more Karate in the UFC

[MasterPain]

Master Toddy in las vegas trained the green ranger in muay thai. And Master Saekson Janjira trained some philipino power ranger who has also has alot of experience in taekwondo. Sorry I am really bad with remembering names.

The only Filipino ranger I can think of is the blue ranger on Power Rangers Jungle Fury. That was the best series in my opinion. It had Kung Fu, Muay Thai and Karate. Also the foot soldier bad guys were based on Jiang Shi. I always liked Jiang Shi.

[kamahlthedruid]

Ernie Reyes Jr. is the name of the filipino muay thai fighter

[bushido_man96]

Ernie Reyes Jr was a TKD practitioner for a number of years, trained by his father, who had a national demo team for quite some time. I think Reyes Jr's first movie appearance was in The Last Dragon (which is a CLASSIC, I might add...).

[kamahlthedruid]

Anderson Silva used a karate kick against Vitor Belfort. Steaven Seagal helped Anderson Silva refined the front kick. Mr. Seagal's first black belt was in shtio ryu karate and his instructor was Master Fumio Demura.

[bushido_man96]

That front kick was awesome! So cool to see a nice basic kick like that in a fight.

[brickshooter]

It's interesting that no one uses the basic front kick in MMA where fighters like to hold their hands in the vertical to defend agaist high round kicks.

Last time I saw a front kick like that was a Pride fight where Machita KO Rich Franklin. Machita needed to follow up with a couple of punches to finish it, but one can clearly see Rich's head rock backwards from taking a front kick on the chin. Poor Rich clearly didn't see it coming.

I wonder whether we'll see more kicks using the ball of the foot as a striking surface. It does so much more damage with less effort.

[rmurray]

Man that was sweet. I've never been in the Silva camp, but you have to respect a flawlessly executed technique like that.

[isshinryu5toforever]

The front kick was great, but I think Silva may be giving Seagal a bit too much credit.

I don't think we'll see a big influx of front kicks though. It's something people will train for now that they've seen it again. It isn't a new technique, but more like one that's so old people kind of forgot about it.

[bushido_man96]

With a bulk of the kicks being low in nature, you may be right, isshinryu5toforever. I don't how well a front kick would work into a fight strategy. I suppose it could be used like a jab to the body with the foot, but then it will become more like the Thai tiip, unless fighters give it a bit more snap and less push, but how much will that wear the kicker down over the course of the fight? It would also increase the range of the fight, which could make things interesting, if it became a staple. So, we're left with the fight-ender version to the face, and it will be interesting to see if it becomes more popular.

[brickshooter]

Well you guys are partially right. Machida just dropped Randy Couture with a jumping front kick that may have taken out some of Randy's teeth. Machida could have raised both hands like a crane to do the Karate Kid pose.

IMO, not enough people do the front karate front kick in MMA. So it's still a novelty technique. It's sort of like BJJ in the earlier UFC. No one knew what it was, so no one prepared for it.

Amazing. That's two top MMA fighters dropped with a head-level front kick that would have about a freezing chance in hell of landing on a brown belt Karateka.