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nielmag
nielmag's picture
Style vs style consentual “fighting” turns “ugly”

Interesting how these consensual style vs style duals “detoriated” technique wise into more “street brawl” or more self protection w close in fighting

 

Anf
Anf's picture

To be honest, what I saw in the video looked nothing like any street fight or drunken brawl I've ever seen.

For one thing, all fighters were landing their techniques. They all maintained a strong guard and with the exception of the odd blunder that can always happen, they all maintained good control and composure.

There were parts were it looked dirty, but martial arts do look dirty because they are.

Any martial art style that only has stuff at what I call the dancing range (ie the range at which you can execute the more showy moves like big kicks or spinning and jumping techniques) is in my opinion utterly useless, because fighting instinctively happens at very close range. I think apart from being fitness and coordination training and possibly confidence booster for beginners, the big showy stuff is just to facilitate entry/retreat.

nielmag
nielmag's picture

I was referring to wild haymakers and the clinching which are not usually part of “sparring” in a lot of dojo’s. My whole point is that as conflict changes to very close range many so called “sparring” techniques kind of go by the wayside.  

Anf
Anf's picture

nielmag wrote:
I was referring to wild haymakers and the clinching which are not usually part of “sparring” in a lot of dojo’s. My whole point is that as conflict changes to very close range many so called “sparring” techniques kind of go by the wayside.

But in some clubs, certainly the one I'm currently in and the few others I've been in in the past, sparring rules mean that even when sparring it looks nothing like the art you're practicing. In fact, apart from being good cardio and good for developing judgement of range, I struggle to see the value of sparring where the rules make it completely impractical and almost train out 99% of the style you're learning. We relentlessly practice forms that contain joint locks and throws and escapes from various holds and very close quarters strikes. Then in sparring the rules prohibit almost all of it. This is why in my opinion sparring looks very different to fighting. It's because sparring is not fighting. If you have enough time to stand and do a little dance 6ft away from your one unarmed opponent before hopping in, giving him a bit of a gentle knock, and hopping back out, then it is not a fight you need to have. You could just walk away. A fight becomes necessary when you can't easily escape your opponent. When he is inside your normal striking range. When he has hold if you. Most martial arts teach for this. It's just that it's not obvious when watching free sparring because of the many, many rules.

Chris R
Chris R's picture

Anf wrote:
In fact, apart from being good cardio and good for developing judgement of range, I struggle to see the value of sparring where the rules make it completely impractical and almost train out 99% of the style you're learning.

Many of karate's fundamentals are allowed in sparring. Not just strikes (punches, kicks, knees, and in some cases elbows) but also other stuff like defense (against both striking and grappling techniques), clinching, takedowns, footwork, distancing, and timing are all allowed in sparring and/or can be improved by sparring. All of that stuff is extremely important, and for me that justifies the use of 1v1 style sparring as a part of my training. I agree that there are many things in the kata that are not allowed in or practical to use in sparring, but that is where drills (with resistance added) have to be used. There are some things that you really cannot do in free sparring due to safety concerns. Overall, I don't think that sparring has to be a simulation of a street fight in order to have value.

Anf wrote:
If you have enough time to stand and do a little dance 6ft away from your one unarmed opponent before hopping in, giving him a bit of a gentle knock, and hopping back out, then it is not a fight you need to have. You could just walk away. A fight becomes necessary when you can't easily escape your opponent. When he is inside your normal striking range. When he has hold if you.

You can't always walk away or escape because there are situations where that is not applicable. Not all fights happen at very close range either. I think that being well rounded is important for being prepared optimally, and that includes different ranges and variables.

Anf
Anf's picture

ChrisR, perhaps I've just been unlucky. I've never seen proper free sparring, not just at my current club, and not just in karate. Several styles in several clubs. Always strict rules that turn the art into little more than a high energy dance.

I'm not knocking the notion of training for all ranges by the way. I think I mentioned that big showy techniques have their place when creating an entry or when creating an opportunity for retreat.

As a young man, I saw a lot of street violence. At the longer range, it was almost always just posturing and threats, or the occasional completely useless wild swing. People get hurt at the very close range. The person that chooses to close the distance is more often than not, the person that comes off least worst.

My point was that the clips in the original post did actually look like martial arts to me, but I can understand why some would think they don't. That's because the fighters look trained, and even at close quarters knew what to do. Perhaps the OP thought it didn't look like martial arts because so many clubs do the spar anything like realistically.

