karate is just part of his 'mixed martial arts' background, we all know by now you don't win with one style, this isnt UFC 1.
Mato
"All trained alive against resisting opponents."
That's the key to it really, I think lots of traditional arts have effective techniques but in many schools the training is not sufficiently realistic. This has led to the mistaken belief that some arts are weak, or inherently flawed whereas in fact it's the way people train (and teach) that is flawed rather than the art itself.
Big props must go out to Machida and his willigness to integrate,adapt and alter his personal karate style for the effectiveness in mma. The essence of his karate and it's effectiveness revolves around great timming, speed, and accuracy. No big surprise here, those are the traits upon which karate,especially shotokan has always been admired for and these attributes have always been at the core for what karate represents. However,the notion that nothing was wrong with karate to begin with and that all you needed to do was find a good hardcore traditional karate dojo or karate guy, in order to present this type of karate flavor for mma is not entirely true either.
The big question karate practicioners should all be asking themselves is, what did machida do differently aside from regular traditional karate training in order to prepare himself and adapt his karate for mma effectiveness? Are karate practicioners willing to go to pro boxing gyms or muaythai gyms and spar full contact under those enviorements inorder to try to adapt their karate to the rigors and realities of this type of sparring and training? Machida has and does it all the time,along with his karate training. Are karate practicioners also willing to venture into the grappling mats and train with elite grapplers and gain such confidence in there grappling skills,which in return will allow them to appply their karate with full confidence ,that if their karate ever fails them, they have a solid back up plan? Machida has and does it all the time,along with his karate training.
It's not that karate sucked before or that it's underlying theory speed,timming and prescise accurate strikes from a distance could not be applied. It's just that for the most part ,former past karate practicioners (just generalizing here,ofcourse)never wanted to train outside of their main domain and traditional training regimens, this reality and closemindedness alone has hurt karate and it's practicioners in the past much more than any bad ill advised karate strategey or theory ever. Machida and his team figured this out a long time ago and one only needs to look at the way he trains to realize that his training curicculium has more in common with how most mma fighters train today, compared to how most hardcore traditionalist karate practicioners train. Don't let the media marketing propaganda hype of training "exclusively" in "traditional karate" at a hardcore karate dojo fool you, machida did not get those mashed up ears by practicing his forms(kata)only and he certainly did not follow the standard strict traditional karate training protocol either, when it came down to adapting and altering his karate for mma. Machida was willing to step outside of the karate traditional pandoras box inorder to make his traditional art effective,something most staunch traditional karate practicioners have never been willing to do.
big props to Machida!
Why karate never got respect before in mma is evident,if you really think machida is the only great karate fighter that has tried to make karate work since the first initial first ufc's,then you are not really taking into account the hundreds, if not thousands that have not made it past the initial training camps,introductions into mma or even beyond the smaller local mma shows.Many great ones have failed or just completely abandoned it's methods for the sake of not wanting to get killed in the cage. It goes with reason, as only 1% of all the mma fighter population has been able to make karate work,you have to also take into account that machida is also very talented and skilled on top of that. Everyone knows what anderson silva(best striker aside from machida in the ufc)and a muaythai specialist is going to do, as a matter of fact his strategy is basically the same as lyoto but with a muaythai flavor instead of a karate one. yet ,very few fighters can stop what anderson silva is doing, he is just very naturaly talented, as sometimes guys like A.S simply have so much talent and skills that even if you know whats comming you can't stop it. anderson can probably represent karate and still be a champion and lyoto can probably represent muaythai and still be a great champion. talented fighters are just that, very talented fighters and they can basicaly make anything work.
More fighters will be tuning in and respecting what he (machida) is doing now but it does not automatically mean that they are going to stop it, they know what anderson silva and his style is capable of, yet they still can't stop it ,so what? It does not always mean dissrespect or that they don't prepare for karate type strikes The people that dissrespect are usually the noobs on the interent that like to talk bs. Profesional fighters like rashad make a living respecting what it is that they need to be respecting. rashad is not going to start respecting and training in aikido,kung fu or capoeira just incase somebody figures out how to make it work for mma. 99% of mma fighters still need to still worry more about boxing and muaythai,bjj and wrestling because the reality is that this is what they will encounter 99% of the time. People will eventualy start learning how to defend against karate strength first,as that is always easier to learn as opposed to actualy applying techniques themselves. Same theory with bjj as most people in mma today will never have the same bjj skillset of a damian maia,jacare, or andre galvao but people will be able to learn how to defend against it much easier than applying it. People respect bjj much more in mma because it's been proven in mma over and over again,same goes for wrestling,judo,boxing,muaythai, and yes with time even karate.
