Karate in the MMA
To me it was pretty embarrassing when I saw Ron Van Clief defeated in just a few moves by Royce Gracie. Ron was the Grand Master of Chinese GoJu Karate, a sub style of gojuryu the second oldest Karate to Shotokan. Ron was 51 years old and continued to fight until his 60s. That's pretty good.
Brazilian jiujitsu just surprised everyone in the 90s as something no one knew how to defend against. This is no longer true in MMA but the stigma still hangs. I decided to see for myself. So at age 57 with a 10th Degree Red Belt I joined in a MMA school in Louisiana.
This is what my trained eye saw. The ground game was outstanding as I suspected and they were good at boxing. Their kicks left a great deal to be desired. All they knew was a front kick, roundhouse and a knee kick. Trouble was they didn't use the kicks, and later I found they couldn't hit the target when they did.
After 47 years my kicks arent that good either but I got back in shape and got my legs back enough to demonstrate. Suddenly things changed. Now they had a stand up and a ground game of equal proportions. The Jiujitsu instructor was pleased as now he had a team of well rounded students, they were winning anyway.
The trick was simple "Aim Small Miss Small" like in shooting. The Japanese call it Kime or focus. I added the Side Kick, Back Kick and Spinning Back Kick to the arsenal and showed them when to use it so a shoot fighter cant get them. It didn't matter much if they were taken down as the ground game was good enough to get them out of trouble. Now the other schools are backing down from fights and they dont want to deal with true Mixed Martial Artist that can do everything. As I'm well aware they will be doing the same thing soon.
