36
Kung-Fu fighters pop up from time to time in MMA style fights. Early on in the UFC, there were a small number of kung-fu fighters. But by the end of its first year, you didn't see any. Why?
Well there's a reason for that. The first UFC's were open to all. They were very much about putting style vs. style. So they had karate, Taekwondo, kung-fu, wing-chun, ...
22
Wing Chun is uncommon in MMA for three major reasons. First, its practitioners generally shun sparring. Second, its practitioners generally shun realistic wrestling, throwing, and groundwork practice. Third, the skill Wing Chun focuses the most time on – hand trapping – is a small part of fighting in general, and is easily overshadowed by boxing or clinch ...
18
KUNG FU, MMA, and UFC
Roy Nelson, a top tier UFC fighter, commented on his kung fu background:
The Lohan school of Shaolin, I actually got started in my Sifu’s garage. I think I was 15 1/2, 16. Kung-fu is the root for I would say 95% of all martial arts. I practice it every day.
(With Sticky Hands) basically you’re just working with their body movement, ...
14
As others have said, a knockout is typically not the result of a blow to the nose, but to the chin.
The brain is basically a loose spongy thing trapped inside your skull. When you receive a hard blow to the head, the brain will hit the inside of your skull – much like when you shake a nut, and you can hear it rattles against the shell. This will ...
14
Sanshou (similar to sanda) is a major competitive outlet for kung fu styles, allowing kicks, punches, kick catches, and throws. Several fighters with sanshou experience have fought in the UFC, most notably Cung Le. Zhang Tiequan appears to also have some sanshou experience, but today seems to fight primarily as a grappler.
There are a small number of kung ...
14
I'm not convinced it was martial arts that caused your bad posture. There are other potential causes. Beware the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
But sure, martial arts can cause bad posture. Kelly Starrett and Joe Rogan discuss this at leeeeength on this podcast, especially circa 46:30. If you hunch to protect yourself from strikes and you spend a lot ...
12
I do BJJ/grappling and stand up jujitsu, and I've discovered the following works best for long hair:
Pull your hair into a tight, low ponytail on the side of your head, not straight back, else when you grapple it will get trapped under your head on the ground.
Quickly braid the hair and secure with a second band!
It's nowhere near the work of the full ...
11
This is really simple. Not every impact to the head (whether jaw or nose) knocks someone unconscious. Plenty of soccer players get hit hard by the ball in the face and don't get knocked out.
You're more likely to be knocked out if you're weak, if you don't see the impact coming, or if you have a history of being knocked out (that is, people can develop ...
11
A common precaution is to wear wrestling headgear, which is designed to protect the ears, while practicing. Cauliflower ear is caused by impacts or rubbing on the ear. Headgear will reduce both of these.
11
Today we focused on some details of escaping mount. This involves controlling the opponent's hips with your arms. Good luck doing that in a MMA fight when your head is being caved in with ground and pound.
Being under mount is bad. There's no rule that says that you can escape without exposing yourself to strikes or submissions. Saying "I want to escape ...
10
There are 2 places where you can check a kick : the knee and the shin. If you check with your own shin bone, you are creating a shin to shin contact and, intuitively, one can expect the damage to be similar for both opponents. However, while the location of the hit will be similar, the results, at least if you want to talk about physics, will be very ...
10
The question asks which is more effective: Doing MMA or doing multiple different martial arts.
There are a couple of different interpretations about what is meant by "effective" in this context, however. First, it can refer to how well all the different styles of martial arts are integrated into a cohesive system whereby all the techniques work together and ...
10
I'm a Taekwondo instructor. I would happily make an exception for a special case like this, put your phone on the loudest volume, somewhere at the side of the class where it's easily hearable. Even tell everyone that it's a special case for this phone to be on, if they hear it please make Danielle aware of it.
I would genuinely say just speak to your ...
10
Television and movies give people impressions of things that are never corrected.
What is the first thing an American thinks of when they hear "wrestling"? World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which is definitely more entertainment, showmanship, and athleticism than wrestling or martial art. Wrestlers are enormous muscled men who jump off the ringside and ...
9
There are no good solutions. Long hair gets in the way of training unless knotted or braided, and even then it is liable to wiggle free and get in the way during hard training.
