I could never take a class. I'm far too shy . . . or, rather, I was when the classes would have been worth the price of admission.

A gentleman I went to high school with taught me a lot of stuff for about three years. I have no idea where he learned. He went by the name of Savage, but that wasn't the name his mother gave him. Anyway, he showed me a series of moves one day and then bullied me into practicing with him for about ten hours. I did it because I knew if I didn't Savage would make pudding of me. [gods but I miss being in the shape I was then]

Anyway, he never put me through it again. I practiced it for about another year and then went back to more basic stuff. And a lot of practice and workouts with nunchucks [sometimes numb-chucks, especially when you slip and bean yourself]. About six years later I saw a guy doing the same routine as Savage - at a Karate exhibition; it was the kata for an advanced black belt rating. The kata was a good exercise, but not worth a lump in a fight. Void, actually. Unless you can coreograph, which is rarely if ever the case in a bar brawl, mugging, or riot.

I really need to get another set of nunchucks. We made our own back in 1980, but they were long ago lost. They were really great for a workout. I'll have to slip over to martialartsmart-dot-com and order some. Their Master Weapon Kits are pretty awesome. I picked up the Bagua Sword kit a while back.

And I can certainly agree that there is a pandemic of need-a-bitch-slap out there. Ocassionaly think it might be a good idea to stop at the table for a buck's worth of what I need

MT is a sport, and Dave said did so to be fair--but Mike is right in many ways, sure. Now the ability to throw fifteen or thirty round house kicks with a reinforced shin in a minute and clinch and pound with elbows is a pretty good skill set to have in a real fight, it translates well. As does the conditioning. I mean, you can have mad skills and technique but if a fear adrenaline dump leaves you gassed in under 3 minutes then a kid with half your skills but twice your stamina is going to school you.

And there are seperate needs. The needs of competetion. The needs of "honor" fights. The needs of hand to hand combat.

There are a handful of crippling moves--many taught to women in rape prevention courses--that will put you down, put anyone down. A lot of military courses are distilled versions of similiar things: "here's a basic snap kick. Follow it with a basic shoulder or hip throw. Now stomp temple or throat of downed man. Repeat if neccessary."

Now. If you're minding your own business in a nice public lounge on a saturday night and the town bully just insulted your date I would not recomend kill moves. But you might still have to fight.

In which case the link between "honor" fighting and sporting events is closer. You might head butt which is a wonderful thing, but not allowed in most competetions, but basically if you see it in a mma match on TV it translates well to that honor fight being a mistomeaner rather than a felony.

In a slight veer to my point but related to it, this is why I think the UFC and the rise of mma was as important to fighting styles evolution as when martial arts first left India and went to China and then left China and went to Japan.

There is a reason Boxing, Wrestling, Jujitsu, and Muay Tai emerged as the "big 4" foundations of mma. But some of this is because the best moves of some of the arts that don't get a lot of respect (TKD springing to mind but Kung Fu forms have been ignored and dissed in mma circles as well) is because some of their best moves are useless in competetion and honor fighting--but are still good in hand-to-hand.