenerio where ricoo won because he was trainign hard, did good sparring contact, and was good with timing and distance and all the other factors to set up and make his moves work

while antwon did things half assed.

The outcome has a higher percetange to come out diffrent.

[Adonis]

Thats the idea of my post. It comes down to the training methods. Pushing and testing your abilities and techniques. IF you reversed the scenerio where ricoo won because he was trainign hard, did good sparring contact, and was good with timing and distance and all the other factors to set up and make his moves work

while antwon did things half assed.

The outcome has a higher percetange to come out diffrent.

[Sam]

exaclty - i think we're agreeing now then!

[McBeth]

Biting and eye gouging are way overestimated in fights, as they have been used before in MMA competitions.

Overestimated? Why would you say that?

I've ended fights with eye gouges and biting. It's far more efficient than punching and kicking for ending a fight, though you may still need to use punches and kicks to get into the clinch. And against larger, strong opponents, its far easier to execute than an armbar or a heel hook, and requires very little training. There are people that I've taken out that I don't think I would've been able to handle otherwise. Also, because such tactics are so psychologically disconcerting, it helps set up an opponent for other techniques such as chokes or other submissions far more quickly. They lose their composure very fast when you're biting their face and drawing blood.

As for eye gouges and biting being employed in MMA, I'm not aware of any that openly permits such tactics. Could you provide the forum with the specific tournaments you are referring to that have openly permitted eye gouges and biting?

From what I am aware, the so called "eye gouges" that have occurred in a few UFC and Pride competitions were actually finger digs into the cuts underneath someone's eye, not actual socket gouges or attempts to rip someone's eye out or permanently blind them. And I am not aware of any attempts to bite during competition, especially nowadays since mouth pieces are mandatory. But I could be wrong. However, if such tactics have been used, the question is how many times have such attempts been made. I would venture to guess not that many, considering the number of NHB-style tournaments that take place and have taken place.

Please provide us with more specific information.

[SubGrappler]

Biting and eye gouging are way overestimated in fights, as they have been used before in MMA competitions.

Overestimated? Why would you say that?

that take place and have taken place.

Please provide us with more specific information.

I'll gladly volunteer

First off, no sanctioned MMA event in the US or Japan has ever "allowed" biting or eye gouging. This does not mean that such tactics never occured. During the infancy of MMA, biting and eye gouging were against the rules, but the only results of trying such tactics meant a fine- fights were never stopped.

A classic example of both eye gouging and biting attempts during a fight was when Gerard Gordeau fought against Yuki Nakai in Japan Vale Tudo 95. Gordeau is a notoriously dirty fighter, and outweighed Nakai but a full 100lbs. During the fight, Gordeau gouged Nakai's eye seriously enough that he was permanently blinded by it. Gordeau also took a chunk out of his shoulder/ neck with a nice chomp. Nakai kept fighting, and eventually secured a heel hook for the win.

Gordeau would attempt his crude tactics again when he was invited to the very first UFC. In the finals, he would attempt to bite his opponents ear off to avoid the grappling game. This only infuriated one determined Royce Gracie, who proceeded to take his back, lock in a choke, and refuse to release it after Gordeau tapped.

Then there was a grossly miscoordinated and fat fighter in the name of Jon Hess who used all manners of eye gouging during his fights, regardless of their legality. His fight with Andy Anderson is a good example of this. While he defeats Andy Anderson, he is pummeled into a coma induced state when he fights Vitor Belfort, showing that boxing skills were far more important during the fight than attempting to gouge out someone's eyes.

Close enough to bite me is close enough to bite you. Close enough to eye gouge me is close enough to eye gouge you. What makes the difference now is positional superiority, which is a trained skill. Eye gouging, biting, and groin shots have their place in a fight, but are hardly the fight enders that people believe they are. Biting hurts- groin shots hurt, but adrenaline will overcome these tactics. Eye gouging sucks, but god forbid you either move your head or simply close your eyes.

[Hansen]

Subgrappler - I don't think McBeth was saying that dirty tactics were necessarily superior to kickboxing and submission skills. At least that's not how I read his post. (McBeth - Jump in any time and defend your position).

I think he was just stating that dirty tactics are not overestimated tactics. They work and are excellent tools in one's arsenal, especially since they require little training to implement. In fact, the H2H program in the military (in every country that has such a program) emphasizes and encourages dirty tactics, especially if soldiers need to be trained for H2H immediately. They don't spend time teaching complicated kicks or bob and weaving manuevers or submissions, at least not in the early stages. Those require more time to learn and execute successfully on a consistent basis.

Also, you seem to be unfairly comparing professional fighters, who are trained for a particular environment and know what they are getting into prior to stepping into the ring, with average people on the street who may find themselves in a physical confrontation at a bar or party or other "social" gathering place. Merely because a professional fighter can use his high level of skills to defeat another fighter (who relies on dirty tactics and is not as good a fighter) doesn't mean that those dirty tactics are without merit or over-valued. After all, Gordeau's opponents were skilled professional fighters who knew prior to entering the ring what could potentially happen, especially after he'd tried such tactics before. But from my experience, most people don't expect to get eye gouged in a fight or know how to handle themselves when bitten, especially in the neck. Just like most people don't expect a person to pull out a knife or a gun or run them over with a car during a heated argument. And like McBeth I've used such tactics quite successfully. It's come in handy more times than my boxing. (But I do admit, I would not rely solely on such tactics).

In addition, you've listed a handful of such attempted dirty tactics in professional tournaments. While it is valuable information to take note of,

a handful of attempts (2 of which were by the same fighter) would hardly constitute one reaching the conclusion that such tactics were overvalued in usefulness. If I had based all my conclusions on fighting from the early UFCs I would've studied nothing but BJJ and never bothered much with striking. BJJ dominated the early UFCs and has proven itself useful, but with time and with a greater number of fights, it has been shown that BJJ tactics are not the only way a fight can be ended nor is it necessarily the most efficient way to win a tournament.

Dirty tactics are just tools. But they are useful tools to have in one's arsenal. It may not always be sufficient to end a fight, but when combined with other fighting skills it can make a fighter much more formidable. Imagine Royce, Couture, or Liddell incorporating such tactics into their repertoire. It'll make them that much more scary to contend with.