Once again, I had the often-repeated discussion/argument/holy-war of “what would you, Mr. Karate Guy, do against a ground fighter.” The guy didn’t want to take my “kill him before he grapples me” statement, so I found this demonstration for him. The UFC Octagon is commonly used as a battleground for making a case that karate doesn’t work against other styles, but my argument is how often do you see a real master of karate in the Octagon? Not often. You see many, many, mixed martial artists there that cherry pick concepts out of styles… essentially jacks of all trades.
Do they train hard? Yes. Are they big, burly, strong, and fast? In most cases, yes. Can they stand up to a knee strike to the face like this poor unfortunate man takes? Doubtful.
Please note: I am not saying that mixed martial arts lack value, or are somehow inferior. I do have the opinion, however, that the commonly held Style A vs Style B doesn’t hold a great deal of water when you are looking at UFC, because a lot of the styles presented there are personalized and don’t represent a true picture of either Style A or Style B. You can get some generalities, but even those are skewed by the rules that exist around that type of competition (which I found out have become more point-oriented than they were when I lost interest).
In short, I don’t claim to have an answer on how karate would do against an equally skilled ground fighter, but I have an inkling what I would do and I know I don’t see many of those tactics show up on UFC. Also, I haven’t seen many people that reflect what my concept is of a good karate person in a fight with a grappler, but I’d be interested to see any footage that anyone may have to light the path.
Related Articles
4 users responded in this post
It’s never about style a vs style b. it’s always about person a vs person b.
Hi Dante8! It’s great to be back into karate, let me tell you. As far as a match between a good grappler and a good karateka goes, I view it as a match between a cobra and a mongoose. It depends on who gets to who first. Having been in the USAF once, I also think of the term “air superiority.” The “air” is the space between the opponents. In this case, as in all cases, the karateka must control the air between himself and the grappler. A fast fist makes a great anti-aircraft missle, too.
Very interesting analogy! I think you hit the nail right on the head there… you articulated the concepts of distance and timing that I was trying to stress during the discussion with my friend.
In the end, I tend to agree with Anonymous there… its usually more the comparison of two representatives from their styles moreso than it is the style s themselves. The fact that I value self-defense aspects of my training is not any more or less valid than someone who trains solely for competition, each perspective has its strong points and in the end, like you said, a lot of what matters is who gets there first.
Thanks for commenting!
i feel that the ultimate goal of karate is not to compete, but to defend when it is needed, so the masters of karate or the ones who train toward that goal rarely compete, so you wont see someone who has been doing karate for 10 or 15 years in the ring at ufc. however the goal of alot of grapeling sports is competition, and the only way you can realy get good is competing, so puting them up against your average karateka is hardly a fair match. It is also largely a matter of the competitors.
Leave A Reply