My sentiments about this topic are not based on a hypothetical analysis of shotokan karate or based on the usual tapout cage fighter mentality of the "karate sucks syndrome". I trained personaly in shotokan karate for many long years under a hardcore shotokan instructor way back in the day. The sparring in shotokan was and is and could be classified as sometimes hardcore because punches and kicks sometimes lacked focus or penetrated further than it's intended purposes and actualy did make contact by accident but if you think that shotokan karate ever consisted of "continuous" full contact karate, then might have never really trained in shotokan karate. The object and philosophy of shotokan karate is based around a one shot kill and that one shot kill was never really allowed to make contact in the face area,not in the dojo and not in competition. This is not to say that face contact never occured,ofcourse it happened all the time and those accidents happened quite often but traditional shotokan fighters would mostly always pull their punches and kicks ( a bad habbit) before contact was made to the face,punching or kicking full force to the body was allowed. Another dillema that stagnated karate development and these original tournament karate principles was that after a technique was delivered, action was halted in order to acknowledge the score. This stoping procsess eliminated what is considered and identified as continuos action,in other words stopping action always occured after contact or after a belief of contact was made,not very realistic.
Karate wont suck in anybody above the age of 15.
First, it costs a fortune. Those studios are designed to make $. Belt tests = money. Classes = money. MUCH more then a BJJ class.
Second, its weird to join a class if your 25. And, its full of 12 year olds. Imagine being in class next to little Jimmy with his hot mom watching the class giving you a bad look, because she thinks your either retarded or a petafile.
Third, the culture. Karate is one of those disciplines where they make you sit in a horse stance doing front punches for the first few months, before there "master" usually some bald beer bellied old man gives you the ok to do anything. And, of course this wise master will never spar, or train.
Im not saying all studios are like this, but the vast majority are. If you havent started karate by age 5 its probably too late to take any of it, and apply it practically. There is only 1 lyoto machida. Notice how there are MANY "masters" of Karate/Kung Fu/etc. and how many of them do you see using it in MMA?
GSP is a black belt in Karate. You would never be able to tell if he didnt tell you. I mean he has applied some of it, and it shows in his kicks (spinning side kick) etc. but people are getting carried away with this.
Why do you think Mas Oyama broke away from goju and shotokan and called his kyokushin karate, fighting karate?. Oyama thought that this sort of fighting(shotokan karate) lacked full force and contact reality. This is what I was trying to explain in my original post and why shotokan karate lacked live resistant continuos contact. It's not that it's original theory lacked substance or that there fighters were not tough. Most people that have ever spared with a good shotokan practicioner will tell you just how fast and accurate they can be, especially from a farther distance were timming,speed and pinpoint accuracy can accelerate a single blow to land with extreme quick like reflexes and effectiveness.....speed kills and that has always been the essense of the shotokan trademark. What was always missing is the live training formula which machida has now incorporated when he trains with the likes of anderson silva at the now defunct blackhouse muaythai gym or when he spars with kickboxers for some of his previous fights at the aka gym in sacramento. Shotokan karate never ever trained this way and if you think that even old time shotokan fighters trained this way, then you really don't understand or never really trained traditional shotokan.
staunch traditional values have always been part of traditional shotokan karate and it's ways , as a matter of fact you could not be authentic old school shotokan without having that mindset in the past. fast foward now to the future and the new generation thinks karate is evolving in the ring, making continuos contact like boxers and muaythai practicioners do,kicking thai pads and grappling with elite grapplers,( a set of training principles that were stolen from boxing,mma and muaythai) and used in order to make the original shotokan theory of the one punch kill more effective for mma, if you cannot see that or understand my point fine keep living in your jackie chan illusional world. I made it clear in my original post how much machida validated the original shotokan theory but I also mentioned to you what training methods he used,which never ever belonged to karate syllabus in order to make that happen. keep thinking that a karate shotokan practicioner could make that happen with just the original shotokan principals and training modalities of shotokan and I will sell you a bridge from newyork to puerto rico.
You can go today to tokyo and visit all the JKA (shotokan schools) including it's main headguarters and then you can travel around the world and visit the premiere shotokan affiliates and you will rarely "if ever" find a boxing ring,boxing gloves,focus mitts and that sort of training,along with the type of training machida does for his fights,it is not allowed. Machida trains his karate using these newer modalities of training and if you cannot understand the difference and that they were never ever part of real authentic karate and one of the main reasons that has contributed to machida karate sucsess,then you do not really understand the history of shotokan or karate, it's traditional lineage and it's dogmatic barriers that have always prohibited and were never ever allowed to be part of shotokan. It's very easy to say yeah but everything evolves and karate evolves just like bjj but you do not understand that evovling was always part of bjj, and on the other hand staying with history and tradition is what shotokan was all about. My original karate instuctor never allowed us to train in with boxing gear or muaythai modalities,just because you think it's cool all of the sudden and respect lyoto karate and think that karate is cool and woopie those older karate guys new there sweet poopie,there were bad asses becasue lyoto proved it does not mean you understand why it happened,how it happened it's history ,struggles and recent advancements. Shotokan karate could have never been classified as sparring in the ring with boxers and muaythai fighters with headguard and 16oz boxing gloves ( not even mma gloves) because karate means empty hands and once you put on boxing gloves, you are technically not really doing karate anymore. this is exagerated I know but in a nutshell yes that has always been the stance of most traditional shotokan practicioners.
