How much better is a martial-arts master then just a well-trained fighter?

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=Snarky_Kong]
I’m calling BS on this.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll have to agree.

Getting back to Boxing, there are plenty of schools around that offer the same amount of training. Tae Kwo Do school are good for this since they are represented in the Olympics. The training is more versatile than Boxing in that you have to also watch for kicks. A good example is K1 Kickboxing. It allows striking but no grappling. You can really see how devastating low kicks can be. It takes away a Boxers lead leg and much of their power.

Anyone will go down with the right punch. The difference is office Joe vs Ali. Office Joe who clicks away at his computer everday or Ali who trains 8 hours day to avoid punches and counter. Both can be brought down with a punch right under the nose but guess who I’ll put my money on.

22

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Boxers have phenomenal footwork, of interest to anyone who is interested in hitting as well as not getting hit.

A good rule of thumb is anytime your opponent has a preferred style/range, you should refuse to fight him in that style/range.

If an opponent’s style prohibits any techniques/actions , that’s a good clue as to the types of techniques and actions he will likely have difficulty dealing with. Learn his rules, and then break them.

Also, an advantage will generally go to the guy whose training involves “live” full contact sparring.
[/QUOTE]

Dinsdale has the real kung fu.

By which I mean to say, he’s dead on the money with this post. Especially the bit about live full contact sparring.

There’s a crapload of BS out there when it comes to martial arts. What it comes down to more often than not is the attributes of the individual coupled with hard, sensible training. There’s a guy in my class, he’s been training for about 6-8 months. Works hard, and has a degree of natural talent which means he’s competent with many of the fundamental elements. He’s naturally fast, and phenominally strong. In sparring he gives everyone a hard time, including us instructors. Because on top of a base of good technique, he’s amazingly strong! Put someone in peak physical condition into an environment where they’re learning workable stuff in “live” training drills, and you have a fairly unstoppable opponent. Just because he’s a beginner in terms of time served doesn’t make him any less formidable.

There really isn’t such a thing as boxer beats kicker, or kicker beats boxer. There’s no magic button on the knee that cripples any opponent. A punch in the nose will put you on your ass the first time; the tenth time you’ll barely notice it, and if you do it’s just motivation to give some back. The guy who’s had his legs pounded by kicks in training won’t curl up and whimper for you if you boot his leg.

If the fighter prepares sensibly then they should be able to cover these aspects. If the boxer knows he’s fighting a kicker, he’d better get a taste of it first, so he’s got a chance to fight on his terms. What it boils down to is who’s got the most sensible game, and who’s got the best physical and mental attributes. In most cases, the boxers and wrestlers/grapplers walk away victorious, and I submit that this is to do with the quality of their training, and the fact that it tends to weed out those who aren’t naturally avantaged to participate; martial selection if you will.

Anyway, I just wandered in to say that Dinsdale has teh real kung fu on this one.

23

This layman suggests that something like Aikido might be a good counter to a boxer or kickboxer. redirecting the opponent’s attacks to get them off-balance and thus vulnerable.

24

This expert suggests that this is not the case. Great in theory, bleeding and semi-conscious on paper.

25

[QUOTE=John DiFool]
This layman suggests that something like Aikido might be a good counter to a boxer or kickboxer. redirecting the opponent’s attacks to get them off-balance and thus vulnerable.
[/QUOTE]

Only if the aikido practitioner has actually done it many times in training with someone actually swinging hard at him. Practicing with an opponent who is allowing you to deflect and grab and throw is totally different than with an opponent who is actually trying to hit you hard and fast, over and over, without waiting for you to be ready. It’s not so much the style as how you train it. I’ve seen MMA fights where one person was obviously used to getting hit hard and the other was obviously not. End result was pretty much always the same - the one guy would get into his special stance, then his eyes would get big as the opponent charged in swinging (or grappling), get popped in the nose or taken down hard and all of their non-contact training did them absolutely no good; the non-contact person would get beaten up or tapped out very quickly.

