Fighters of the past may be deficient in technique but they are tougher than today mma fighters. Agree or?

Question

Disagree? Nowaday there are way too many rules...can not knee or kick a down opponent, no strike to the back of the head, no headbutt, just to name a few...how are they going to win in the street?

Answer 1

The early UFC was style versus style.  The new UFC fighters train and cross-train in all aspects (striking, stand-up grappling, and groundfighting).

Trackman, of the three individuals you mentioned only Bruce Lee was a significant martial artist.  Jackie Chan was a Chinese opera performer who transitioned into movie work, and Jet Li actually failed as a prize-fighter, the action movie star thing was a fall-back (helluva plan B though).

I noticed you didn't mention Bill Wallace, Chuck Norris, Benny Urquidez, Masahiko Kimura, Morihei Ueshiba, Jigoro Kano...no non-Chinese?

Before you get your yellow belt in a twist, what makes you so absolutely sure all those stupid, ignorant Europeans were just waiting for some Asian master to come riding over the horizon and teach them all real martial arts?  

Forget the Marquis of Queensbury Rules c**p with the big puffy gloves, and forget the time-limit wrestling you see in the modern Olympics.  Boxing and wrestling date back thousands of years to before Alexander the Great's time.  They were brutally effective fighting systems then, and even with the limits imposed upon them by sports, they are still effective today.  

And Pankration - the system that combined the two - did have an array of kicks, so they had that covered too.

Answer 2

I would agree with you in respect to boxing but in MMA I am not so sure.  A guy like Anderson Silva is pretty good and pretty tough and several others come to mind like Pulver who just took Faber the distance but lost as well as Ernesto Hoost.  I am sure the majority of them can be tough opponents in the street as well which is one of the reasons why I would go for finger strike of some kind to the eye, or shot to the groin, knee or ankle and that is one of the things that karate teaches is how to hit those areas or targets from a number of different angles, a number of different ways, in a number of different situations.  If you don't hit that target with effectiveness and hit it early I am sure they would be making you or me pay for trying it and failing.

Answer 3

I disagree. Watching Urijah Faber attack Pulver and Pulver refusingto go down is , in my opinion, the pentacle of real toughness. Maeda vs Torres was also an amazing display of toughness.

Answer 4

This is all written from a friend:They were not deficient in technique.  

Before martial arts became popular in the western world there was a considerable difference in training methods, haha. Martial arts was developed for war, your intent was to kill your opponent not win a fancy belt.

-To condition yourself.  Conditioning certain body parts now is just building bone density.

If you were a guard or soldier, conditioning your fist meant punching a tree or make wara (spelling) post until you could no longer feel it, or using nukite for exactly the same purpose. At my dojo there is footage of a bloke pretty much cooking his hand in hot oil.They would basically kill all the nerve endings in there fingers or fist. One of their hands would look  like a big, dead club and that’s what they would use it for.

-A sword fight for a samurai usually lasted no longer than a minute. The amount of time it took  for someone to make a mistake was the amount of time the fight lasted.  No swashbuckling like in movies.

Those people who are apparently ‘deficient in technique’ were founders of styles.Those that learn mixed martial arts today, learn what was taught back then. But in a MUCH more gentle form.  

My opinion anyways… =]

Answer 5

I certainly wouldn't condone that Fighters of the past may be deficient in technique to modern fighters as it really depends on each individual in person ,yes there are far too many rules these days in ufc fights etc as to make them more sporting.

Put any of the modern fighters against ,Mas Oyama,Gene LeBell and others of that elk if it was possible in their prime and attitude and my money would be on Mas Oyama and Gene LeBell elk types :)***

Answer 6

The rules are there so no-one gets killed, and for insurance purposes. Mainly the second one.

The fact is though, these guys still learn these techniques, they'll still utilise them in the streets. Look at Bas Rutten, he's proficient in Knife Attacks and Krav Maga (basically gun defence), and was a very well-known MMA fighter, he's a bit older now, but i dont see him as one of the 'old' MMA fighters.

Answer 7

MMA fighters don't train to beat people in the street.  They train to beat people in the cage and earn the biggest paycheck possible.

They may have trained in their original martial art to learn discipline or to learn to protect themselves, but for most of these guys, once they transitioned to MMA, it was to earn a living, not to beat someones @ss in a bar, although i'm pretty sure they could still do that, without training to use headbutts or kness to grounded opponents.

Answer 8

I would say it's the present mma that is deficient in technique as they are being trained to suit the rules and the originals had to be proficient in all technique.

Karate went thru the same process of matches where bones were broken from kicks ears ripped off  collar bones shattered from punches.This was prior to 1920/30s

It was watered down to point type or light contact sparring for safety and so it could grow .Eye strikes groin grabs kicks etc throat shots low kicks to the knees arm breaks and chokes are still practiced but only in kata and with a partner in flow drills .

Answer 9

Deficient in tech.? Where did you come from? Sorry, but you take any one of the martial arts greats of the past--say, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, or Jackie Chan, and pair him up with somebody like Cotoure, not only will his technique be better than the MMA's, he'll totally waste him. Now, I don't know where the MMA actually originated, but my only experience with it is UFC. And, IMO, (and I got shot down for this before) all it looks like to me is boxing/wrestling with kicks. I'm a stick, but if I was stronger, with my technique and what I know, even in just straight TKD, I think I'd be able to take one of their fighters out.