Katana sword fight to the death, Aikido Master VS. Kendo Master? Who'd survive?

Question

No hand-to-hand combat even if both drops the Katanas. They'll have to start over if they both drop it for whatever reason there may be. The Katanas are equal in looks and weight and hardness and sharpness; completely identical. No armors, although they would be wearing the specific robes of their martial art of mastery. This means, no face or body or any cushion or armor protection for both.

Aikido does have katana-like wooden sword practices when you've reach the high Dan levels, right? So, how does this stand up to a Kendo Master, which also use wooden katana-like swords when practicing?

Both of the same skill on the art they specialize on, same size, age (they'll both be at ther prime age) height, weight, looks, speed, strength, intelligence, etc. The location would be a place where both will not have disadvantage and advantages, example, they can't use sand to throw on the other guy or use the walls for leverage. These will not be present.

Who'd survive?

Answer 1

mein gott! wtf is up with all of these answer. Katana's is the only sensible one.

I'm gonna have to go on one of my aliveness shpiels again...

Simply put, the only way that martial arts techniques can be ingrained into somebody well enough to use is if they practice in an 'alive manner.' Aliveness is basically synonymous with 'resistance' or 'non-compliance.' It is only by drilling and sparring against fully resisting opponents that one can develop attributes like timing and distancing.

To work without aliveness is like trying to learn how to swim without water. It doesn't work. There are non-alive excercises that you can do, which will help your overall ability or fitness, but they are not a viable substitute.

A problem that general plagues Aikido is a lack of aliveness in their training methods. And while this doesn't hold true to all dojo, the disturbing majority of them never practice against resisting opponents and never spar. If they don't spar in their medium of choice, its even more doubtful that they spar in a lesser portion of Aikido, namely swordsmanship.

Also, in my brief experience practicing Aikido, I noticed that most of the 'sword techniques' that they taught were clumsy overhead swings. They displayed no tenouchi and in most of the 'drills,' the sword guy was supposed to lose to an unarmed guy or a jo wielder.

Anyways, Kendoka practice with aliveness all the time, which gives them an enormous advantage. But even if both parties practiced with aliveness, as Katana had mentioned, Kendo is all about swordsmanship while that is only a small piece of Aikido. The Muay Thai fghter vs Boxer in a boxing match was a really good anology for it.

Answer 2

id say kendo master.. only because hes training purely sword fighting. its not really a big part of aikido training.

Answer 3

The Aikido master would probably win as their techniques are more focussed upon killing and disabling the opponent however is appropriately available while the Kendo master's techniques are much more limited in terms of killing than their ability to strike specific zones.  If you put an Aikido vs Kenjutsu it may be more even because Kenjutsu has slightly more focus upon sword techniques for leathal blows than Kendo does.

Answer 4

could go either way no clear cut winner but their is a better chance of the akido user of having real sword experience not just shinai or bokken not much of an advantage but could affect outcome favorably as a real sword has different qualities than the bamboo or wood training swords

Answer 5

Id go with the Kendo Master, or if I could even an Iado or Kenjitsu Master.

Answer 6

Really tought to say. if i had to pick I would say Kendo, simply for the fact that it is a sword based art, as opposed to Akido which includes sword tarining at higher levels. the Kendo person is going to have more experience with the sword.

For instance if a Muya thai person fought a boxer under boxing rules, more then likely a boxer would win, simply because hands are what he spends the majority of his time training. the Muay Thai fighter only spends part of his time on hands.

just my take on it.

Answer 7

As Kendo is taught as more of a sport nowadays, I'd say the Aikido master.

Each technique in Aikido relates itself to the sword technique. An aikido practitioner, particularly in higher graded spectrum often practice with katanas rather than bokken (wooden sword). Kendo practitioners use a shinai (bamboo sword) so the ability for the Kendo practitioner to judge distances etc when using a katana would be at a disadvantage.

From what I've seen of Kendo, it's one movement and as soon as there's contact the competition is over so I wonder whether defensive/blocking skills are taught as they are in aikido? If not, again the Aikido practitioner has the advantage.

EDIT: Rear Naked Joke:

I don't think you've "dabbled" in aikido for long enough to understand that if you resisted many aikido techniques you'd possibly end up with broken wrists, elbows or shoulders and in the most worst case a broken neck (try resisting a good shihonage and you'll see my point). There's a balance required when training in aikido to ensure there's a certain level of compliance/resistance to be able to make a technique effective. I agree there are many clubs who don't practice with the right balance and it's far too compliant rendering the technique useless from a self defense perspective. However there are clubs who teach it as an art and not with the self defense aspect playing much part. Believe me, I've been to some and many ki aikido clubs are not at all self defense orientated. Personally that form of training doesn't suit me.

We used to practice (with bokken) our weapons training wearing cricket protection wear to allow us to be able to practice more realistically until people began getting injured.

I think whilst you "dabbled" in aikido, you missed the point and the principles of what aikido really is.