The K is on the Way - Olympic Games 2020

[DWx]

Not a Karate practitioner but I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, Karate as an Olympic sport will only result in increased exposure and popularity and it'll most likely result in loads of people wanting to get involved with Karate and other martial arts - which can only be a good thing. But hand in hand with that you'll get (as what happened in TKD) more and more schools just specializing in Olympic Karate or even more and more McDojo's to cater to the ill-informed who want to go to the Olympics.

Also one of my pet peeves with Olympic TKD is that whenever I mention TKD to anyone I get the "oh like in the Olympics". I personally don't liked getting lumped in with that as all their thinking of is Olympic sparring which in no way reflects the style as a whole.

[bushido_man96]

Good post, Danielle, and I agree with you. Although, I don't get quite the same grilling about the Olympics like you do, which is nice.

I can see Karate making it to the Olympics, and then 30 years after that, we'll be reading articles in Black Belt Magazine about "The Lost Combat Applications of Karate" due to all the watering down.....

...well, maybe not.

[DWx]

Another issue for me, no offense guys, is I'd find it a bit boring to watch. I don't even like watching TKD in the Olympics and I know what's going on there and semi-sort of follow the fighters. I'll watch the odd match or two or if I know it'll be a good fight I'll watch, but with TKD largely it's 2 fighters standing there for the majority of the bout and only engaging maybe 20% of the time. I suppose it'll come down to the rules and how the WKF and IOC intend to run it. I mean with TKD for some reason, they decided that roundhouses are worth far more points than any other type of kick, head shots don't net any additional points and hands to the head aren't allowed. All you see for the whole bout is mid-section roundhouse after mid-section roundhouse and as a spectator sport it's not great to watch. If they can formulate the rules so that it makes for interesting kumite, then I'm all behind it. In fact, I'd love to see kata in the Olympics but only if the ruleset did allow somewhat for individuality and stylistic difference and not require competitors to be clones of one another.

[sensei8]

I don't want karate in the Olympics. It will water it down.

It will be to karate-ka jumping up and down for 1:55, and then an attempt at the quickest gyakuzuki for a point...

I concur wholeheartedly!!

[sensei8]

Imho, it's up to us, the karateka's, to make sure that karate-do doesn't become watered down by standing up for what we believe is pure karate-do, and to not surrender to peer pressure of those who want to change karate-do into what it isn't, and that is...a commercialization of misbranding.

[Zaine]

Imho, it's up to us, the karateka's, to make sure that karate-do doesn't become watered down by standing up for what we believe is pure karate-do, and to not surrender to peer pressure of those who want to change karate-do into what it isn't, and that is...a commercialization of misbranding.

Super solid post. I agree 100%