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Tournaments are horrible these days!

Writer's picture: thomaskenpo925thomaskenpo925

Updated: Jan 27




Now I know that this title may offend some people. I honestly cannot say that I care a whole lot about that. I may care about YOU, but not your belief that that modern tournaments are good.


Remember everyone, a tournament sparring match is supposed to reasonable substitute for a real fight. What I am seeing these days, especially at the Black Belt level is horrible. In the good old days, not just the so called " Blood an Guts" era, sparring focused on clean and powerful technique. Nowadays, the so called fighters are just looking to touch their opponent first and that is enough to score a point. All of the way up until the early 90s, there was something called the "Trembling Shock" rule. If you hit me clearly in the chest, but without the force to move my body or make me react, the point would not have been called. And THAT is how it should stay. If you are in a fight, merely hitting an opponent is NOT enough. The idea is to hit them hard enough to deter them from wanting to continue the fight.


I now see so called Black Belts with technique so slow and lacking of power that it does not even move their opponent in any way at all. I think that the reason that people disrespect traditional Karate and other striking arts, is that they are nowhere close to what a real fight is like. In my opinion, that is why Karate is losing ground in popularity to Muay Thai and Boxing. Now, there is NOTHING wrong with Muay Thai, I enjoy watching it. These are styles that still emphasize realistic sparring and high pressure testing of their techniques. If tournaments want to continue to hold any hopes of prestige or value, they REALLY need to get back to their self defense roots.


In the better days of tournaments, you would see a lot more techniques like ridge hands, spinning back fists, foot sweeps knife hands and spinning back kicks. These are the techniques that separate Karate from the other arts. They are the reason that things like anime and live action movies still motivate kids to want to learn Karate in the first place. If they are inspired to try a tournament because of movies like the Karate Kid ( the original, I do not acknowledge other) or any movies like that, they are going to be let down big time.

NOW is the time to bring it back to the better times. I am sick and tired of watching the thing that I love most get disrespected because of what is happening from INSIDE the community. I LOVE Karate and we need to bring back the honor and respect that is deserves. That is my rant. Have a great day!

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