Back in the days before the UFC, cage fighting, or any other events that consisted of two styles going against each other, people really thought that the only way to fight was to do crazy spinning kicks or fancy kung fu moves to beat somebody. It's not anyone's fault necessarily; hollywood portrayed young asian actors like Jackie Chan, Jet li and many others as small short asian men who could beat up anybody who came their way using ancient styles of kung fu or the equivalent. For me personally, I took up martial arts as a child because I wanted to look cool; specifically I wanted to be a power ranger. All the fancy and crazy kicks and the sweet flips, I thought that stuff was cool (and i still do to an extent). I mean, why give the people something boring and unrealistic to watch on television; people already immediately start booing at UFC events when fighters "stall" on the ground when to the trained eye, they are actually attempting to get in a better position to end the fight.
Grappling, in my opinion, (you don't have to believe anything I say you know) is by far one of the most underlooked aspects in many martial arts today. Now, it's not as bad as it was before, where people thought that their ultimate stiking style (typically taekwondo, kung fu, and karate guys claim this) would not allow them to be taken down to the ground. Still, there are some people today that think the same reasoning and feel like grappling is a waste of their time. Those people should do themselves a favor and actually....test their theory. That is a major problem with alot of martial art systems today (especially those of traditional systems) that they don't test what they "think" will work. As I mentioned in a post the other day, one step systems kill martial arts. They literally are interpretations of fighting that never get tested and don't work quite frankly. But I digress. Grappling is essential to martial arts as 90% of street fights end up on the ground. Still, you never want to be on the ground in a street fight, but you don't want to be clueless right?
Have a great day,
Martial Arts Tutor
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