Hmmm... nice post KF. I think I can add a bit to your analogy. American/Hawaiian Ke?po as well as many other martial arts brought over to the United States was designed at a time when the culture was different. The difference, IMO, is that most or many of those that came into martial arts already knew how to fight because they grew up and got in a few fights or played contact sports like football and wrestling, etc. In fact, just in Hawaii it was a given at the time that people knew how to box, so any street brawl meant fighting someone with boxing skills, not slow haymaker punches. Now you teach martial arts in this culture of the past and it is normal for them to be making contact, they already know how to take a punch... so you teach them techniques and discipline, etc. It is not the same today or in the last few years. Very few of those that come into martial arts have ever been in multiple fights or played tackle football or other contact sports. Many do not have boxing skills today before coming into kenpo or karate, like was a given forty years ago in Hawaii. So today, it just happens that you have a completely different culture, starting from scratch, like a karate kid movie and working up from there. It happens that MMA, for example, builds up these skills in a sporting environment that was a given forty years ago. Now you got something to work from, train in MMA, then you can start adding the techniques on to that and refining the understanding and application of principles.
