For the most part, I found this thread ridiculous. There were a few soundbites that are just too irritating to ignore, though.
Those are below.
..someday there might comes a day where we only see guys come from those barbaric MMA gyms. Guys who never became great at one traditional Martial Art and combined this art of fighting with another one and another one from time to time, to make the transition into the Sport of MMA. Outstanding Judokas or Wrestlers who after a couple of years of MMA training, switched over to the Sport of MMA.
Apart from the loaded term "barbaric MMA gym," which is unbelievably irritating, what in hell makes you think that there is going to be a trend away from traditional martial arts?
Seriously?
Are the best fighters in the world slowly becoming less dependent on their backgrounds? Is Brock Lesnar using less wrestling than Dan Severn did? Is Anderson Silva less muay thai intensive than Pedro Rizzo? No.
The fighters are getting better at other areas of the game as well, but the vast majority of successful fighters have a background that they utilize with regularity. They're not homogenizing so much as rounding themselves out, and there's a difference between those two things: they are not sacrificing the skills of their preliminary backgrounds in order to be somewhat competitive in other areas of the fight game.
I even see myself stop watching this Sport. If all I need to know is, that the MMA guy fights the MMA guy.. two dudes who call MMA there Martial Art. Isn't that a sad thought, that this Sport will 99% head into this direction?!
Apart from the fact that there is absolutely no support for this claim, the pettiness that you would stop watching the sport because there were less stylistically diverse matchups is pretty bizarre.
Props for giving me a complaint I'd never heard before.
Wow... how elitist. So if they don't come from a "legitimate" amrtial arts background they are just some thug from a "barbaric" mma gym? This train of thought is just stupid.
I agree with the "stupid" part. I hate the term elitist.
Every time I hear it, I wonder what the f*ck that means. Really, the word you want to use is "pretentious." Firstly, it's actually an adjective. Secondly, (and more importantly) it actually says something, other than attempting to alienate the person on the basis of having different tastes.
What you are witnessing now is the birth of a new martial art.
This annoys me.
MMA is
not a martial art, because MMA is not a system. The term "martial art" implies systemization, it implies cogency of techniques and similarity of styles between academies.
There is no "style of MMA." There is no homogenized way of viewing the techniques of mixed martial arts. There are a dozen substantial, well known instructors (Greg Jackson, Pat Miletich, Ricardo Liborio, Renzo Gracie, Mark Dellagrotte, etc.) who all have different "styles" of mixed martial arts.
MMA is a form of competition. You can argue that the systems that these guys are pioneering are martial arts. You can't argue that MMA is, because MMA is so much bigger than any single curriculum or systemization.
BJJ, Judo, Karate, etc. are all "styles" insofar as they emerge from a systemization of techniques and philosophies. MMA is different. It's an open forum with no instructors attempting to reduce the techniques to the most efficient and technically sound in the way that the kodokan or the Gracies did/do.
I don't call it a Martial Art, because there is no such thing as perfection in MMA.
And there's a "perfection" in BJJ? Or judo? Or wrestling?
I'm just going to stick to the styles that I study, but I'll say this: there is no perfect. There is what's good and there's what works.
There's mastery. But there's no perfection. It's a dead concept. Let it go.
nobody will try or bother anymore to demonstrate his background as guys like Lyoto, Shinya, Silva or Akiyama. They will just be MMA fighters who learned everything at ones.. but without a background.
I don't see that at all. I have guys who are looking to start training come to me for advice all the time, and the thing that they hear from me, and from guys much more experienced, and smarter, than I am is this: find a style that compliments your body type, where you're comfortable and how you want to fight and start there.
That's how you build a successful fighting style. Not: "I'm going to keep all of my skills rounded out and then take the fight wherever I have to in order to win." That doesn't work.
Bobby... you are still being an elitist. MMA is a martial art. It is. It is a martial art as much as jiujitsu is. Jiujitsu's actual philosophy is whatever works. Sounds a lot like mma to me.
This comment drove me to post. It's so grating to hear someone say: "Jiujitsu's
actual philosophy is..."
I've been training jiu-jitsu most of my life. I've dedicated hours of sweat and blood and to hear a fortune cookie as what jiu-jitsu is all about is irritating. No one agrees about the philosophy of jiu-jitsu is.
The philosophy of any sport is "whatever works." In the same way the philosophy of any sport is "win the damn game."
Every coach has a different philosophy. Helio's from what I've read and gathered from his students was "use leverage, be crafty and catch him when he's getting aggressive." That doesn't work for everybody. It works for me, but my coach prefers: "Rack him up, drop your weight and make him squirm until you catch him."
There is no fortune cookie. Have a little more respect for the style than that.
I don't mind you taking the guy to task for being stupid, but either show some respect for the complexity of a martial art or don't comment on it. It's really irritating to hear the McNuggets dropped like that.
And, just to let you know, I come from that old school background. I have a black belt in both Judo and Tae Kwon Do as well as a blue belt in Shotokan Karate. I'm not someone trained at one of these barbaric gyms.
Great. It's nice to have martial artists on the board. And I don't mind the commentary, but I noticed that "jiu-jitsu" isn't included in that background, which annoyed me further.
You're going to comment on the philosophy of a martial art you don't train in, when there are martial arts you can reference with some degree of credibility? That makes no sense.
the old discplines will never die out because they are arts or sports in their own right. many people who practice them arent very interested in MMA at all, and I don't see any real reason that will change.
This was a golden ray of sunshine in a bleak and irritating thread. I certainly agree with it, and though I really think it's worth noting that fighters come to MMA with a variety of backgrounds in those styles, and that trend doesn't seem to be changing at all, I don't mind just pointing out that the traditional martial arts seem to be doing just fine.