Archive for the 'martial arts' Category

MMA has a way or turning the martial arts world on its ear. I remember back when the UFC started and this skinny guy trained in jiu-jitsu took the contest! I thought, wow – what a fluke! Everyone knew that wrestling around on the ground would not win any fights! Now almost 18 years later, UFC 1 changed fighting!

The more traditional martial artists like myself have had a love-hate relationship with MMA. You see it has proven to be a way to test various techniques within the framework of the rules – to see if  they have any merit. You see martial artists take techniques taught to them at face value – meaning if our sensei says it will work – we believe it.

MMA has changed all of that to a point. It is not quite self defense because there are a lot of rules compared to self defense but it is the closest and most exciting fighting constest probably since the Roman arenas! Today’s martial arts students see and hear a lot about various fighting methods. Students know what is fairly realistic in a fight and what skills are just a piece of the puzzle.

In this post I will first speak of my frame of reference  so you can evaluate my thoughts about MMA, Steven Seagal. Then I will focus on the trend I have been seeing in MMA where more traditional arts are coming back into these modern gladiators fighting skill sets.

First for your persual here is a video of Steven Seagal being interview after Machida’s recent win.

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The more I have entered into this quasi social networking blogasphere I have come to realize that there are plenty of the more esoteric karateka that seemed to have divorced themselves from the notion that the end goal of any martial art is to ultimately defend oneself! I mean on the one hand it is good that one has the option to fight or not in today’s society but are we in danger of losing sight of the prize?

In this post I will list some arguments for learning how to fight (whatever you call it) and conversely learning a black belt as one might earn a doctorate. No disrespect to doctorates but there are two kinds – the scholarly professors that don’t have to practice real world skills (just teach them) and the practicing professional doctors, JD, MD, DVM, DBA and such that provide a real service!

The previous example might be a bit of a stretch but I am hearing about and have known black belts that cannot and some that even do not think it is important to fight themselves out of a paper bag.

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I don’t know about you but the two biggest martial arts influences on me were the TV series The Green Hornet and the movie Enter the Dragon! I was picked on as a kid and started reading everything I could about marital arts. I saw karate/kung fu as a way to even up the odds against bigger, stronger boys. I had some success in defending myself in the sixth grade but later after moving into a rough neighborhood – I was mugged while going to the store.

Then while I was 16 years old, I knew that Bruce Lee was the real deal! While unlike many of my friends, I was not into hero worship but respected martial artists like Bruce Lee because if a light Asian man could overcome weight and strength advantages of his foes – there was hope for a skinny wannabe martial artist (me)!

Sylvia “Sly” Zimmer worte a nice, informative piece over at ParanormalAnd.com (scroll down to the Hollywood Ghosts and Curses section or click the next link) entitled “Bruce Lee Was There Really A Curse?” I will have to admit here and now that Sly is the writer of the family. Sure I work at writing interesting content for my blogs but she (Sylvia) really researches her topics and brings a fresh perspective for paranormal, mysteries, and sci fi type of topics like the old TV show, “One Step Beyond” did.

In this post I will review a bit of Sly’s story and add some of my prespective on Bruce Lee. Here is one of the opening paragraphs introducing Bruce Lee:

 His trademark cocky confidence, feral stalking gait, mesmerizing glower, predatory wildcat screams and lightening-fast movements, put him in a class all his own and a force to be reckoned with. He didn’t quite fit the stereotypical, 20th century image of the mild mannered Asian that many mindsets of a Western world recognized. This lethal powerhouse, encased in a steely sinewy sweat drenched body, sized up his opponents and with his palm outstretched, in a fighter’s stance, let loose an unexpected ferocity that left us speechless.

Here are some of the feats Bruce Lee accomplished.

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Today while was reading the news I saw this article, entitled, “In Rough Slum, Brazil’s Police Try Soft Touch.” Apparently in the favela’s (slums) some cops have been working with the youth to reach out with karate! After a little more research I found out about an organization called, “Fight for Peace” were this NGO (non-governmental organization) also reaches out in a favela to offer boxing & martial arts, personal development, youth support services, job training, and youth leadership!

In this post I will highlight the problems, some traditional solutions, and what I think of this organization’s approach, “Fight for Peace.” First here is the movie trailer – City of God.

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How many times have you witnessed heated arguements between normally reasonable people but due to a political, religious or moral view – the discussion digressed into name calling? Whatever the point that started the discussion was lost as soon as they stopped listening to the opposing point of view. How about people treating others disrespectfully leading to undignified actions?

Does this apparent lack of civility, dignity and respect contribute to the apparent willingness of people to commit crimes? I mean if people have no apparent ethics or morals that enforce a code of reasonable behavior, how far behind is raping, plundering and murder?

People are a mixed bag. There are no all good people or all bad people. We all have our demons to wrestle – come to terms with if you will so we can get along well in life. Sometimes good people are tested by the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, growing up in a bad part of town,  or growing up with no real ethical standards. Some think music, video games, movies, and such contribute to this but I do not. What I think does contribute to how a person will react to situations are their own personal strength and their examples around them.

So in this post I am going to try and make the argument that good behaviour starts from within and is contagious. If we all try to work towards civility, dignity and respect of everyone around us – others around us will be more apt to see how this positive behaviour can help them communicate more effectively with those around them. I also think that people will be less apt to do bad things if they work on common civility and we will all have a better community. Here is what one city is trying to do. 

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One Tuesday night back in the late 1970′s I was working out at the school when a couple of Korean Stylists came in and spoke to my instructor (Dick Willett) about doing some sparring. Dick asked me to spar with these guys and I agreed as they seemed to be respectful. I believe that I had my fighting black belt at the time.

In our system, one could do an abbreviated test to wear a black belt early before the official test. The only problem with this strategy was one had to fight 10 black belts in a row and do ok against them to get the fighting black belt. I did it as I wanted to start fighting tournaments as a black belt early. I did later achieve my traditional black belt and beyond.

I fought the guy about my size and did well against him but the other big guy (I’m about 6 foot and this guy was about 6′ 4″) kept saying “Poor Form” as I was kicking his friend. You see I had been fighting lots of tournaments and had the timing down. The first guy I was fighting had some beautiful kicks but they were not connecting like mine were. You see I did not care about form at all… only if my kick or punch connected.

More about these fights later but in this post I will talk about kicking form versus substance and does it really matter? I mean what are the pros and cons of adhering to some long dead master’s view of how to throw a proper kick (no disrespect intended). I’ll finish my recollection of my fights that day in the late 70′s and the surprising (to them) outcome! Here is one video of some of the best karate kicks.

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I learned how to fight as a kid out of necessity but I did not really think of girls fighting. I mean that it did not happen when I was a kid. Girls were the weaker sex and they were too nice. Girls did not seem to have the ‘killer instinct’ boys did to do whatever it took to win, or even fight!

As I grew up I was exposed to the idea of women fighting. Yes girls were weaker than boys but with karate or judo, a few fighting tricks, I reasoned could even up the score. 

In this post I am going to explore the idea of women having the ‘fighting spirit’ necessary to win a fight, I will also look back a bit to the fabled Women Amazon Warriors and then comment about some of today’s women fighters. To get this started here is probably one of my first exposures of a woman warrior – Wonder Woman!

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