I watched this video, and it makes many wonderful points. But if there is anything I learned from watching it, it’s that martial artists should never ever ever ever want their style to get into the Olympics if they still want it to have a combative focus.
Most notable was the fact that when the western world first revived the Olympics since ancient Greece, wrestlers basically could do cranks and grinds, they allowed submissions. You could submit the bastard or pin them.
But apparently the French didn’t wrestle like that. What they called Greco-Roman wrestling was actually French, and they convinced the Olympic committee to bring that version instead. Greco-however didn’t allow touching the legs, so then we got Freestyle.
That’s right guys. Olympics used to allow freaking shin slicers and leg locks.
We already have lots of old school Judo players complaining about how the Olympic committee keeps getting rid of throws and take downs in Judo for the sake of distinguishing it from wrestling, even throws that used to be staples of Judo. Even the gripping is regulated, all to distinguish it from wrestling. Some Judoka even brag about it, but many also remember what it used to be, and they are not as happy.
TKD wasn’t the most badass martial art, but atleast it was done with the focus of actually you know, fighitng. It generally taught good habits like keeping the hands up and punching people in the face. Now it’s people with their hands hanging down, jumping up and down knowing leg kicks won’t happen. They can knock people out, but the equipment makes quick tappy stuff more ingrained into muscle memory since it’s harder to get a knock out.
Karate people can no longer laugh at the TKD people can we? This year we had a guy get knock another guy out, and the dude lying still on the floor was the one with the gold medal, because of ‘excess force’. Remember EVEN IN OLYMPIC TKD A KNOCK OUT IS A WIN, BUT NOT OLYMPIC KARATE!
The good folks at Southpaw podcast pointed out that the most useful form of Karate in MMA is point karate, the in and out to score a point. That’s true, but only after it’s adapted lots. Kyokushin and Muay thai don’t need nearly the same levels of modification. Many touch karate people never are able to change the way they strike or move to adjust to MMA, even the pure striking.. Most kickboxers and Kyokushin people though can at least land strikes, even if sometimes they never pick up the grappling.
To note though, point sparring is not bad, but TOUCH point sparring is. In the 70s, 80s, and even early 90s, point sparring meant you had to stagger or knock your opponents chin back before the referee stopped it to score a point. Your strike had to affect them, either their consciousness or their balance and structure.
Robert Whittaker and Stephen Thompson, Lyoto Machida all trained karate by fathers that all did karate in that era. Thompson also did Kickboxing, while Whitakers dad did Goju which tends to be hardcore. They do all the same things olympic TKD people do, but able to throw weight and structure behind their strikes and still not telegraph. While the Olympic people have hard to read strikes, but often the moment they use hip rotation into a punch or kick, they lose all that non-telegraphic punching.
I AM NOT ADVOCATING FULL CONTACT SPARRING FOR TRAINING, OR ANY KIND OF “JUST LET THEM BLEED” BULLSHIT. WHAT I AM SAYING IS THAT THE GOALS OF OLYMPIC KARATE ARE HARMFUL TO KARATE CULTURE IN GENERAL. GO AHEAD AND SCORE THE POINT, KEEP IT SAFE, BUT MAKE SURE IT HAS SUBSTANCE.
The full contact point sparring guys though, could throw power punches and still make them hard to read. That is not what we see in most point sparring in todays era.
So I don’t like this statement that point sparring is very useful to MMA. The people that use it best, often trained with folks that did it in a way that was basically bare knuckle boxing with head kicks. The Olympic stuff can help, but it takes lots of work to modify it if it is your base.
Now if you already do MMA or Muay thai, and you bring in an Olympic karate fighter to teach you to break the distance and score a clean quick shot, then you’ll probably be able to make use of that skill.
But that Olympic karateka going into MMA has much more work than you would.
But I’m a karate guy so I like to talk about Karate. But lets talk about other martial arts.
Let’s talk about Muay Thai.
And all I have to say is THANK GOD FOR PROFESSIONAL KICKBOXING AND MUAY THAI.
Because if the professional version did not exist, Muay Thai going into the Olympics could royally fuck the martial art up globally.
But it’s possible Olympic Muay Thai could make professional Muay Thai shrink. So we can only hope professional Muay Thai grows globally.
Why does this happen with the Olympics? Is it inherent?
To most sports no it’s not inherent, but to combat sports it’s very inherent.
See the Olympics may pretend to be about something very idealized, but in reality it’s about getting eyeballs to watch events and then sponsors for money. The countries that host it get tourism and acclaim, the sponsors get their products out, athletes make money and don’t starve because of sponsors, the olympics generally benefits from it. It needs people to pay attention.
Fighting can be individualized in the sense people have personal styles. But unless it’s very obvious, it takes a trained eye to see how people have different styles, because ultimately the general mechanics of fighting are universal across sports and styles, especially when focussed on knock outs, submissions, hitting people with sticks, cutting them with swords, shooting them with guns. All the things I listed can only be one in so many ways because the human body and mind is designed in a certian way.
What then is the point of different events?
The Olympics will screw around with the rules of styles or throw out techniques to encourage different combat sports to manifest and aesthetically look different from each other, and to be entertaining for those watching.
Judo lost single and double leg take downs because wrestlers favoured them. Judoka did them as well, which then basically made it wrestling in a Gi. The Olympic committee did not like that, so they banned those techniques. Then suplexes were banned to favour throws, despite the fact people would learn to do Hip throws without risk of a ura-nage/suplex because it was banned.
TKD lost it’s head punches and high guard, gained much more equipment, which changed the nature and strategy of how they fought. The reason was to keep people from boxing folks heads off like they would see in Olympic Boxing. But hey, the TKD people could at the very least still hit their opponents as hard as possible. Yeah the equipment makes it far less rewarding, but they can kick as hard as they want, and thus many still develop very good kicking mechanics.
Karate has the hand techniques, but if you show ‘excessive force’ you could be penalized or even disqualified. This is causing karateka to spend a great deal of time not using body mechanics striking. They develop non-telegraphic striking which is great, but the moment they put force into their strikes, they lose it. As I said above, the old school point sparring guys didn’t telegraph, but could also deliver powerful blows. That is gone now. Once again, it has to distinguish itself from TKD and Boxing right?
Judo, Karate and TKD do not have professional versions of their sport, and thus both of them globally had the entire nature of their arts change.
Professional boxing makes sure the Olympic variation does not harm the sport very much, and thus boxing is still doing fine since the Queensberry era.
Professional wrestling is not combative. Is wrestling okay? No it is not. At one point they considered throwing wrestling out of the Olympics until there was huge public backlash. Wrestling is not safe.
IS THERE A HIDDEN BENEFIT OF MARTIAL ARTS IN THE OLYMPICS?
If you didn’t watch the video above, I’ll repeat what Ramsey Dewey said.
He says that people support martial arts going into the Olympics because it makes it popular and mainstream instead of a niche interest. The arguement is that it exposes the arts to the public.
But Ramsey argues that Judo didn’t get mainstream, it’s only mainstream once every four years that’s all. And after that only grapplers really care about Judo. TKD became more mainstream, because it was safe art for little kids and soccer moms to practice while still giving that veneer of self-defense, certianly much more common than Judo. But even that isn’t entirely mainstream.
Greco-Roman wrestling was in the Olympics, but it confused too many people, Freestyle was always more widely practiced. As a result Greco-Roman wrestling disappeared from the Olympics, and now it’s rare to find.
Many non-combat sports in both summer and winter Olympics are not exactly popular or even known with the public, yet they are there every four years.
So does the Olympics really make sports and arts mainstream? I don’t think it always does.
What's the deal with Adeel? 