I like striking. I started out with it. I think for a slow fat guy I’m pretty good at it. I certainly love dirty boxing, Okinawan karate is a close quarters fighting art, and unlike most Uechi-Ryu schools that give lip service to close quarters combat, we actually did close quarters combat, with head butts and thai clinch and all that. We did flow drills and actual
But here is the thing: My dirty boxing got much better when I started doing MMA clinching, which is essentially mostly wrestling with two hands on the head being allowed. The ability to control, hit positions and transition with stability is much better with a wrestling background. Hell Wrestlers that have never done striking very easily can self-teach dirty boxing. In Muay Thai they will do these jump knees and jumping elbows in close quarters to be explosive and land a hit, but because level changes and folding an opponent is not allowed, they get away with it in Muay Thai but often can’t do this in any kind of MMA or Vale Tudo. Wrestlers who strike in the clinch often do not do this over reach, are not vulnerable to being taken down as they strike.
And the thing is, sometimes in close quarters you’re in positions where you can’t hit, that means you can’t do dirty boxing, even in a traditional Muay Thai context it’s hard to hit, the Thai’s will often do dumps in that situation, or stall. And if your a kickboxer, Dutch Muay Thai or karateka that doesn’t practice any kind of dirty boxing, it’s even worse.
But wrestling? A wrestler will start going into take downs, slams or position changes from there. Infact as much as I love dirty boxing, Wrestlers can forgo that skillset and take control. If they get clinched they can disengage it. If they get taken down or tackled, they are very good at popping back up.
Even the distance isn’t much of a problem for them. People have noticed Wrestlers do better in the UFC than high level BJJ Champions doing it, even guys not known for butt scooting. THe reason is because wrestling often has a sense of distance management, while BJJ even when they clinch don’t respect the distance nearly as much. They often take space away and go for the take down, it’s not a priority since take downs are only moderately scored. But in wrestling, take downs are very heavily scored, they want the perfect distance to explode, shoot or enter the clinch. So even though they may not be strikers, they have a sense of distance management BJJ players or Judoka do not have.
They can often pick up striking skills easier than BJJ players as well.
Yes Ben Askren had crappy striking like Damian Miai. But Usman, Covington, Khabib, Islam, and a shit load of other wrestlers have decent striking, often much better than the strict BJJ players, because wrestling is very familiar with the upright posture of striking, and those that struggled with crisp striking often had heavy hands, it seems consistent with many wrestlers other than…Ben Asken. Damn you funky man!
But hey, much of what you’re saying is still subjective Adeel. Gimme something more universal.
Okay sure. I’ll make this point:
As much as I love karate and striking in a gi, styles like karate and even Boxing are not nearly as wide spread as some form of wrestling. There is wrestling all over the world.
Yes boxing in some form exists all over the world as well, but not nearly as wide as wrestling, often not nearly as refined or well practiced. Most cultures appreciate grappling much more than North Americans do, they won’t boo when seeing good grappling exchanges.
If wrestling is not important, why is it found all over the world throughout history? Why is medieval combat often using wrestling techniques modified for Gamesons and armour?
Medieval combat whether Japan, South America, China, Europe, Middle east didn’t have people pulling guard and scooting around on their bums. They may strike sometimes, but kickboxing wasn’t the staple, even in ancient Greece and Rome wrestling was more the foundation even of their beloved Pankration than kickboxing.
Hell wrestling isn’t even bound to the human species.
Animals with claws often use wrestling to show dominance that’s true, they don’t want those claws and teeth to ruin and wipe out their species, either intentionally or instinctively. Bears wrestle a great deal, doing lots of familiar positions and moves.
There was a viral clip in MMA forums of a gorilla faking an ankle pick to cross over and scoop the opposite one, just like a real wrestling feint.
Thing is though, when bears maul people, they don’t stand on their hind legs bouncing around saying ‘stick and move! Stick and move!’ they basically jump on a person, pin them down, then claw and bite. Very similar to how soldiers pinned armoured opponents and stabbed them with dagger or other weapons.
Yes some forms of wrestling had a guard like Judo had a fairly well developed guard including Dela Riva and X-guard, and Chinese wrestling also had it. Catch didn’t like it much, but used it in the form of ‘body scissors’
But none of them relied on the guard, it wasn’t a neutral position like it is in modern BJJ. The moment strikes are allowed, a person needs to have a significantly better grappling game than the person on top to reverse, otherwise they will get hit and drained in the modern era. Not to mention guard jumps or guard pulls are absolutely terrible when slams and soccer kicks are allowed.
Now as for boxing, it’s the second most common martial art in the world. Some cultures did not have it like Japan, their boxing equivalent came from their conquest of Okinawa. Kung-fu can be said to be a boxing style, but it does not manifest as we think of boxing. Those culture skewed more in terms of wrestling. I dare say Taiji is more a grappling style than a striking one. Hsing i was created for spear fighting, and Pa kua is a heavy weapons art as well. All of them close quarters. More striking heavy kung-fu styles are newer, and many speculate were influenced by trade with other countries.
However outside of East Asia, boxing is very common, with the Philippines having an indigenous form of kickboxing, Muay Thai is a boxing style, perhaps the most extreme form. Lethwei in Burma. Boxing all over Russia.
Yet if you look at these boxing systems before the sport, they often had heavily involved clinches. British Boxing used to have kicks and throws for a long time. Then we know the Marquis of queensberry rules happened, but even then the standing grappling in boxing was good to set up punches and strikes. Jack Johnson was known to have a gentlemans fancy style of boxing, but martial arts historians pointed out he had a killer clinch where he mauled guys.
Of course for the sake of entertainment, boxing penalized the clinch more and more. Floyd Mayweather is known as a good clinch boxer in the modern era, but it’s more an exploitation of the rules where he holds without holding to hit. The moment his opponents ACTUALLY grab him, it’s broken up. It’s certainly not the heavily involved dirty boxing of Jack Johnson or Jack Dempsey, or the wars we saw between Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraiser.
What does this have to do with wrestling?
The clinch. Standing grappling. Boxing will always be a combative martial art, having hands and throwing them will always be tactical. But boxing got way less gritty, way lesss brutal when clinching was more and more penalized, and it continues to be.
Wrestling is where the clinch seems to remain, and the clinch of MMA owes it to wrestling.
Sambo is heavily influenced by wrestling and owes it’s clinch to that art.
Boxing and wrestling used to be brother and sister, and many boxers supplemented their clinch game with wrestling.
That clinch is super important, and wrestling is the king of clinch in the modern era.
What's the deal with Adeel? 