I found this when browsing through Sherdog: It's an intriguing idea--that one of the major reasons for the success of MMA gyms is that the talent has filtered through to them. There is a great deal to be said about MMA's cross-training approach, but even in the 50's-80's period there were significant numbers of challenge matches and cross-style pollination going on. Judo and karate went VERY frequently hand-in-hand (as Urquidez and Bluming could attest, among others). Kyokushin tournaments were attended by worldwide MA'ists, and hard contact was the norm in tournaments. Boxing theory was being incorporated into karate. Today, "we" have mixed techniques and MA's more effectively and tested a bit more realistically. It's undeniable that MMA is thus far the closest that a sport can get to actual hand-to-hand fighting. But I suspect our predecessors in the "golden age" of martial arts had a few fighters worthy of competing at a top level today.
The golden days of martial arts is yet too come. It will make the peak of interest in the 60's and 70's seem small in comparison. When MMA truly breaks into the mainstream, martial arts will become more widley used and become part of our culture. Although with MMA we are likely to see the decline of the traditional martial arts, especially ones such as karate and take-kwon do that have proven to be pretty ineffectual in real combat situations.
Depends which Karate and which Taekwondo you're referring to. I imagine the Kyokushin guys and traditionalist Taekwondo people would tend to disagree with you. There are many, many approaches that have yet to be integrated into MMA. It's an incomplete product--it's managed to integrate the most effective couple of systems (boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, BJJ, to a lesser extent catch), but it's still missing useful components. Everything from Harimau to Lua has yet to be examined and cross-trained in seriously...which would save MMA fighters the trouble of figuring these all out on their own. The problem is that many styles (Wing Chun and traditional Aikido are perfect examples) have no real competition or sparring. Even though they may have a few useful principles or techniques to contribute, they will NEVER be able to apply them against MMA fighters because they don't spar hard. All those techniques wasted because of lackluster practitioners. When MMA fighters clobber these guys, they assume that it means that boxing/wrestling/BJJ/MT is THE ultimate approach, whereas it's merely an extremely well-rounded and effective one backed up by hard training. The difference may seem like semantics, but it isn't. Others are effective, but too obscure to care about. Not many people are interested in Indonesian Silat styles, Tomiki-style Aikido, or Tai Chi used in a Kuoshu format. It only took a decade for MMA to become coherent and uniform, but it will take ages before it's truly "complete". And I hope that they don't move too far away from traditional martial arts (as boxing does), since insularity will cut them off from a few useful techniques. Fedor would be favored to beat any other martial artist under MMA or "no rules" situations. His art is better-rounded and more efficient than everyone else's...plus he's a tough, amazing fighter. But that is not the same thing as saying that his art is complete, or that he couldn't be improved by a few obscure odds n' ends floating around in the traditional arts.
Perhaps when MMA becomes massive in terms of worldwide exposure we will see far more competitors from more diverse countries intsead of the standard Brazil/USA/East Europe trio.
The problem is MMA is still being marketted as Extreme and No holds barred fighting.Until this stops i doubt it will ever truly become mainstream unless theres a massive crossover style with global appeal ala Mike Tyson Ali Bruce Lee etc
man MMA err I mean the UFC has 2-3 big years and you are making statements like these, wow. Dont get ahead of yourself or anything. Im sure kickboxing thought it would be huge on the global level and out do boxing during the kickboxing boom, but wait what happened?
Well MMA is much closer to heart of human beings. It was THE sport in ancient olympics. Now its just making its way back into mainstream. I think its here to stay. It will eventually level with boxing in few decades imo.
and im not saying it wont, but to have people writing it off as the next best thing thing since sliced bread is moronic. It has already peaked and is beginning to plateau if not drop off in America, which should be expected, but MMA fanboys still think it is going to take over the NFL, lol It will be like boxing, it will have peaks and valleys.
