If you mean old-school pugilism as in old-school boxing from before the Queensburry-rules...that type of boxing is as different from modern boxing as is the reverse punch to the real old style okinawan karate punch... Why is there no old style boxing anymore? Because the (sports)rules of the game changed, they introduced gloves and new rules for boxing. Not because the new style is automatically better. Different game, different tools, different attitude.. But I must admit: bareknuckle gypsie fights do seem rather tough (although their technique is not always old-style boxing). I would not be surprised if people end up dead from time to time.
this is what most people forget - no 2 groups train the same way with the same mentality using the same tools - thats the POINT!
Agreed. And he doesn't seem to have churned out any champions does he? Call me cynical, but slagging off other arts does gain a lot of attention Now to the use of Silat in the ring. Some techniques in Silat are pretty much the same as MMA & other arts. Punches-yes, close guard-yes, low kicks (same as MT low kick)-yes. Also, I know a Silat player that used to regularly fight MMA players in the ring. He did use Silat techniques. Two that used to regularly catch the other guys out were.. scooping an incoming punch across the body & checking it in towards the attacker, and using a sapu (funny,silat sweep ) when in close or in a clinch. However, I agree with the Sarge that Silat is not ideally suited to the ring environment, but this does not mean it is ineffective. In the ring you have space and predicability. You know it's 1 on 1. You know the opponent will act within certain parameters. Just as an aside, I saw a very interesting(& quite comical) pub fight once. Huge gorilla of a man and a scrawny little guy. The little guy took a few mammoth punches & then dropped to his knees, managed to get behind the guy, hooked one arm around gorilla man's leg. With the other hand he grabbed gorilla's yarbles and hung on for dear life. He would not let go and gorilla could not get in a decent hit. Gorilla gave up and was in too much pain to pursue the scrawny guy.
sorry to go a bit off topic... the first mention of 'kali' is in placido yambao's book 'mga karunungan sa larong arnis.' the section was on the history of arnis, and was written by mirafuente buenaventura. in it, he mentioned that kali was the name for the fighting art when the spaniards arrived. where he got that information is a subject of scholarly debate and research. there's actually a (long and heated) thread on the origin of kali in the fma forum. tim
silat is the ancient malay art of war. war=sport? i know it's efficient on the street. so did the chinese MA. some people do go fight on the street (the tradition still cont over here) just to know if the materials that they learned would be useful or not. u know what, it did the job. 3 on 1, yeah, u still can make it. no doubt. would you believe that there were those who died when the techniques were applied to. and would u think those who 'kill' them would go on the street and bragged about it so that the authority can get to them. that would've stupid, isn't it? well there's a saying, "siapa cepat dia dapat". meaning whoever is quicker, then he's better? (maybe someone could help me translate it better? im bad with english language). doesn't matter what MA or MMA that u embrace. or even no MA at all. street fights is different. 'normally' it's more than 1 on 1 plus all the dirty tricks that u can pull from the bag. why do you think the term pendekar (pandai akal) is there? it's not for show off. it's there for a reason. a sport is a sport and a street fight is a street fight. it's different. no use comparing it. archery, boxing, spears throwing, bla bla bla, all have sport aspects. would it be the same when use on real life situation? come to think about it, it's a whole new ball game. ah, me and my superstition again.
Edit: In reading the last page of the thread, my post was pretty much redundant. Suffice to say that I don't believe elbows are, statistically speaking, particularly deadly or all that reliable against a trained opponent.
