Whether it’s combat sports like MMA or RBSD, many people who study eastern martial arts(With exception of Muay Thai) will look down on western martial arts.
Today I saw a guy I respect, who generally has intelligent takes, exclaim how offended he was that MMA now has mainstream acceptance as Boxing. Says it’s offensive to people he knows devoted to combat sports and martial arts. Maybe he if was talking about MMA twenty years ago. But today? Amateur boxers, dutch kickboxers, lots of Karateka and kung-fu guys who do Sanda are showing up at the highest levels of MMA more and more. If anything you see more Kung-Fu and karate doing well in MMA than boxing, which he did give respect to.
What, so those arts he loves sucks now because they have success in MMA? He praised boxing but also took shots at the ruleset of MMA being bad. But boxing only allows striking with the front of the fist. MMA allows much more than that. What exactly is combatively bad about MMA in that sense?
Another guy I talked to was offended that people who study Chinese martial arts and Karate would dare to find benefit in RBSD or western arts. This I find very strange, as modern combatives has actually validated traditional martial arts to me more than blasphemed against it. I study Kata for exploration of movement and structure not applications as they are traditionally taught, but RBSD does put some of this ‘library’ view of kata into perspective. So much of Kata applications make sense when you look at how modern military and civilian defensive tactics look like, whether interceptors or close quarters combat.
Most kata is for close quarters combat, you learn that by looking at RBSD or military combat, because the movement and mechanics of the forms match that more than the long distance game of tag so many traditional arts play with. Traditional arts already close range learn how to drill them better through both combatives or MMA.
Why is any of this a bad thing?
It’s foolish to think looking at another cultures military and sport combat has nothing to offer. The masters so many Kung-fu people love, like some guy named Wing Wan Wu or some Karate fighter named Goshi Nakamura often looked to other styles, even other cultures and how they fought. They were never content to look for all wisdom only in their traditions.
All these Okinawan karate guys getting mad people look to modern martial arts like Combatives or combat sports fail to understand that Savate and boxing greatly influenced modern karate before it was again influenced by Muay thai, MMA and reality based self-defense.
That’s just normal guys.
I’m surprised this is even something that has to be argued.
What's the deal with Adeel? 