All external tools--nets, headbands, bandanas, caps--are liable to come off. Well-executed braids and buns are slightly more reliable, but frequently come out anyway.
You must ...
9
Defending punches by putting a glove against your face is not a successful strategy without big gloves. With MMA's small gloves or without gloves at all, it is a Bad Idea. To be truthful, it's not an optimal strategy in boxing or kickboxing, either: you still take a substantial impact.
Instead, work your rolling, bobbing and weaving, slipping, and parrying, ...
9
One thing to realize is that you have two factors that affect blocking a strike: 1) reaction time, and 2) tracking.
Reaction time is the time taken by your brain to notice the strike coming towards you, to calculate an appropriate response, and to begin to move to counter it. (Notice I said "begin" to move, not the complete movement.)
If a strike has a ...
9
Wrestling isn't often seen as a martial art because it has been primarily pushed as a sport - much in the same way most people don't consider archery, javelin, or shot put, as war arts, though those are clearly origins for those sports.
However, one of the benefits of having achieved mainstream status is that it is not in danger of dying out or losing a ...
9
It's certainly possible to hit someone while they work on a takedown. It sounds like you're asking specifically about countering wrestling shots, where the grappler attacks the hips and legs, rather than clinch takedowns generally, so I'll focus on that. (Nevertheless, remember that upper-body clinch takedowns are common and effective as well.) Punishing ...
8
There are all kinds of places on the body where fighters can get hit (the nose, the jaw, the solar plexus, the thigh, the liver, the kidneys, etc.), and each one of those triggers not just pain but subconscious, automatic physical reactions and altered psychological states. The pain is really the least of anyone's problems in this situation. It's the other ...
8
Your shin can break if you kick someone very hard and they block just right and all conditions align against you. You can break your hand punching someone, even aiming to soft targets like the ribs. You can blow out your knee throwing someone with ouchigari. You can get concussed into unconsciousness taking someone down with a double-leg if they time their ...
8
The record is Mirko Filipović's cumulative record as of each fight. It is not a recording of what happened in that particular fight.
The breakdown is:
Wins - Losses - Draws (No contests)
Taking your example 2 as a concrete example:
34–11–2 (1)
34 wins
11 losses
2 draws
1 no contest (fight stop by officials without a winner)
8
It is also a simple fact of aging. You could look at any sport, and see the same thing. Champions in any sport at extended ages are outliers. Some examples of these outliers would be:
Al Oerter - Olympic Champion in track and field, winning medals in events into his mid 40's
Gordie Howe - NHL player, played in 5 decades, last game at 52 (All Star electee ...
8
Grappling is not predominant in modern MMA, and hasn't been for a decade or two, so the "matches seem to pivot on one competitor being forced against the cage...moving to the ground, and decided by definitive locks or holds" premise of the question is invalid. MMA matches are overwhelmingly striking contests.
Professional competitors in the modern ...
7
You say you are young.
If you are still in middle or high school you should join the wrestling team.
This will be free daily training, and you will have bi weekly competitions if not more often. So Once you can fight MMA legally (18 usually) you will have already had 100 or so competitions, which is a huge advantage when it comes to the adrenaline dump of ...
7
I used to play water polo in high school, and some of the lifeguarding maneuvers (such as taking the person under the water with you) can lessen these things.
The other thing that worked well for me (especially once I established a reputation for it) is if they are willing to choke you, then they should be willing to suffer the consequences. I would grab ...
7
When you train MMA you train each specific art that the gym offers: Brazilian jiujitsu (or, rarely, other forms of grappling), wrestling, some form of striking (usually muay Thai or MMA striking). You generally still train each constituent art separately at least some of the time.
The concern is that training several arts at once will slow your advancement ...
7
From a physics perspective, one way to think about striking is impulse:
To have an effective strike, you want to:
Maximize mass. The normal advice is use your whole body to strike. This means that you do not want to punch simply by using your arm. Most styles deliver more mass behind a strike by rotating the hips. You can also step while striking. It helps ...
7
I second coinbird's motion: don't do this.
There is a theory called Wolff's Law, which is a medical concept first studied by a German surgeon Julius Wolff back in the 1800's, and he found that microfractures of a bone develop under extreme conditioning, and the body responds by shoring up the fractures with calcium. The body, ever efficient as it is, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