These types of threads stopped being entertaining years ago and I'm not sure that anyone has ever found them informative, and yet people can't seem to resist contributing to them (including myself apparently). They're usually started either by some troll in a TMA forum or by some TMA guy trying to defend his art against accusations of complete ineffectiveness by someone from the MMA community and then others from that community take that defense as an attack in turn on the effectiveness on MMA, a bunch of other cats feel that they have "the one irrefutable argument" or just feel they have the right to mouth of so they join in, its the internet so unless someone is well known enough to be respected in both camps nobody knows anyone's background so everybody feels that they are a bigger authority on the subject than anybody else so their opinion matters more so nobody is willing to give an inch, and then invariably the threads end when enough people get tired of banging their heads against the wall and the last group to have a post in it feels that they've "won." For one thing, both sides "speak" a different language. What I mean is all systems have different terms for things, different techniques and different ideologies and philosophies. So people will try to make a point or give an example from their own point of view, and nobody who reads it wants to admit that they might not understand it and thus know what they're talking about, so they respond as best as they can from their own perspective (As in the case with Mr. Perry's example of a technique when he was trying to assert a point. Whereas many of us in the pentjak silat camp knew immediately the technique he was describing, most of the MMA participants envisioned it as something that they were more familiar with.) so nobody gets the other person's point and the threads get driven in completely different directions. Also, everyone in Camp A feels that they know enough about Camp B's system to make valid points but at the same time feel that the other parties couldn't possibly know enough about Camp A's so they look for any inconsistencies to reinforce that opinion thus negating or at least attempting to invalidate anything the other party has to say. Again, stagnating the conversation. To be honest the argument for "alive" training is a valid one and I don't think anyone contests that. Where people get defensive is when the question revolves more around what is "alive enough.” The main purpose of alive training is two-fold: To make sure that the practitioner can perform a technique on an opponent while both going at full-speed and with realistic intensity and also to try to simulate the mental state that you will be subject to when put in a situation to try to perform that technique. Since most techniques are situational and opportunistic the very nature of trying to repeatedly practice a single technique against even a resisting partner negates a certain amount of that "alive-ness" so right there you are forced to judge things on what you consider “alive enough.” Everyone feels they are an authority on this or that they can confidently parrot someone who is, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so. As to the second aspect of ‘alive” training, well, I have to admit that at least I am guilty of not training hard enough in this regard but I know that I am not alone. I readily admit that even when I train regularly and diligently that I have, in the past, completely blanked when put in positions where I actually needed to rely on my art, however I also personally know MMA guys who train “alive” all of the time and then similarly blanked the first few times they got in an actual competition, and furthermore I know people who compete regularly but blanked when they were facing an opponent in a street fight who genuinely wanted to do them harm. (Yes, ring-aggression and the kind of aggression you face against someone who just wants to just keep stomping on you by any means necessary and long after you are unable to defend yourself are two completely different things.) If you truly feel yourself an expert on what constitutes “alive enough” training then I honestly would appreciate you to instead of slamming other systems, please step forward and tell us how to train more alive with a blade, or punches to the throat, or a heel to the groin, or an eye-gouge, or a fish-hook, etc. If it furthers my training in my chosen system then I would actually be very curious to hear it. I’m not going to be one of those “my art is too lethal (deadly, dangerous, etc.) to be used in sports competition” guys, I think that argument sounds just as silly as the “If it doesn’t win in the ring then it is useless” argument, but the fact is it is just unsafe to train certain maneuvers with full intensity in real-time. When you train for sport you do so with certain expectations that carry over. If you do participate in a fight, even one that is not occurring in the ring, most people will maintain those same expectations, such as, the situation will be more or less set-up and balanced in neither opponents particular favor, that you will only be fighting a single opponent at a time, that the environment that you are fighting in will be static, that your opponent will be held to the same rules that you are, that the same equipment will be available to both opponents and ultimately that even if the worse should happen in the fight that someone (whether a referee, onlooker, or just your opponent acting on his own ethics) will stop the fight once you are unconscious, before serious injury or even if you have just "had enough.” None of which is a given in real-life encounter. No one is saying that an MMA trained person is going to be completely helpless against three guys with knives who just want to carve him up for whatever reason, that’s just silly, he obviously has at the least, a decent chance of getting out of there but I bet that same guy at that moment would appreciate a background that might have better prepared him at least mentally for that situation and that might give him an edge he might not ordinarily have been aware of. The point that really needs to be made though and the fact that makes all this bickering pointless is that all these statements and opinions are merely academic. The plain truth is when you fight, you fight the fighter, not the system. You can juxtapose any two systems in the world and when it comes to the practical applications it will merely come down to who has the better raw abilities. Training helps and techniques can give you an edge, but a guy with no formal training who only relies on what he knows and has worked with in the past can still beat someone who has rigorously trained in any system, MMA or TMA for decades if he is just a better, natural scrapper. There is a saying in the tattoo community, "The only difference between someone with tattoos and someone without tattoos is that a tattooed person doesn't care whether or not you have tattoos." This seems to be the position that the members of the MMA community who are the vocal detractors of TMAs puts the TMA community in. In all these arguments I never hear the TMA proponents say that MMA players can't fight or whatever, but in the methods they use to attempt to defend themselves from these detractors they get accused of attacking MMA. When I started this post I intended to keep it fairly balanced, looking back over it I can see that I failed at that, so let me state here that this is in no way intended to be a slam on either the MMA community or methodology. I personally have a tremendous amount of respect for both. I do, however, get tired of seeing other systems get slandered based on simple, prima facie and biased arguments. If you feel your system has merit then, by all means, promote it all that you can, but to do so by trying to discredit others to make your own seem superior, well then it seems to me like you are having to compensate for something somewhere. Why can’t you just let it stand on its own merits? This is not intended as a rant, simply as an attempt to point out how meaningless and futile these kinds of threads are. I'm not the first to make this attempt or even submit any of these points, and I'm sure I won't be the last but, I mean come on, aren't we all pretty weary of this crap?
