Karate is great for fighting other Karate fighters, but in the cage it would never work. Also in the street it would probably never work as there are many other factors to a street fight. Fun to watch, but if you do Karate for any other reason than for the desire to study an ancient martial art you will be very disappointed.
303
first, 303...tell that to Hackney, Liddell and all the K-1 fighters in MMA and I disagree with you saying you'll be disapointed studying it...Karate can be very formidable-
Moke is correct
Karate by itself will likely not be effective in an MMA fight. No traditional art or classic combative sport will be effective by itself in today's MMA arena.
Whether a fighter's base is Karate, BJJ, TKD, or muay Thai, he still has to cross train and be proficient at other aspects of the fight game. Proficiency does not necessarily mean expertise.
It looks like there's a Pankration episode coming? It's listed on the show page as a martial art.
Wasn't Pankration dead? There's some schools now, but weren't they restarted after the UFC came around? THe only guy I ever heard about before the UFC was Arvantis, and he wasn't claiming lineage or anything either.
Isn't Pankration now an amateur subset of major MMA?
I'd think Jason would be favored over some Pankration guy for their "fight", right?
Max
There's plenty of MMA fighters with karate backgrounds.
GSP (Kyokushin)
Bas Rutten (Kyokushin)
Chuck Liddell (Kempo)
Lyoto Machida (Shotokan)
Rory Markham (Kyokushin)
Assuerio Silva (I don't remember the name of his style)
Shonie Carter (Shidokan)
I hold black belts in both Shito-ryu and Seishinkai. The seishinkai black belt was awarded to me by then 9th dan Shogo Kuniba, he would be made a legit 10th dan prior to his death. I can break bricks, boards, bats, etc.
All breaking demos fall into one of two categories: 1. not as hard as it looks 2. complete fraud.
All of the ones I saw fall into category #1. Making smoke come from your finger tips falls in #2 aka the Chris Angel category.
All that said, I still to this day have a great respect for Shogo Kuniba and he would have been far more effective in a self-defense situation than many on here would expect.
That said, train boxing, MT, and grappling........it's a quicker ends to a great goal.
Word of experience.
Let me add one thing. I've never broken a bat with an arm strike, only low line kicks with the bat planted against the ground. That bat break was impressive and difficult....not as hard as it might appear....but still damn hard.
303: GSP. Lidell, Bas Rutten, Lyota, Sam Greco, Kestutis Arbocius(last "king of pancrase") all kind of disagree to mention a few of the more well known fighters with karate background. Karate has to be modified to be suited to the cage. But then, so does thaiboxing. Karate has to be supplemented with grappling training to work in a ring. But again, so does thaiboxing -or any other standup based arts (and grappling arts needs to be supplemented with standup training).
Karate has made quite a good impact in k-1 kickboxing where several knockdown karate fighters (kyokushin, seidokaikan, ashihara etc) and a handful of other karate styles have done very well. Thaiboxing has had many knockdown karate fighters who has competed as Pro for cash (since knockdown karate organizations traditionally has not allowed fighters to go Pro and fight as a living). Many have taken international thaiboxing titles. A few even in the lumini (sp?) stadium.
You dont often see kick/thaiboxers who enter knockdown karate tournaments and do good.
Many people trash or laught at karate looking at the crappy McDojo karate schools, not realizing that the same schools are just as ridiculed (and hated -maybe even more so) by the serious karate schools. There just happen to be a lot of the McDojo schools around. The serious schools that focus on hard training and tough fighting -where sweat blood and injuries are part of daily training, are not as popular, and you dont often see them in malls.
Go to a dojo that are into hard fighting and you will see training and sparring that are just as good (and usually very similar) to any kick/thai boxing gym.
"My gf translated that he was going to transport all of his Chi into the tip of his fingers and when that happens we should see smoke/steam rising from his fingers."
Could he fly though?
"Many people trash or laught at karate looking at the crappy McDojo karate schools, not realizing that the same schools are just as ridiculed (and hated -maybe even more so) by the serious karate schools."
That's a great point! There are karate / TMA schools out there that produce excellent fighters. There are just a lot more bullcrap dojos on every street corner. 99% of it really is garbage.
