By Joel B. Belinan
Nowadays, most youngsters who are interested in combat sports or combat martial arts have fixed their eyes on mixed martial arts (MMA). Blame that to its popularity that is even much more than professional boxing, and which could already be equal to football. But what these youngsters do not know is that there is no such martial art as MMA as a style or discipline. It is just a sort of rules in a combat arena where protagonists are allowed almost all types of martial arts styles with only limited prohibitions.
One cannot be a mixed martial artist without having to learn various martial arts styles or disciplines. And it’s nearly impossible now for combat artists to succeed without knowing the skills of at least two or more kinds of martial arts. A combatant, if he or she is to survive an MMA fight, needs to possess stand-up fighting or striking techniques and ground game techniques at the same time. Missing one of the two would mean an almost impossible task for one to progress in his her career as a MMA fighter. Among the striking techniques include, in no particular order, boxing, muay thai, kickboxing, wushu, karate, taekwondo, among others. Ground game or grappling techniques include jujitsu (both Brazilian and Japanese), judo, and wrestling, among others.
The problem with the new generation of martial arts practitioners is that most are motivated not by the very spirit of the arts but the glamour of being called a practitioner thereof. Yes, even the martial arts world has not been spared from the impact of commercialism, thus, the very soul of every martial art has been relegated to just being a historical literature instead of being an everyday life guidance. I remember one conversation with the late Sir Ramon Dacawi whom I consider as the best sports writer in this part of the country. We were talking about the rising stars in sports from the Cordillera and naturally the topic would not be complete without touching on MMA. At one point Sir Ramon or Mondax as he was popularly called, said, my problem with this new martial art (referring to MMA) is that it completely bypassed the very art of martial arts as it is focused more on brute force. There is no finesse at all, he said in exasperation. By the way Manong Mondax was himself a karateka during his younger years and thus knew by heart what he was talking about.
Indeed, to many of the older martial artists, the advent of this so called MMA had ushered in an almost new concept of appreciating martial arts. And with the present trends, MMA and others with similar mixed rules seem to be the very future of combat or martial sports. In short gone were the days of a pure karate or judo or wrestling players. Adaptation is the keyword for mixed martial arts fighters and even those in kickboxing or even in muay thai and boxing competitions. Why did I include the others instead of MMA only? Fighters in kick boxing can now compere in muay thai tournaments or even in a boxing event, and so with other styles such as karate practitioners donning gloves to compete in kickboxing or muay thai tourneys. During the early years of MMA we have seen players who had very good striking skills but lacked the understanding and knowledge to deal with grapplers from either jujitsu, judo or wrestling, and vice versa. Indeed, while some stand-up fighters who had nearly no ground fighting skills made some progress in the beginning of their careers and the same can be said with ground game specialists, none lasted long enough. Soon coaches and trainers prepared their wards on how to counter those big loopholes in their arsenals. Without knowing all the styles and adapting with them, one would suffer the consequences of such neglect.
In 1991, I personally experienced being made a punching and kicking bag because of complete ignorance of the style of my opponent. It should be noted that I played karate, arnis and aikido in the 80s and 90s but none prepared me on what muay thai was like. Due to the nature of our duties as missionaries of our Ananda Marga Yoga organization, I usually passed by Bangkok in Thailand on my way to India from our base in Singapore. One time when I was in Thailand, one of our colleagues from the place asked me if I wanted to go and watch some muay thai fights which was happening near our office there. Apparently, they had regular tournaments in the community centers all over Thailand. Of course, I was very excited to go and even bragged that I am a practitioner of the three styles I mentioned above. I observed that the crowd was quite big for a community tournament and realized that indeed muay thai was considered a treasure of that country that almost every citizen was proud of. What I did not expect was my colleague asked me if I would like to try a two-round exhibition fight with one of the newbies. Foolish me, I agreed without thinking, perhaps due to my big ego, having had some experience in karate.
I saw the guy was just as tall as I was and they said that he was at least 5 years my junior. At the very start of the first round I took the initiative to attack first with my punches and kicks but were easily blocked and evaded by my opponent. By the middle of the round I was already gasping for air and then came the muay thai style attacks which caught me completely off guard. While I usually put on a one two punch-kick combination, the other guy could easily throw several combinations that I even did not know how to avoid so I had to absorb these. And, yes his shins were as hard as steel whenever these collided with mine. What was good was this guy seemed to have noticed that I did not really have knowledge of muay thai as I did not have any answer to his attacks and so he took it easy on me. Instead of humiliating me, he made it possible for me to finish the agreed two rounds of two minutes per round exhibition. That night, I could not sleep until I took two pain relievers bought by my colleague-friend. Two days later while in our Calcutta Ananda Marga Yoga Organization office I related that to a Filipino monk of ours whom they said was a high level muay thai practitioner. Hearing this, he said he will give me a crash course on muay thai in the few days that we would be in Calcutta for me to appreciate the Art of Eight Limbs (muay thai) so I could defend myself in the future. But that would be another topic, maybe later. **