26

[QUOTE=IOMDave]
The guy who’s had his legs pounded by kicks in training won’t curl up and whimper for you if you boot his leg.
[/quote]

My instinct is that this isn’t true. I bet if a competent martial arts master got a good kick to the knee on somebody, it would pretty much end the fight. Because there would be so much freaking damage to the guy’s knee. How can you train to take that kind of damage and stay standing? I don’t buy it.

27

[QUOTE=brazil84]
My instinct is that this isn’t true. I bet if a competent martial arts master got a good kick to the knee on somebody, it would pretty much end the fight. Because there would be so much freaking damage to the guy’s knee. How can you train to take that kind of damage and stay standing? I don’t buy it.
[/QUOTE]

I didn’t look too hard, but that’s 5 kicks to the leg that pretty much didn’t do anything. If you get a guy to brace his leg against something and he lets you stomp on his knee, sure, but you’re not going to shatter his knee in a fight.

28

My Dad was a Golden Gloves Champion, and he said that a Pro would beat a talented amateur every time. I guess we now have Pro Martial artists, so that’d be an interesting match. But a Pro boxer is fucking dangerous to fight, no matter what the color of your belt is.

29

[QUOTE=John DiFool]
This layman suggests that something like Aikido might be a good counter to a boxer or kickboxer. redirecting the opponent’s attacks to get them off-balance and thus vulnerable.
[/QUOTE]

John
Aikido/Judo/Jiu Jutsu are great if your opponent lunges at you or really leans into his punch. A good boxer doesn’t do either of those things. As long as he remains balanced he will be extremely difficult to throw, he doesn’t give you his balance or inertia. There’s also the speed thing. Boxers will hit you several times very quickly and trying to grab their arms/wrists is generally (in my own experience) a losing proposition.
You need to get close and grapple with them, try to get them on their backs or at least on the floor where boxing techniques don’t work so well. You usually get hit several times while you’re trying to do this though and if he lands a really good shot things will look bad for the home team. :stuck_out_tongue:

Regards

Testy

30

I’m not a total masochist, but we share our training area with a group of talented MMA fighters; they’ve just started competing this year and have two guys going for the amateur belt, that’s pretty impressive stuff.

Anyway, I draw my conclusions about leg kicks from their training and competition stories. These guys can really throw a leg kick! Not only that but they can take 'em as well, because it’s such an important technique for MMA competition and you need to be prepared for it. “Damaging the knee” isn’t actually as easy as you think; the only kick that can really hit it from the right kind of angle is a roundhouse, and apart from the possibility of the relatively easy defence for this technique (wouldn’t take a decent fighter more than a few sessions to get the hang of if they’d never seen it before), it’s just not something that happens. Sit down in front of a stack of UFC DVD’s and count the number of times a guy goes down going “Argh! My knee!” from a kick. If you watch the video on the end of that link you discover the reason why this doesn’t happen; the fighter moves his knee or whole body like a shock absorber when that kick hits home. Not to say that it wasn’t hurting him - if not in the “here and now” you can bet his leg was aching afterwards.

31

Judo vs Boxing - apparent transcript from an article about a 1963 fight.

32

Ah, Gene Lebell. A total legend, and if anyone deserves the label of “master” of his art, it’s him.

33

In his autobiography (well worth a read), Gene also mentions that Savage had coated the Gi in vaseline to make grip work more difficult.

34

Just wanted to express my heartfelt hopes that someone as obviously intelligent, perceptive, and damned fine looking as IOMDave opts to pony up his $15 and hang around here. :smiley:

35

[QUOTE=Snarky_Kong]

I didn’t look too hard, but that’s 5 kicks to the leg that pretty much didn’t do anything. If you get a guy to brace his leg against something and he lets you stomp on his knee, sure, but you’re not going to shatter his knee in a fight.
[/QUOTE]

What are the rules in the fight you linked to? No submissions or takedowns?

