Once again, I had the often-repeated discussion/argument/holy-war of “what would you, Mr. Karate Guy, do against a ground fighter.” The guy didn’t want to take my “kill him before he grapples me” statement, so I found this demonstration for him. The UFC Octagon is commonly used as a battleground for making a case that karate doesn’t work against other styles, but my argument is how often do you see a real master of karate in the Octagon? Not often. You see many, many, mixed martial artists there that cherry pick concepts out of styles… essentially jacks of all trades.
Do they train hard? Yes. Are they big, burly, strong, and fast? In most cases, yes. Can they stand up to a knee strike to the face like this poor unfortunate man takes? Doubtful.
Please note: I am not saying that mixed martial arts lack value, or are somehow inferior. I do have the opinion, however, that the commonly held Style A vs Style B doesn’t hold a great deal of water when you are looking at UFC, because a lot of the styles presented there are personalized and don’t represent a true picture of either Style A or Style B. You can get some generalities, but even those are skewed by the rules that exist around that type of competition (which I found out have become more point-oriented than they were when I lost interest).
In short, I don’t claim to have an answer on how karate would do against an equally skilled ground fighter, but I have an inkling what I would do and I know I don’t see many of those tactics show up on UFC. Also, I haven’t seen many people that reflect what my concept is of a good karate person in a fight with a grappler, but I’d be interested to see any footage that anyone may have to light the path.
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