I don't know. While you may have hashed this argument to death, I'm finding it extremely interesting. I've learned a lot. What I think is pointless is for someone to come into a civil and informative thread after about 150 posts not to contribute to the discussion, but to essentially call it stupid. Then to rail on about how no one listens to anyone else because everyone thinks that they've got "the one irrefutable argument", following that up with several long paragraphs in which he asserts his own "one irrefutable argument". And finally, to finish by saying in essence, "Sorry I implied you are all idiots for engaging in this stupid discussion... especially you MMA guys. I didn't mean it, even though you are... and you all know I'm right." I realize that the words are different, but how else could someone interpret your last two paragraphs? Seriously. Perhaps you should have taken your own advice and, at most, stopped after your first paragraph.
Fair enough. You're right, I was responding based on my prior experience with this subject and assuming everyone else was in a similar position. However it is a fairly common topic on these types of forums with the same points and counter-points being made over and over. I never said the thread was "stupid" I said it was pointless and invariably fairly frustrating to the participants. If its all new to you and you are gleaning useful information from it more power to you. It was not my intent to try to stifle the genuinely curious. If you are here to better inform yourself and have a genuine discussion then obviously my post was not intended for someone like yourself but more for the people trying to just propagate their own agenda. Here I disagree. My point is that the nature of the situation makes it difficult at best for either side to understand the arguments and examples that the other side is making. The only argument I remember putting out as absolute was the "You fight the fighter, not the system" statement. Anything else was to put forward the historically-backed point that nothing tends to get solved by these threads and that logically nothing can. Nice paraphrasing. The intent of the last two paragraphs was to say that I realized how long a post I was writing and I was still unable to adequately convey the message I was trying to and to try to sum up that there must be a better way to go about these kind of discussions other than the "your stuff sucks and would never work" and that "your all idiots for participating in it" that usually starts out these kinds of "discussions." I realize the words are different but how else is someone to interpret the antagonistic tone of some of these posts. Perhaps I should have but I had a point to make. Apparently I did not illustrate it as well as I would have hoped. Maybe I should make a larger post next time.
I can hear where you are coming from Monyet Nakal having seen my fair share of TMA vs. MMA threads however as pesistratos illustrates perhaps it's not always as futile as an endeavour as it seems. For me personally these debates are not about slandering any art but about highlighting faulty arguments... I've never claimed I'm a bad ass and to be honest competitive MMA does not really appeal to me and yet I still find myself disagreeing mostly with the arguments put forward by those on the non-MMA side (though there are some good arguments!). I've also stated several times in this thread that I don't have enough experience with silat to offer an informed opinion and that as such I am not going to generalise about its effectiveness as a style so I don't think disagreement is always about bigging up your own art: However, that doesn't mean I can't see when faulty arguments are being used and so far in this thread I have seen: - People arguing that if you are do not have a murderous mindset when defending yourself that this somehow makes you less able to defend yourself- despite the fact that no-one here seems to have ever had to kill anyone. - Someone arguing that if he trained hard enough he would be able to make an elbow strike work 50% of the time in a competitive ring and that if it hit it would end the fight but such things aren't allowed- despite the fact that elbow techniques are used in MMA tournaments and Thai Boxing fights and A) are never 50% to hit (even with professional fighters training over 6 hours a day!) and B) do not necessarily end a fight even when they do hit. - People arguing about the unrealistic nature of MMA competitions and training while failing to address the inherent artificial nature of all training in martial arts i.e. people tend not to fight using Indonesian weapons or wearing traditional Indonesian uniforms just as much as they don't fight with padded gloves and round breaks in real life. I also disagree with the argument that if something doesn't work in the ring it wont work on the street because A) people in everyday life are not as well trained as competitive athletes so you could get away with a lot more, B) there is the potential for using improvised weapons (or weapons you carry around) and C) running away or striking someone hard then running away is rarely a succesful strategy in a ring but in real life it could do wonders. So to summarise I think people too quickly assume there must be a 'vs.' element or an element of wanting to promote their own art if someone happens to disagree with a particular argument.
