UFC _ Have any Karate Masters entered, and if so was result?

[Elky]

from my limited exposure to MMA tournaments it would seem a good starting point for training would be BJJ and Thai Boxing training,

not karate - classical or sports.

The UFC guys and what have you are seriously conditioned athletes first, something most karateka simply are not, myself included.

I would say the ideal training would be MMA. Anything else is like taking badminton lessons to get good at tennis.

[BlahuKahuna]

Well, I don't think he has been referred to as a 'master', but Bas Rutten says that Kyokushin was the base of his striking skills.

[shoshinkan]

'I would say the ideal training would be MMA. Anything else is like taking badminton lessons to get good at tennis.'

yes fair point, I guess I was thinking more of the best way a more traditional martial artist could compete with a chance of doing well, I havent seen much MMA training so im not that aware where the sport is going.

[Mischievousjoe]

a couple of karate based fighters I've known of in MMA competition are

ryota machida (shotokan i think), bas rutten (kyoksushkin) , a guy named jeff newton in KOTC , and believe it or not, George St Pierre has a pretty high belt in kyokushkin i believe. oh and Seth Petruzelli from the Ultimate fighter also has a karate background.

as has been mentioned however, all of these fighters cross train extensively in other arts. Machida has been very successful and has kept his striking very karate esque still. GSP has kept a lot of it , but obviously incorporated a large degree of wrestling, bjj, and muay thai to round out his game. It would be interesting to see more serious fighters come from a striking background such as karate etc, but its not too likely in the near future.

[bushido_man96]

The future that I see for MMA is fighters coming straight from MMA gyms, not claiming any base "style." It will be much like the old Pankration would have been. When they trained, they trained according to the rules they would be fighting under. Now that MMA has been established, and leagues like the IFL have formed, people go to the gym to learn the MMA style. Sure, there will always be the guys that come into the gym after spending years training in another style, like Karate, or Wrestling, but the other will become more popular as well.

[DokterVet]

Yes, a few pure karate stylists have entered UFC and other early Vale Tudo/no-holds-barred events.

Fred Ettish, who I believe was a 5th Dan (but I can't find out because he has apparently been erased from Wikipedia) in karate entered UFC 2 to be badly beaten by a kickboxer, Johnny Rhodes.

Also, Ron Van Clief was the 51-year-old 10th dan grandmaster of Chinese Goju when he entered UFC IV to be easily beaten by Royce Gracie.

Both of the above happened before gloves, judges, time limits, and the extensive ruleset that governs modern MMA were in place. It was basically no-holds-barred fighting.

In modern MMA, Ryoto Machida has a background in Shotokan, but as a modern MMAist, I suspect that his training looks more like Royce's than Ettish's or Van Clief's. Lots of fighters also have backgrounds in Kyokushin including Georges St. Pierre, Bas Rutten, and others. But once again, they are all MMAists and all now train in kickboxing, jiu-jitsu or submission wrestling and amateur wrestling like all other MMAists.

EDIT: I did some research and Machida currently trains in an MMA gym called Black House. Their training is BJJ, Savate, Boxing, submission wrestling and wrestling with fighters like Vitor Belfort and Anderson Silva. So despite his background, he's not really a karate fighter anymore.

[Elky]

Fred Ettish, who I believe was a 5th Dan (but I can't find out because he has apparently been erased from Wikipedia) in karate entered UFC 2 to be badly beaten by a kickboxer, Johnny Rhodes.

By all accounts, Fred Ettish was very unlucky though. He didn't really know what he was letting himself in for and he wasn't scheduled to fight that night. Johnny Rhodes' opponent pulled out at the last minute and Ettish found himself thrown in at the deep end. He really didn't look like he'd trained for the match in the slightest.

[sandinista]

I don't think a karate master would ever want to fight in mma. All his best techniques would be illegal in the ring.

[Montana]

Something you are missing here is that karate, and other "traditional" martial arts aren't designed for fighting in a ring. They are designed/geared for self-defense purposes, and that is an entirely different sort of thing.

The training involved in them is different, and the objective is different.

I've seen it in the UFC where a traditonally trained MA takes on a UFC trained martial artist, and gets his head handed to him. Yet take that same traditional MA and put him on the street in a fight against an average attacking individual, and they are in their element. I've been there.

Apples and oranges people. Both look similar, but each has different methodologies.

[DokterVet]

I don't think a karate master would ever want to fight in mma. All his best techniques would be illegal in the ring.

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?