Kind of confused why this is on HN, but I practice Jujitsu and would just like to say, it is perfectly fine to think your style of martial arts should be compared to Yoga. Don't however compare your art to MMA.
Also, this article really makes MMA sound like a brutal no holds barred sport, which is just incorrect. MMA is as beautiful as all the other previous martial arts (I know, I know, MMA is a conglomerate of all of them). People have spent the last 20 years trying to say MMA is a blood sport. This is just another attempt to pose it as such.
I've watched lots of MMA fights. Obviously, there are rules to the sport. But, to suggest it's not brutal is a bit much. It's brutal. That's why people watch it. No one turns an MMA match on hoping to see a beautiful display of athleticism. They tune in to see someone get their ass whopped.
> No one turns an MMA match on hoping to see a beautiful display of athleticism.
I think that's a bit unfair. I don't watch MMA much, but it's interesting when I do, and I don't watch to see someone get hurt or to see a lot of blood. If I want to see that, I can go back and look at any of the first few UFCs. Just as with boxing, there's a lot of skill involved in MMA fights. Some people tune in for the technical display, some people tune in for the sport of it, some people tune in because they want to see a fight, and that might include someone getting hurt. There are many reasons to watch.
I also practice BJJ but think of MMA as a pretty brutal no holds barred sport. The 2 things are not the same (although often talked about as being the same). BJJ is a (relatively) narrowly defined practice. MMA is a sport where you can bring any fighting practice or combination into the ring (and the successful fighters bring many). BJJ is a big part of MMA, but arguably no longer the defining skill needed to succeed (especially in the past 5 years or so).
" People have spent the last 20 years trying to say MMA is a blood sport."
Because it is. In MMA when you are bleeding, the fight pretty much continues. In nearly every other organized form of martial art, blood stops the match. If you can't stop bleeding, you forfeit. This has been seen as a good idea in terms of sanitation and infection since the original Olympics in Athens. MMA is a lot of things, and uses the techniques from a lot of martial arts; if you like it, that's your call, no judgement. But MMA itself is not a martial art, its human cock fighting, it is a blood sport.
What do you mean by that is has no form? I feel this might just be that you're not used to watching these matches. It's the same as someone not familiar with soccer watching a soccer match, it's just some guys running around kicking a ball randomly. There is technique, tactics and strategy involved in MMA. As evidenced by this Tai Chi master being worked to the ground quickly and effectively. In my opinion the MMA fighter demonstrated excellent form.
Arts and sports have constraints, MMA has none right ? I don't say it's easy, just that it's first in the coma loses.
In soccer you don't score a goal because you said so. In most martial arts you use dedicated forms and styles which impose constraints on how the match evolves. In Chess you have limited movements.. etc etc
MMA has plenty of constraints. First of all there a bunch of techniques that are illegal (details differ slightly between organisations). Secondly you are fighting in an enclosed space (again details differ) so you have to know how to use that to your advantage. Thirdly there are time limits and round limits so you have to know how to manage you time and energy. Finally there is a scoring system that you have to understand so you know how to score points in the case that no one finishes the fight in the allotted time.
Also if you're going to do MMA for living you have to take into account that being entertaining is just as important as winning for your bottom line.
I understand your point, I look absurd, but I can revert back to the answer above, spatial constraint is not a sport qualifying constraint. Or you can say it's a sport because you have to have two legs.
MMA limitations seems to be, do not attack sensitive parts and do not kill the opponent. There's nothing to master other than survival. Every people trying to use one genre/style, ended up smashed by the people that went purely for pragmatics (put the guy down, smash his face until submission). My (own personal subjective perceptional) definition of art cannot accept this. See for instance dancing has some innate aesthetics, moving is not enough to be dance. Random noise is mostly not music.
Most direct human vs human sports have a space constraint, but not all sports do. Hunting, for example, doesn't have a space constraint (not a feasible one, at least. Sure, you might be constrained by a state, but all sports are currently constrained by our planet). You did specifically mention fighting sports though.
> MMA limitations seems to be, do not attack sensitive parts and do not kill the opponent. There's nothing to master other than survival.
Perhaps you would like to see this list of MMA rules[1]? It seems there are quite a few rules other than what you listed, and there are a few ways to end the fight. There are, for example, technical knock-outs, and doctors can call the fight.
> Every people trying to use one genre/style, ended up smashed by the people that went purely for pragmatics (put the guy down, smash his face until submission).