I didn't really like the episode of the "human weapon". That type of karate seems very useless to me. I am not trying to disrespect the "old masters" on the show. I'm sure the guy hitting the rock is tough. (Why he is mangling himself by smashing a rock is beyond me).... There are a lot of different styles of karate out there. The type shown on that episode were way too rigid, and the blocks were not realistic. The kumite is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen! 2 guys standing there punching each other in the chest!!! Come on now. Its silly. These guys train all these blocks, different strikes, different kicks, etc. Then their kumite turns into a chest punches and bad leg kicks?!? Terrible!!!
About smashing hands into rocks and shit like that. Maybe if you are living in a time of hand to hand war, doing this would be important. But in this day and age, it is completely ridiculous to mangle yourself for the small advantage that a tough hand will give you in a fight. I used to really develop my knuckles. Every day I would build them up by hitting cement, rocks, etc... And they got huge and strong. Then my hand started getting fucked up, and I decided having big knuckles wasnt worth having othritis at the age of 20 years old.
Anyway, whatever... Im glad they did an episode on Karate, but there really is so much better stuff than that out there. And it is in America. Not tied up in the traditional / rigid katas of the far east.
"Assuerio Silva (I don't remember the name of his style)"
Seiwakai -it is a offshot from kyokushin. Silva is more commonly known as a chute boxe fighter though -because that is the kind of competitions he has fought in.
BTW. He is the current king of Pancrase, next month or so he will face the previous "king" Kestutis Arbocius (who lost his title due to a injury that prevented him from defending it) who is a shidokan karate fighter.
Other previous "kings" include, Bas Rutten (formerly kyokushin) and Semmy schilt (ashihara/seidokaikan karate -currently defending k-1 champion in his 3rd year).
Not bad for karate in one of the oldest MMA organizations
""Then their kumite turns into a chest punches and bad leg kicks?!? Terrible!!!""
Knockdown Karate is MUCH harder than it looks, its no joke.
""Anyway, whatever... Im glad they did an episode on Karate, but there really is so much better stuff than that out there. And it is in America. Not tied up in the traditional / rigid katas of the far east.""
Really, cause knockdown Karate styles are doing a pretty good job of producing some of the best kick boxers in the world.
Great episode last night.
This sounds like a great show. What did the first 2 episodes cover?
I hope all of the season's episodes will be available on DVD one of these days. (hint, hint)
Thanks,
Brett
Ep 1 was Muay Thai, very good.
Ep 2 was Escrima, from the Phillipines, interesting but not too practical (I don't usually carry two long sticks in my back pocket).
I thought this thread was about Joey Karate.
The more recent styles of Karate such as Kyokoshin, Ashihara etc are VERY tough and produce many tough Karate-ka.
Unfortunately in Okinawa and Japan, there is not many 'real-deal' hardcore karate-ka about.
Lots of people that practice it for cultural reasons, or fitness.
Lots of board and bat breaking (they are special breaking bats BTW, you can buy them in karate stores) and people REALLY exaggerating historical facts in order to impress foreigners.
Not to say that there are not any left, but the few that remain would be extremely difficult to come across.
"All breaking demos fall into one of two categories: 1. not as hard as it looks 2. complete fraud."
***You are mostly correct but the way we did it and a few others i know of and have seen in action would make you change your mind in a hurry.
"(they are special breaking bats BTW, you can buy them in karate stores)"
Ive done kyokushin for a long time. Ive never seen any special bats used in breaks. Ive never seen any special breaking bats offered in karate stores (not sure what a "karate store" store is though) or anywhere else. I have seen (and accompanied) people going to regular sport stores, buying regular baseball bats to be used in demos.
One of my instructors once failed a baseball break at a demo because the bat brought out to him had a aluminium core inside the wooden casing. They where abroad and the guy buying the bat bought it in a regular store, but missed the part about the core since he didnt speak the local language. After that my instructor started checking the materials beforehand better.
but I am sure there are special breaking bats sold somewhere, for people who cant break the real thing but wants to look like they can.