"If you truly feel yourself an expert on what constitutes “alive enough” training then I honestly would appreciate you to instead of slamming other systems, please step forward and tell us how to train more alive with a blade, or punches to the throat, or a heel to the groin, or an eye-gouge, or a fish-hook, etc." I'll state right away that I'm no expert but I feel I can add something here. Alive training with the blade. For a start no live blade. A live blade means that you can't attack and/or defend with real intensity (as people would die). Cover the eyes (to avoid being blinded) and go at it with increasing levels of resistance with dummy blades (rubber at first leading up to wood or metal). You can do this blade against blade or empty hand against blade. The good old marker pen sparring is a good method. The armed attacker should gradually resist the defenders counters (swap hands, pull his arm out, keep stabbing, attack with his free limbs, take it to the floor etc). Attacks should build up to being completely free-form (no set pattern, no set response and no set resistance to that response). Punches to the throat. Train punches to the face and upper chest instead. Spar with them, hit pads and bags with them, isolate them and then integrate them into your overall arsenal. If you can regularly tag people in a specific (fairly safe) target in open and free sparring (with resistance) then you are getting close to being able to tag the throat instead. Move the face punches down six inches or the chest punches up six inches if you want to hit the throat for real. Think of the accuracy developed to hit the face in free-sparring as a short hand for hitting the throat instead. The target is not important but the accuracy to hit where you want in the chaos of free sparring is. As an example when I spar knockdown (where you can't hit the head) I elbow the deltoids and arms. Move a shot to the deltoid up a bit and it hits the head. That's an easier adjustment to make than applying an elbow that has never been used in free sparring at all (IMHO). This same method can be used to practice eye jabs with the fingers. Practice a jab punch instead and then when you really need to eye jab extend the fingers. If you can't regularly tag someone with a regular jab then you can't land an eye jab either. The skill to land one helps with landing the other. And the jab punch can be practiced with far more intensity. For an added twist get some of those full face masks and eye jab into the perspex eye covers. If you miss the eye protection you would have missed the eyes too. Eye gouging and fish hooking can be simulated in free rolling (if both parties are willing of course). Gain a dominant position while grappling and lay your hand across his face for 5 seconds. In reality that would have given you a opportunity in which to gouge (you can stop it there as a "win" or carry on sparring). If you can't get into a position where you have the control to PLACE your hands in the required area (rather than just flayling them into the area on the off chance they'll land) then chances are you wouldn't have the control to apply them for real either (without masses of luck). I've even sparred with biting allowed at an old club I trained at. It's not for everyone but can certainly be incorporated (with massive amounts of trust and control) into free rolling and grappling.
Gah! I may have overreacted, but it really looked like you read the first few posts of the thread and then voiced your frustrations. What I'm finding interesting in the thread, and you touched on it a little, is the varying vocabulary at work. Words like sparring and "alive" mean different things to different people. Heck, even seemingly self-apparent words like "pressure-testing" can mean different things. Maybe the thread would be more constructive if we could agree on definitions first.
Er PASmith, this is what we do Of course we learn techniques first, but yes we have completely freeform knife sparring. However, I don't like rubber knives, you cannot push or pull with the blade & they don't hurt enough
Good. I'm sure Matt T would be pleased. However do you also learn set patterns of response? Like sumbrada in Kali? It's stuff like that that Matt T calls "dead". You do this I do that...you do that I do this...repeat. That's one of the main things he rails against.
just a minor point that a disagree with but, if you look at Tank Abott in the first UFC's, he was just a brawler no training at all and he took out every TMAists he fought with absoloute ease, probably because they weren't ready for the ferocity and aggression he used (also note that barely any techniques were illegal then).
Salam GS, That's my first rule, we practiced with real and very sharp knife/parang/sword. No rubber or wood or dull stuff. It will makes student think hard before they are doing stupid things. Learn how to walk before trying to run is the motto. Do it slowly in a larger circle before doing it fast in a small circle. To Sean or whoever his name is and other who think UFC's is the greates test of fights...I agree to disagree. They are rule in UFC, most people who compete with UFC must obey by the rule for safety reason. When you cut down the techniques who favor wrestling and boxng. Any martial arts who want to compete must alter their training to comply with the rules. That's would be very difficult for true martial artist. To changes or to stop the flow of techniques in motion. So it does not matter how long one practice martial arts, he cannot win if he don't play the game. Many moons ago, I trained two of my student to competes in PKA tournament. They did very well, indeed. However, both of them trained in boxing with the ex golden globe prior to the matches. As far as fighting on the streets, if one trained and studied martial arts, it would be to his/her advantages to win a fight. But is not guarranty either. But at least they are not in the dark. One can practice religously, as hard as he/she can, but if one can't act, he/she will be in the big doo doo. You must act. Tristan
As i said the first UFC's had very little in the way of rules, even groin shots wre allowed. Also the gracies have fought many TMAists in no-rules fights, this is where many of the so called "dirty fighting techniques" that so many people rely on as opposed to actually training hard, dont work 10% as well as they thought they would.
I respect UFC, my buddy Eugene "Wolfman" Jackson does it, so I don't knock it, but the thing about Silat is that I can do it for another 40yrs looking as sharp as a Karambit..(Pun Intended), is that something a BJJ can do in his later yrs? Train very very hard.
