azns in ufc are lacking

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Jung announced in mid-October 2014 his intention to begin his stint for mandatory military service in his home country of South Korea. While Jung did not comment about the future upon his completion, his manager indicated that he would return to mixed martial arts at the end of the two years.

Spoiler

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Dethklok wrote:

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Bars wrote:

China, Japan and Thailand, where martial arts are big, have their own leagues and tournaments. Not everyone is willing to relocate to the other half of the world, in a completely alien culture, when they can compete and gain fame and recognition where they live.

At least that's what I assume.

Apart from that, Asians won't have too many competitors in the higher weight classes - for obvious reasons. This is the reason why tournaments K1 have been dominated by non-Asian fighters: they have no weight classes or doping control to speak of and the largest, most powerful freaks of nature generally do better because we all know 'use the opponent's strength against him' is nonsense taught to gullible wannabe ninjas in McDojos.

Also, as Head_Less correctly stated, Pankration was strikingly similar to modern-day MMA, the Olympic games also had wrestling and boxing and these are the earliest known historical sources of martial styles resembling the modern-day fighting sports.

The Indian Kalaripayattu claims to be the oldest martial art, although I find this argument a bit silly since it's common sense that any civilization which regularly engages in warfare will have developed martial arts. It's just that martial arts were, historically speaking, mostly practical disciplines so they focused on weapons and armour as the most effective way to kill your enemy and protect yourself. This is also the reason why BJJ was developed in Japan: it was mostly an accessory set of grappling techniques to help samurai if they were disarmed. Pure unarmed fighting styles developed mostly in places where people were for some reason unable to use weapons, like the Okinawan karate where the local population was subjugated by the Japanese and banned from owning any weapons.

Speaking of which, the HEMA community (Historical Western Martial Arts) has been doing a great job of recreating sword fencing techniques as they were used in Medieval Europe until the modern era and guess what, there are various Medieval and later fencing treatises which describe various sophisticated grappling techniques to supplement weapon fighting. It turns out grappling was an important part of fighting, especially between heavily armoured opponents. These techniques are strikingly similar to Japan's jiu jitsu - and it only makes sense. There's convergense in techniques and styles accross the world since anywhere people get down to discovering what works in certain settings, they eventually arrived at similar conclusions.

Which leads me to the lat part of this rambling text: the place of certain traditional Eastern fighting styles which are so markedly different from the styles used in modern-day MMA - why no convergense here? My personal explanation is that these styles don't use real sparring to test what works and what doesn't, so over time they have degenerated into a mix of philosophy, charlatanism and delusion which always crumbles when faced with reality in the ring or octagon. Before I get accused of being an MMA fanboy and bashing super-deadly styles which I know nothing of, I've practiced wing chun and aikido and I think I have sufficient experience with the bullshit in some traditional martial arts. IMO a month of boxing classes is better than a year of training in any style lacking full-contact sparring, apart from the physical conditioning part which simply can't be rushed.

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Head_Less wrote:

yea all good points.
The other problem with asian traditional martial art is leader cult.

You bow down to dead people pictures and can t contradict their teachings. This asian mentality make them unable to evolve and it is why BJJ got so efficient while the old japan JJ stayed with their bullshit ninja moves and crappy katas.

Being a sambo practitioner I can tell when traditional MA comes in the gym. They lack improvisation from live fighting (however a good judoka who can boxe is a lethal combination, my back still hurt from this black belt guy who throw me in the air last month haha ).