Also, a sparring rounds often lasts several minutes. A street brawl is usually over in seconds once you get past the posturing. From the first punch being thrown, very typically within about 20 seconds it's either being broke up, or one person is on the floor being repeatedly kicked or punched by the other(s), or someone has curled up into a ball and squealed and the other has discontinued the attack. None of that is anything even remotely like what you see in a several minute sparring round.

Chris R
Chris R's picture

I think your point was good, my response was intended to be based on the sparring topic. But I want to add to what I said - While I pointed out that I think there are benefits to general sparring, one should be aware of the differences between that kind of sparring and the sparring you might do for self protection specifically. If your main goal is self protection, then you need to be doing sparring that is specific to that goal. So the inclusion of other variables will be necessary, which is something that I should have been more clear about before. This reminded me that Iain has written some articles on this, and I would recommend reading them if you haven't before, as I remember they answered a lot of my questions about this topic when I first read them. Link to the first one if you're interested: https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/article/how-spar-street-part-1-iain-aber...

Anf wrote:
As a young man, I saw a lot of street violence. At the longer range, it was almost always just posturing and threats, or the occasional completely useless wild swing. People get hurt at the very close range. The person that chooses to close the distance is more often than not, the person that comes off least worst.

Your observations sound pretty much the same as what I have observed. I think that the techniques found in kata fit in perfectly with that range, which is a part of the reason why a lot of today's sport-influenced bunkai looks unrealistic; people are trying to use kata techniques for something different to what they were intended to be used for. There are aspects of karate that are suitable for sport-style sparring (as is evident from the successes of karate-based fighters), but I believe that a lot of the stuff in the kata really is not supposed to be used for that purpose. So I think you are completely right in saying that this modern style of "high energy dance" sparring is not a good way to develop many of the skills taught in kata. I reckon doing both styles of sparring is good for all-round development, at least for me anyway. I'm just putting down some thoughts at this stage, not trying to disagree with the points you made.

JD
JD's picture

Hi Nielmag,

I've just finished ready for Christmas weekend, sat down after making myself a cuppa tea and thought I'd checkout the forum posts on Iain's site, what more could a Karate Ka ask for? :)

Love the vid, thanks for posting. I think using the term 'ugly' is possibly a little harsh, you could see relatively good technique put under pressure from mainly the Wing Chun practitioners, although the so called ''Kyokushin'' karate fighters on the vid descript looked very amateur... certainly not the experienced kyokushin (hard as nails) fighters I've become accustomed to.

It seems these Wing Chun fighters are having a purge of challenging other styles and clubs in Japan or China, I watched a few other vids of them (same clothing, badges and fighters) taking on a Muay Thai guy and Taekwondo, both TKD & MT again did not look proficient in their chosen art... maybe still beginners/intermediates which makes for an interesting pattern. I recommend watching the Wing Chun v Muay Thai due to the ending of the bout, where both fighters smash into a row of huge mirrors that crack and brake, funny and also very dangerous! Then again... the glass was ''made in china'' lol...Sorry!

I was pleasantly surprised to find the practical overwhelming style Wing Chun uses, certainly an effective defence/offence against trained fighters and no doubt street fighters also, with little or no training. One thing I had noticed though was the use of quick open hand slaps/palms, really fast but no real knock out damage seems to emanate from them, great for ''blitzing'' the oppponent and fleeing though.

From my experience of martial arts put under real pressure in real situations, it's always going to differ from the precise movements and forms used in controlled enviroments. The key for me is a trained martial artist should have a good edge over the non trained fighter, this doesn't mean he can't be beaten... after all, nobody is superman! But he should have a disinct advantage, so instead of the fight looking like a messy scrappy brawl, it should look like a ''educated'' scrappy brawl, still not clean cut like our Kihons, Ohyos, shadow boxing or kata do, but there's some good technique inbetween all the chaos. Taking that into account I feel the fighters of that vid did exactly the above and showed what happens in real fighting.

Another thing to bear in mind is the fact these are diferent styles going toe to toe, martial arts designed for civil combat are to mainly give you an advantage over the untrained aggressive muppets out there, not other trained fighters and so taking this into consideration, I believe these fighters using their art for it's orginal intended purpose would probably do the job rather well.

More importantly than all the above I've written and whether it looks good or not... did anyone watch the 2nd fight? The Wing Chun guy has spectacles on! I mean bloody hell, where's the common sense in that one, he keeps having to re-arrange them every couple of punches lol, could of been nasty.

Thanks for the orginal post...

All the best,

JD