That isn't what I remember seeing every time when UFC first started. What I remember is that certain styles were immediately shown to be more practical when the setting is one-on-one and with less constraints that are purely to enforce a style. Grappling quickly showed its strength, and those people that had no answer for that found themselves at a severe disadvantage. Striking is useful, but has a very specific useful range, and it generally does not include "on top of me". The sport relatively quickly moved towards submission and/or maneuvering your opponent such that you can strike but not be grappled.
Just as in boxing, where a single opening can lead to one or two devastating hits that can decide or at least greatly influence a fight, in MMA the same can happen. Much of the fight is about the strategy and tactics of maneuvering into that position.
> My (own personal subjective perceptional) definition of art cannot accept this.
I don't think you need to reassess your definition, but I think it's possible you are making assertions without enough knowledge to know how true they are. I rarely watch MMA or Boxing, maybe once a year, but still I can see that quite a bit of skill, strategy and tactics goes into what the fighters are attempting. To the degree that some fighters undoubtedly train and incorporate more specific techniques into their current moves based on their opponents strengths and weaknesses.
> I understand your point, I look absurd, but I can revert back to the answer above, spatial constraint is not a sport qualifying constraint.
Perhaps not, but a set of victory conditions that includes a point scoring system seems pretty clearly to make an athletic competition a sport (or any competition, athletic or not, a game), even when there a game-ending, victory-granting conditions which bypass scoring.
Ah its probably because you've only seen fighters kicking, boxing, and smashing each other, no? There is one crucial part of MMA you are forgetting: grappling
Grappling is more like chess, you need to make the proper position and holds to execute the next move. At the same time, you must avoid opening yourself to critical locks: kneebar, choke, kimura lock etc. A smart fighter, for example, can render a stronger opponent to submission if he has him on a "kneebar".
One of my favorite fighter is Sakuraba who fights smartly (He comes up with counter-attacks on-the-fly). His fights are entertaining and full of sportsmanship. If you're into it, google Sakuraba vs Gracie family.
the constraints are not getting whopped by the other guy. you can try everything that falls inside the rules (no biting, kicking in the nuts, and so on), and your constraints are how good the other guy is at beating you up
MMA might be a beautiful martial art but it's still a blood sport. Young men beating each other's faces into a bloody pulp and doing their best to give the other guy a serious (and cumulatively permanently damaging) concussion between their fists and the ring floor. I don't know how that wouldn't be a blood sport.
I think the problem is that china is lagging behind the whole "modernized, scientific fight training is way better than romanticize traditional fighting technique" thing and the KungFu novel just increased the myth. Which leads to that certain percentage of people joining the club/learning martial art because they thought they can be real strong after training. One can image that it may cause this industrial collapse if they admitted "this is nothing more than your typical jogging/yoga/whatever sport" publicly.
16 year MMA and jiu jitsu practitioner here. The secret of success at MMA is learning how to control your opponent in ways that protects yourself. This is what the Gracie family was proving when they created the UFC. Modern fighters such as Damien Maia and Ryan Hall are taking virtually no damage in their fights.
As you learn to control your opponent the sport actually becomes very safe - far safer than snowboarding, mountain biking, etc.
Damien Maia barely deals or takes any damage, he just effortlessly takes people to the ground, chokes them out, and they tap and both walk away fine. It's magnificent to watch.
This is why I still find jiu jitsu so beautiful - it requires a basic level of skill to beat someone's ass, but it's another thing entirely to control them so well that inflicting damage becomes optional.
I once heard it described as "drunken uncle" martial arts. When your drunk uncle is being an ass at christmas dinner, you want an escalating scale of options, ranging from "suddenly he's in the living room unharmed and doesn't know why" and moving through "he's in a great deal of pain but hasn't taken any damage as you escort him out the door" to "that spiral fracture in your arm is going to take 6 months to heal". Not all forms teach that kind of finesse.
The difference is that it's suspected that boxers and NFL players actually receive more head injuries because of the padding, whereas the lack of padding on hands and heads means people's heads aren't being bobbed around too much, either because it hurts too much to hit heads as hard or because the cushions aren't acting as springs.
Also, this article really makes MMA sound like a brutal no holds barred sport, which is just incorrect. MMA is as beautiful as all the other previous martial arts (I know, I know, MMA is a conglomerate of all of them). People have spent the last 20 years trying to say MMA is a blood sport. This is just another attempt to pose it as such.