Jones has Great Kicks

During an instructor’s class that my Grand Master would hold every Wednesday, filled with all high ranking black belts and other school owners, the Grand Master said something quite prophetic. 

We would work on harder combinations, high level patterns and hard sparing drills, but then we would grapple. He was also a black belt in BJJ so that naturally worked its way in on special occasions. After we were done rolling we got to talking about the current state of MMA. Keep in mind this was ten years ago, but he came out and said something that at the time I thought was bold. Now I am paraphrasing but it went something like this;

“MMA has become boring and unrealistic. They start on their feet and then wind up rolling around on the ground until someone taps out.” Now we all realized that there were great strikers at the time, and that the majority of fights do end up on the ground, but what was so unrealistic about it was that they were allowed to just roll around until someone won. 

That’s not like a real fight at all. If you are on the ground in most situations that I have been in there are always outside, outside of the two fighting, elements involved. (I.e. friends, weapons, or cops…etc.) Trap wrestling would be more beneficial I suppose, as to BJJ. But anyways back to him, “An average martial artist can start training under a decent BJJ instructor for half a year and get to be ok, a year later they can be pretty good, after two years someone that has dedicated them self to the sport of BJJ can become really proficient. However, that’s not the case with strikers. A good striker, that is not of natural ability, can take years and years of studying.”

 

This made since to me, but he continued, “Right now BJJ is the new thing and none of the martial artists were expecting it. They did not know how to defend against it but over time they well all, quickly, learn either how to defend against it or how to do it. Then years later we are going to see strikers make a comeback.”

Now this might not have been that prophetic in the grand scheme of prophecy, but this is exactly what has happened. UFC 145 proves that. Not only is Rashad a great striker, but he was fighting another great striker for the title. And Jones defended that title with strikes. 

Here is a good piece that MSN did on Jones;

http://msn.foxsports.com/ufc/story/jon-bones-jones-succeeds-in-ufc-as-the-strong-silent-type-042312

Strikers are the future and will be for a long time, ground game is important, but don’t get caught up in the belief that TKD sucks and BJJ is the best. That has been going around for almost a decade now, and quite frankly I get sick of hearing it. The argument is weak. You can’t compare the strikes in TKD Olympic style or basic school sparing, that were derived from imitating the image of an ancient Korean tradition, to the striking taught in the forms and in actual combative situations. They are two completely different things. I do believe that TKD can pull it’s self out of the false impression it gives people but that you simply can’t translate most had strikes, from TKD’s deadly force maneuvers, into the ring of sport. Rather it is the sport of TKD or the sport of MMA. Some sport moves can be transitioned but most strikes in TKD combative theory are not real sportsman-like. 

Keep kicking.

Peace.