The whole reason for my original post was not to downgrade machida or his karate but to applaud or give machida Credit for validating karate effectiveness in mma. I mentioned how he uses karate theory and strategy in his fights. So he must be using applicable techniques of karate in his fights. I even mentioned the main attributes that machida has that are shotokan influenced speed,timming,accuracy along with great long distance strikes. How can he not be using certain aspects of karate.I just cannot give all the total credit to his original art and it's original training methods, just pointing out some of it's flawed original traditional training methods that won't cut it for mma, apparently machida seems to understands it and how he really needs to train his karate and is doing so.
I tried to point out also how most old time traditional hardcore shotokan representatives could not consider someone using training methods not associated with karate to be termed authentic karate. This is not my own personal perception but one that was ingrained in me from the many years of training in traditional shotokan karate. Do I personaly think he is using karate? ofcourse I do and ofcourse I think he uses a distinct aspect or flavor of karate but I also think that some of the original founders of the art of karate are rolling over in their graves also.
The key to this thread and the point that is really being conveyed is that many Striking styles follow similar principles. There are only so many ways to throw a punch and there are even less variations of each particular path. You can only throw a hook so many ways and some ways are better than others but one thing is certain- even if the exact trajectory of every hook is not the same, a hook is thrown from the side.
A 1-2 in Karate looks very similar to a 1-2 in Boxing. There is the chain of power from the back leg to the back arm and the punch comes straight down the pipe. Does this mean that Karate and Boxing are the same? No. It just means that there is a proper way to throw a 1-2 and that different styles embrace that idea.
disbeliever - And while his style is shotokan karate, his father has blended and changed that to become machida karate, which is something you can only learn from the machida family.
People overreact so much sometimes
Hence the statement 'Don't panic'.
disbeliever -Kai Tremeche -disbeliever - And while his style is shotokan karate, his father has blended and changed that to become machida karate, which is something you can only learn from the machida family.
People overreact so much sometimes
Hence the statement 'Don't panic'.
Was not referring to you
Oh, I know that. But other people are freaking out and turning this place into a madhouse.
Machida is repping and doing Karate in there, but it's Karate referenced against a modern environment, with modern gear, modern strategies and modern methodologies.
Mc6pack - What ? so there are actually people out there that think he just stepped out of Mr. Miagi's dojo an took the belt ?
There are people who would love to frame it that way.
i don't care if it was a boxing right-hook or a karate straight punch or a muy thai upper-cut that Machida used to win the match. the fact is that the foundation he draws upon, the style that has been taught to him since age 5, is karate. and that's why i think his wins are changing the way people are viewing MMA. before his ascent, i could still hear the way some commentators and fans would talk about TMA: that it's a joke, it doesn't work, BJJ is king, blah blah blah. it's like you were almost embarrassed to tell anyone you were taking karate lessons.
now (at least judging from the posts i've been reading here), it seems that people almost have this new-found respect for the art -- that maybe it's not a complete waste of time after all. that's why i think Machida being champion makes a great, positive difference.
I'm hoping to attend a three-day seminar, after which I will be given a "Machida Karate Instructor" certificate and can open my own dojo.
If you were smart you'd get on board now... this thing is going nationwide. NATIONWIDE BABY!
Don't know about the arguments going back and forth but the slo-mo gif itself is bad ass. Good work whoever made that.
Machida is a karate based MMA fighter.
Be done with it already.
Wasa-B - Machida is a karate based MMA fighter.
Be done with it already.
Exactly. So the only way to emulate what he does is the train your ass off in Karate and build you base as strong as him.
Kai Tremeche -Mc6pack - What ? so there are actually people out there that think he just stepped out of Mr. Miagi's dojo an took the belt ?
There are people who would love to frame it that way.
No doubt. I'm a huge Machida fan, but that shit is a pipe dream.
OP is correct.
LOL at all the karatekas hanging on desperately to any TMA relevance.
Or lol at those desperately trying to convince themselves that all TMA clubs, practiioners are the same and never had any relevance in MMA and top levels of striking competitions to begin with.
Poor BJJ dinosaurs, plodding along unawares as meteors of pure karate approach inexorably to usher in the new age.
They'll always have those old infomercials on tape.