When you mention point karate to MMA fans, you generally get negative responses. The UFC's founding myth involves wrestlers and jiujitsu guys tearing through useless, floppy karate fighters who'd trained in a glorified game of tag. Even top tournament competitors like Chuck Norris aren't considered "real" fighters. I bought into a lot of this a while ago. I still do to some extent, but Machida and a few other old-school JKA karate fighters in MMA have encouraged me to take a second look. Karate in the "Golden Age" of point fighting -- early 60s to early 70s -- was a much, much tougher game. A lot of the fighters were ex-military. They'd usually trained in Korea and Okinawa during their tours of duty, and had brought the art back to the States. More importantly, they hit one another pretty hard. Full contact to the body was typical. Light contact (for a very charitable interpretation of "light") was reserved for the face. Which isn't such a bad idea when you have limited training equipment and no MMA gloves. A few tournaments did allow full contact bareknuckle competition, like the 1968 championships. This video should give you a pretty good flavor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mA16yBHcws Oh, and notice that they're using judo throws in competition. Unlike the generation who came after them, a lot of the 1960s guys cross-trained. Some even came from judo before switching over. Black Belt Magazine polled the karate competitors from the 1960s to late 70s about the greatest fighters of that era. This composite list should give you a pretty good idea of the best competitors from that era. It also gives a good cross-section of what I'm talking about: 1. Joe Lewis 2. Chuck Norris 3. Bill Wallace 4. Howard Jackson 5. Jeff Smith 6. Mike Stone 7. Skipper Mullins 8. Ron Marchini 9. Fred Wren 10. Tony Tulleners / Thomas LaPuppet With very limited research time, I discovered the following: * At least five of these guys had a grappling background. Probably more, but I didn't do a lot of digging. Lewis wrestled in high school and trained in judo alongside karate in Okinawa. Norris had a brown belt in judo. Wallace wrestled in high school, and played judo until he ripped a muscle in his leg. Marchini was a judo brown belt. Thomas LaPuppet also started out in judo. Additionally, Norris and Marchini trained with Gene Lebell later on. You can even see the judo influence in a lot of contemporary karate manuals: Tulleners taught sweeps and hooking the legs, Norris integrated sweeps and shoulder throws into his arsenal, etc. * Eight of these guys are former military (four Marines, two Army, two USAF). A ninth -- Tulleners -- worked as an undercover policeman. This seems to have been pretty common in those days, and helps explain American karate's obsession with regimentation. * At least four of them went on to extremely successful careers in kickboxing. Usually American style, admittedly. This not only further confirms an aptitude for full contact, but also points to the reason that point karate became a game of tag: a lot of the tougher competitors deserted it when kickboxing became available. You can see the rot setting in as early as the late 70s/early 80s. Now, I'm the first to admit that these fighters had limitations. Most tournaments didn't allow leg kicks, which meant that fighters could get away with deep stances. The point system rewarded first strikes over counters, which encouraged a lot of feinting. Probably excessively so. And they mostly move in straight lines. Not much lateral footwork. These tournaments did produce an interesting skillset, though. 60s point fighters seem to understand distance and timing very, very well. Each man had his own arsenal, and the short, explosive matches against multiple opponents on the same night put a premium on adaptability. Their attacks may have been linear, but they were also masters at closing the gap. If you want to see these guys for yourself, just search for their names on Youtube. The film quality's crap, unfortunately. Most of them only show up in 1960s home movies. Even so, you can see the things I'm talking about: two guys standing at pretty long range, each trying to out-feint the other, followed by an explosive lunge from one guy that clears a pretty impressive amount of distance. Unlike their successors, they actually have power in a lot of those strikes. Watch the side kicks especially. You'll see a guy fly backward every so often. Anyway, it's not MMA or Muay Thai, but it's worth a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEixgkBNCgU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4XlcFA1VJA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuOWzhcRh48 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT1YNHLIxP0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaa8mv_bsy8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wACj__4Kguk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo3XZlA23Gg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2vRxARNfyM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZITmRFaz_0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KQDvTwYeyo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXCYZEbF1jU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOjqz2SWdls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJkWeUaRcYg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIMaTSalZRo
Urquidez was awesome. Kickboxing champion, top point karate fighter, judo blackbelt, and he won a quasi-MMA event in Hawaii with open weight classes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yblJ9VqHW8w
Nice post, good to see ya around CT i'm not around much anymore. Chuck Norris was/is a legit badass. Pretty sure Van Damme had a good amount of point fighting matches along with standard kickboxing.
Yeah Van Damme has a good record in Karate although having watched one of his matches the ruleset it did seem questonable. I think there was more ringouts\restarts than scoring strikes thrown. He defeated everyone he fought (lost one or two but won rematches) and I believe was the European Champ in his weight class, which is a pretty high level. I don't know the sort of rules he competed under in Kickboxing, whether you could kick below the belt etc. He did try (and supposedly still is) to organize a Kickboxing match (minus elbows, not sure about knees) with a Gold Medal winning Thai fighter (96 Olympics). I tink the guy is a weight class below him but is significantly younger. I don't think it will ever happen but Van Damme has balls if it does. Actually now that I think about it makes sense why his movies were all about powerful one-shot counters rather than combinations, that's the thinking behind Karate. I have a hard time believing any Traditional fighting style is inherently flawed. It's the commercialization and the softening of the rules which over time reduces the techniques more applicable to no rules fights and emphasizes the techniques which take advantage of limiting rules. Lyoto Machida shows the tactics of Karate in a practical application, lots of movement and precise single shot counters. I'd love to see Van Damme spar with Machida, of course he wouldn't have been in his class even in his physical prime. Supposedly Van Damm was an awesome athlete in his prime, which is believable considering how athletic he still at 50 in spite of years of drug abuse etc. Supposedly from a standing start he could jump over a volleyball net.
It seems like the rise of MMA has taken away a lot of the mysterious\magical element of Martial Arts which I miss. You'd hear stories from guys who went and trained with old yet elite guys like, "dude it was like magic, I just couldn't move him. I was way stronger but I just couldn't get him off the ground... I didn't really in Chi and all that stuff until that day. I'm sticking with this Martial Arts **** it's unbelievable." ****... this discussion is bringing back all these memories of watching Martial Arts movies about secret Ninja Societies and the brotherhood you felt just talking to other guys who trained and how much respect you had for the old masters." Benny Urquidez was awesome. Me and a buddy hired Grosse Point Blank just to watch his fight scene. Man... I gotta start training again.
