| Name |
Views and Comments | Date |
| Erick |
I'm not sure what the secret was that no one wants you to know.
Probably there are two issues that you touch on that are very important today.
One of them is that two athletic people competing in a fight is going to be close no matter what. If they are physically comparable then it is going to be who carries the second instead of who carries the day. Fights are that quick and chaotic that the underdog can win, and easily if he's not much of an underdog.
The other one is that most martial arts have never been used in war and their existence today is within the sports world. I don't know of any competition that allows punches to the throat, and for good and obvious reasons. Unless we're willing to allow fights to the death then these martial arts are going to remain sport. Unless the athletes involved are willing to allow biting, eye gouging, groin shots, real blades, hidden weapons, full metal armour in a fight to the death, and willing to lay their limbs and lives on the line for what could happen in a split second, then those athletes are going to remains sporting athletes and not combatants. Of course real combatants exist, but they are the British SAS, Canadian JTF2, and US SEALs (or Army Rangers). Those guys use guns, real blades, and all sorts of gear to give them an advantage.
The discussion of martials arts usually revolves around one of these two issues, the former usually taking the form of a comparison between arts on the basis of two individual fighters. |
3/20/2009 |
| Robert |
First of all, you absolutely cannot assess the value of karate by Human Weapon, the TV show. Well, you can and have - but you're wrong. In real karate, there are no rules - you can punch to the face, you can gouge the eyes, you can take out the knees, you can grab-twist-and pull anything soft in the groin area, the list goes on.
For television sake, and even for training sake, you can't do these things (except punch to the face - but that's a Kyokashinkai thing, not a generalized karate thing.) There's also a reason those guys don't wear sparring gear - believe me, there's a reason no one broke a rib during training. They're not hitting with as much power as they'd have you believe. Shotokan is the same way. Goju-Ryu is NOT that way. At least it's not supposed to be that way.
Secondly, do you really think the Kyokashinkai guys were going to put the best fighter they had with that American with the TV camera that was about to put their dojo on the map? Did you think they were going to obliterate that guy on his own TV show? No - they did a training sparring session with him - that's all. It effectively showed the art, and that's it - that's all it was meant to do.
Now compared to the cookie cutter dojos that exist today, it probably does just come down to who is stronger and who is in better shape. But it shouldn't. Real karate can be done by anyone of any size. But real karate, as I've already said, has no rules.
I'm surprised that a black belt in Goju-Ryu, can't see this. Then again, I've never see you or your karate school. |
5/9/2008 | |
