The Truth Around the Edges
by Keith Vargo

Using the combat sports as proof of what does and doesn’t work really gets some martial artists bent out of shape. It provokes immediate and predictable protests from nonsport martial artists. They’ve included comments about how the rules of the fighting sports limit what you can do and how artificial it is to dismiss eye pokes, groin strikes, weapons and so on. But these complaints seem anemic compared to the wordless truth of one man beating another in the ring.

That’s a shame, too. Nonsport martial artists really do have a point about the limitations of sport fighting. The rules really do bias you toward using certain techniques and ignoring others. But instead of dismissing all fight sports as totally artificial creations, nonsport martial artists should acknowledge the power of their examples and embrace them. There’s nothing that supports traditional and modern self-defense ideas better than what happens around the edges of the rules.

First, attacks to the eyes and groin are illegal in every legitimate form of sport fighting, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen. Boxers and mixed martial artists often sustain injuries from accidental eye gouges and scrapes. The most serious of these occurred when Vitor Belfort accidentally sliced open Randy Couture’s eyelid in an Ultimate Fighting Championship title match. The bout was stopped before the first minute of the first round had finished because the tear seriously impaired Couture’s ability to compete. So someone deliberately trying to do what Belfort did by accident can’t be dismissed.

As for accidental groin shots, they provide even better support for nonsport martial artists. Sure, we’ve all sustained the occasional low blow in practice, and we generally recover quickly. But when a professional athlete accidentally blasts another in the groin, it’s usually a fight ender. The most infamous example of this occurred when Pancrase veteran Akihiro Gono got kicked in the crotch by Chute Boxe’s Nilson de Castro. In the aftermath, Gono was vomiting and unable to stand. When I went backstage an hour later, the Japanese fighter was being wheeled out of the building on a stretcher.

Second, there are lots of fringe techniques that only occasionally succeed in sport matches, but those successes hint at what’s possible when there are no rules. They include standing submissions and kicking downed opponents.

Standing submissions are a big part of many traditional arts, but MMA athletes dismiss them as low-percentage techniques and usually don’t even try for them. The main exception is the standing guillotine choke. However, there are times when you’ll see combatants pull off other ones.

In early 2005, jujutsu standout Shinya Aoki met Keith Wisniewski in a Shooto match. Halfway through the first round, the two were clinched against the ropes. Aoki suddenly spun out and into a waki-gatame hold that snapped Wisniewski’s elbow. It was similar to the joint-breaking techniques in lots of stand-up arts, only this time it was a real broken arm against a real resisting opponent.

As for kicks to guys who are down, that’s been part of kenpo for a long time. But it’s only when MMA guys are allowed to kick a downed opponent that we see proof that it’s a viable finishing technique. In fact, Chute Boxe’s current champion, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, made it his calling card for a while. His victory over Hiromitsu Kanehara was a lesson in how to beat a ground fighter using kicks and stomps.

These are only a few examples of how sport fighting actually supports some notions of nonsport martial artists. Traditionalists and self-defense practitioners have more to gain from engaging with sport fighters and learning what sport-fighting accidents and fringe-sport techniques can tell them about their own methods. But mostly it’ll just give them a chance to put away the weak arguments and display some real knowledge of the sport.

About the author: Keith Vargo is a freelance writer, researcher and martial arts instructor who currently lives in Japan. To read more of his work, visit http://www.blackbeltmag.com.