Should martial arts always keep changing or be kept in traditional ways?

Been thinking about this some more...
There's a style of fighting where fighters kick and punch each other full power in the body but don't punch each other in the face. They wear traditional looking uniforms and it happens on a matted area. It was founded by a Korean.

Now...is that Knockdown karate or WTF Taekwondo?

Because from a simple written description, mentioning some superficial similarities, maybe bringing in some static pictures that don't fully convey movement or a bout as a whole or looking at a sculpture or two, but without actually seeing the two styles in action live they could be mistaken for the same thing.
When in actual fact they are stylistically very different and the actual bouts and "style" don't look similar at all.

 

The last words of dying organizations

'But we have always done it this way'

I think maintaining some tradition is ok and beneficial. As for change, it is usually inevitable and a majority of time, it can be beneficial.

Getting caught up in the hype of new things and navigating your way through the hype, can be daunting.

 

Sounds like Kyokushin?

 

I immediately thought of this when talk of the evolution of boxing came up.

However, without buying the biography this is sourced from I can't find any corroborating evidence. I have seen that he fought other "counter-punchers", so I'm not sure if he entirely came up with the idea of evasion.

 

I haven't check the dates from the other video, perhaps he was just well known in the UK for it, or popularised the idea of evasion in the UK.

A bit like naseem hamed being very well known for evasion, yet he didn't invent it.

 

Thing is though...in those times boxing wasn't so much a test of skill but a test of gameness.
The rules of boxing and the rules of dog fighting were very alike. The winning boxer (or dog) wasn't the one who did the most damage but the one who came to scratch while his opponent didn't (although obviously being damaged makes it a lot harder to come up to scratch).
As such while "evasion" may have not been a new idea (people in their first boxing lesson naturally try not to get hit) he implemented it at a time when it wasn't in vogue and in many ways was probably frowned upon and going against the prevailing "style" expression of the day.
And the counter punchers he fought may have blocked, absorbed punishment, used stop hits, etc and other forms of counter punching while not exactly being "evasive" per se?

 

Who knows?

All I'm saying is information about it seems thin on the ground.

 

What's the biography called?

Maybe I can get a hold of a copy!

 

Which ironically is what we've been saying about the details of boxing through history.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Richmond-Unchained-Biography-Sporting-Superstar/dp/1445644894

Here's an article about it by the author: Bill Richmond: The black boxer who wowed the court of George IV

 

Cool, I'll have a look once I'm home.


This is legally free

Bill Richmond Exclusive Black History Download

As is this
Black Terror: Bill Richmond’s Revolutionary Boxing

(This seems to be exactly the type of source we need, only read the first page so far though)