haha yeah...and the complete sense of helplessness. The first few times on the deck you feel so tight too and completely fight every single thing with all your strength instead of trying to look for positions.
I think one of the issues people have when taking styles and putting them into an MMA ruleset is that they all tend to look similar. Then people put the label Muay Thai on it. Even the announcers do it sometimes - they won't call it kicking, they say "his muay thai is good". Unfortunately, half the time this is an insult to Muay Thai as a martial art - because the fighter sucks half the time. A leg kick and hitting with the shin does not make a martial art. As with any striking art, in the modern MMA world you have to be able to grapple, throw, punch, and defend yourself at all these areas as well. Cross training is inevitable, but thats true of no just taekwondo. I think a lot of people see a kick to the leg and think Muay Thai. A knee, muay thai. An elbow, etc. This is not always correct. A taekwondo man must learn to attack the legs, and to use knees and elbows - training for a different kind of fight. It doesn't make him any less of a taekwondo user or mean he is suddenly doing Muay Thai since he uses knees, elbows, and kicks to the leg like Thai fighters do. Hitting with the shin since you are fighting barefoot, and the other changes that need to be made. Going to an MMA gym with a strong basis in TKD, there will be things you need to add, and things to change, but there is no reason that you would have to start over again because what you learned doesn't work. It just must be modified. Feel like I rambled a bit there, sorry.
Some really good points there. Everyone needs to adjust their own fighting style in order to make their attacks more effective. Remember Toney versus Couture There's very few people who are great at everything in MMA. Many know that kicking isn't their strength so focus on other areas. Can you remember the recent Diaz/Condit fight. I know Diaz has a 'rock em sock em' type boxing style but it's very effective. What I've noticed is that he never throws kicks with intention. Perhaps he is doing this so that the other fighter gets in his boxing range or so that he can lure them into a takedown, but his kicks are always half-arsed attempts. When I trained in Thailand a few years ago I was surprised that no thai fighters had ever trained in anything else. I found this out myself when doing light sparring with them. They would always be much quicker than me with traditional thai kicks etc and always killed me in the clinch regardless of how small they were but whenever they came in close I instinctively threw a sidekick and they didn't know how to defend it. This is no slight on them at all (and no gauge on how good my sidekick is haha) - I'm sure if I had trained with the same guy every day he would quickly make adjustments and learned to avoid it. It just shows that previous experience in another martial art, regardless of what it is, will help you when you learn another art.
UFC 1 Or 2 Don't know if someone already mentioned this since I didn't read the whole thread But Kimo had a TKD background. He gave Royce Gracie all he could handle in fact had kimo not worn a pony tail he may have beat royce. Royce grab his ponytail and held on throughout the fight. No rules in the early UFC's.
Whilst I agree on the second point (although remember Kimo had a good 50lbs on Royce) I thought Kimo made the TKD thing up?
Dont think you rambled, you just mentioned whats on your mind. And to be fair, yes the Commentators do sometimes get it wrong but thats on the spot calling, they have researched all their fighters and Joe Rogan himself is a TKD BB and you can tell he has a scrutinizing eye for it. He changed his tune very recently as well, as early as TUF3-Finale he mentions that Danny Abbaddi is a TKDer and states at times TKD is not effective (Stephan Bonnar being the exception..TUF1-Final) Move along a few years and we have the likes of Lyoto Machida and Anthony Pettis where he now states more or less what you mentioned above, come in the sport prepared for the ruleset and you'll do fine. I do sometimes find it funny that people come in thinking "well I trained in (add singular MA here)" and think they can go into MMA and be suprised that they will A) get punched/kicked or B) get thrown. Its like bringing a Badminton Racket into a tennis match. You have similarities but its not going to work.....and its the same if you brought a Tennis Racket into a Badminton game.
Yeah and the rest Royce was tired as well as going up ironically someone who at the time was a little more well rounded... (only in the 90s can Kimo Leopold be said to have a little more game) He was way much bigger, stronger, crazier and kind of knew what he was doing. He lost, but he was definately better off. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkKJvL_mjRc"]Kimo Leopoldo vs royce gracie - YouTube[/ame] Oh how we have come a long way..............
Rank I think Kimo was really a TKD stylist however media reports indicate that he was not a Black Belt. The promoters upped his TKD rank to make things interesting.
But his TKD was used for approximately...oooh 0% of the fight (unless you include that godawful haymaker that ventilated the arena) and then he relied on his back-up skillset of "250lb steroid monkey with bad intentions" I would not be holding him up as a paragon of the art!
I guess maybe I just watched a few fights and with bad commentary or something. It really turned me off from watching. I do a lot of reading, watching, practicing, and I know what things are supposed to look like. I may not practice muay thai but I know the difference between that, karate, taekwondo, and some guy who is just throwing knees because his coach told him to. All of them can work but to not differentiate them (or worse, to group them into the incorrect category) was disappointing to me.
While I think TKD doesnt have an impressive overall presence in high-level MMA, a very good friend of mine Cam McHargue, used to hold an IFL world championship title; Ive had mutiple detailed discussions with him about how his base art was TKD, and the only person he really sees as his true teacher was his TKD instructor. You can definitely see the TKD when you watch his highlight reels. So, at minimum, there are isolated pockets of TKD being a presence in serious MMA...
Often its just about logic and how good you want to be. At a pro level every little thing counts. If you spend years soing kicks or strikes from a TKD stance be it sporting or traditional, when you come to MMA and you have to consiier grappling defence to you lower body and upper body (turtle neck for clinching,shoulder up for chin defense, wider stance for takedown attack and defense,two fisted fighter for hand fighting and striking) it becomes harder to now do all the things you learn in TKD. Its just plain logic and tactics. Now the tweaking is not as easy and if you in a gym with others who are adapting faster, then its fair enough to go that route than spend years alone adapting TKD. And the irony is that you would come to the same conclusions anyway and no one would tell it was TKD anymore, just MMA.
My opinion Generally TKD is not highly used as a stand up in MMA although is also an effective form of striking. As a TKD practitioner what do you think the reason why TDO is not widely used in MMA? Know how powerful a muay thai kick is click here
Here is a video of a polish ITF guy Lukasz Jurkowski who has had success under different rule sets. It is a best of video but gives an idea of what he is capable of. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JRKeJprBxs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JRKeJprBxs[/ame] PS watch at the very end, TKO via back kick
