Thursday, July 29, 2010

Clouds Of Childishness

In the past, I wrote about the supremacy of Lyoto Machida's karate. He then lost immediately.

Does that mean what I thought was wrong? I say yes and no.

Karate fighters know better how to create length with their kicks. But Shogun is not heavily reliant on his boxing skill; he has tremendous kicks, and was able to outkick Lyoto. Lyoto couldn't use his counters and hand work because he got stopped by Shogun's kicks.

Also, Lyoto has great clinchwork and he has the ability to determine the distance of a fight. However, Shogun has the strongest clinchwork in the light heavyweight division and was able to take that part of Lyoto's game away.

I still believe diversity is the major charm of the sport, but single martial arts can't win in MMA, and I underrated that aspect. But, karate will remain an important skill for effective MMA because of what Lyoto was able to do with his particular skillset. How to adapt a fighter's background skills to MMA is important, but it will remain an interesting theme to watch how these fighters show off their backgrounds.

I do think that there's a huge value to people who understand MMA and can try to predict the sport by evaluating fighters' skills and fundamentals. However, MMA can't be broken down by theory.

For instance, takedowns and judo throws are completely different skills, but their goal is the same: to take the opponent to the ground. There are different ways to take fighters down, knock them out, to submit them. Considering what kinds of skills comes from what martial arts and what foundations can make this sport's discourse much richer. The more exotic skills of fighters can't be judged by the most common analysis, yet, those skills will determine the new generation of fighters and contenders.

People in MMA claim that MMA itself is the almighty fighting skill. However, MMA can't run from other martial arts and their impact. Their effect will change MMA and for the better. MMA charms people with the whole package -- the idea that a fighter has all the skills necessary to win a fight -- so people want to draw the insane conclusion that MMA itself has all the answers about fighting. In order to not sound ridiculous, you need to be conscious where different elements of MMA come from and how they impact the sport.

MMA is notorious for this kind of behavior, though. It's childish, but then again, MMA has always had a immature essence going back to the style versus style days. That kind of argumentative childishness is in all of us, whether we're conscious of it or not.

If you want to watch my childishness, look at my Twitter.

Big thanks to Jordan Breen (from Sherdog) for English and editing.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Kazuyuki Miyata's Reaction to HDNet K-1 Commentary

On July 23, HDnet's North American broadcast of July 5's K-1 Max 2010 contained frank and critical commentary from Michael Schiavello and FEG USA president Mike Kogan. This was covered by MMA media outlets like MMAFighting.com and BloodyElbow.com.

A Refreshing Piece of Candor on a K-1 Broadcast

Honest Moments in Combat Sports Commentating: Michael Schiavello and Mike Kogan Do K-1 Edition by Bloody Elbow

Since then, Miyata seems to have found out about it and has reacted on his blog.

Kazuyuki Miyata's blog July/27/2010

Here is a translation of his reaction (note: he only names Mike Kogan in his blog entry):

"K-1 USA's commentary man Mike Kogan was insulting me.

"He knows me but he's still saying things like that? I have confidence at 63kg. Of course, I have confidence in K-1 too. I have many weapons. I can win with my body strength alone at that div. I'm so pissed off that I'll fight in the next K-1 as well. I'll even fight anybody.

"I really want to kick someone's ass. It's been a long time since I've felt that way."


Kazuyuki Miyata

My personal opinion is that Miyata should not be the one blamed by the commentators. I think Miyata is better at MMA and should be fighting in MMA. However, the reason he is doing K-1 is that he was offered a fight from the organization. Miyata probably found it difficult to decline since he has a long history and relationship with K-1 Hero's, which is the promotion that produced him and made him popular in Japan. However, the organization's responsibility should still be to make the best kickboxing-oriented matchups, and not a match pitting a boxer versus an MMA fighter.

Alas, why must we still be saying these kinds of things in 2010?

Big thanks to Tony Loiseleur (from Sherdog) for English editing.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

SKILL MMA want English editor

(Thanks for apply for English editing. We have English Editor now.But in future,if people leave from Editing Job I will accept new people who apply. So still I will apply editing.But you need sure I can't work with you immediately.)

SKILL MMA run by myself and sometime get help from Jordan Breen.That work really well.But I want edit my old work as better English.Jordan is basically busy so I want another people to make him work less (At new writing, I think I want get help from him though.).I can't pay money for work,but if you help this web and finish editing every old works web with quality,I will credit you as English editor and send you Japanese some MMA collectable(like pamphlet).I'm sure you can't get those thing at abroad.

I want quality as a work (I'm probably severe about it.Because I get help from professional daily.).So I want test translation quality.If you interest it, please send me as a mail of better English editing version of link below.It's famous Japanese MMA story.

Cult Martial Arts In MMA

Warning:I can't pay anything from English editing and this testing.I just say if I apply many of your English editing work to SKILL MMA,then I can give some my collectable.

(shiroobimma@gmail.com)