36

[QUOTE=IOMDave]
Anyway, I just wandered in to say that Dinsdale has teh real kung fu on this one.
[/QUOTE]
He usually does. We’re pretty proud of him. :wink:

IOMDave (is that for Isle of Man?) made a good point earlier when he opined that it’s odd that we would consider a martial arts master and a well trained fighter two separate things. There’s an odd sort of view in the west that martial arts is something that eastern and mystical, somehow alien and different in substance and nature from western boxing. That’s not really the case. There’s no such thing as someone who’s not a martial artist but is “just” a well-trained fighter who “simply” developed the strength, reflexes and skill to become so. If you spend the time to develop the strength, reflexes and skill to fight, you’re a martial artist by definition. The Olympic Boxing Gold Medalist is every bit the martial artist that the Olympic Judo Gold Medalist is, and Muhammad Ali is just as much of a “martial arts master” as Judo Gene LeBell, (except that Gene has a genius for teaching as well). The question the OP asks is not so much about a “trained fighter” versus a “martial artist,” but on the efficacy of the different styles and the methods used in their training.

37

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Just wanted to express my heartfelt hopes that someone as obviously intelligent, perceptive, and damned fine looking as IOMDave opts to pony up his $15 and hang around here. :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

It’s amazing how far a compliment can get you eh?

I was on the boards ooo about 7 years ago or so when I was but a confused teenage lad, obviously under a different username. I left when the boards stopped being free, because I didn’t have access to funding and my parents wouldn’t have understood what I wanted the money for. I finally found my way back after all this time, and you better believe I’m gonna shell out.

@pravnik: Yes, IOM is for Isle of Man.

@Least Original: the K1 rules are no subs or takedowns, quite correct.

38

[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever]
What are the rules in the fight you linked to? No submissions or takedowns?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, but the video was only an argument against the “knee-shattering” kick that the martial arts masters supposedly can do. If you were implying that isn’t not a good video for evidence in the overall argument, I agree, but I wasn’t trying to make that point. If you’re just curious about the fight, then ignore that.

39

[QUOTE=IOMDave]
If you watch the video on the end of that link you discover the reason why this doesn’t happen; the fighter moves his knee or whole body like a shock absorber when that kick hits home. Not to say that it wasn’t hurting him - if not in the “here and now” you can bet his leg was aching afterwards.
[/QUOTE]

Disclaimer–I’m a kung fu guy going on 10 years, cross-trained in a few other arts and have sparred quite heavily, though not competatively.

The mythical “knee kick stops anyone” technique, ala Patrick Swayze Roadhouse, is one of the most irksome myths in MA that I’ve come across.

In reality, knees are one of the strongest joints on your body. It is only at certain angles and vectors that they are at all vulnerable to a kick attack. When vulnerable, a knee attack is 100% disabling to someone, but getting an opportunity to exploit that vulnerability with a high degree of success is very hard. The generic “knee stomp” taught in your typical 1-day women’s self defense seminar is completly unrealistic and, IMO, is irresponsible to be teaching.

Additionally, it is a very easy technique to defend against a kick to “take it on the knee” that will leave your attacker in far worse shape than yourself. A slight turn of your stance to use the “bladed knobby part” right below your kneecap is a very effective defense. Those Thai boxers condition their legs for a reason, and shrug off a metric crapload of direct knee shots. My style uses a person’s knee deliberately as a defensive object, either as the stance turn I mentioned, or as a transitional chambering of the leg to defend your lower half while advancing. It is very effective against kickers.

40

I was always a BIG fan of leg kicks. But I NEVER had the goal of incapacitating an opponent with one strike to the knee. IME, there aren’t too many sure on-shot fight enders.

Not sure if I would ever aim a kick at or above waist level in a fight, other than as a follow-up in a combination after hurting/unbalancing my opponent. Or - of course - if a competition requires a certain number of such kicks per round. In a street confrontation, after you stagger your attacker, a nice sidekick/roundhouse could clear a good deal of distance to allow you to run away. Other than that, high kicks are mostly for show IMO.