[Closed] This olympic TKD business

I don't think we have any TKD expertise on the forum. These days.

They just seem to be taking it in turns to kick each other. It doesn't look like the Teakwon-do that I practice.

Didn't it feature on that somewhat controversial UFC thread a few months back. I see there's another UFC thread appeared today. Here's hoping...

As for TKD, no flippin idea but no more bizarre than a bloke on an electric bike equipped with 170mm Marzocchis ( http://www.elmoto.com/en/en-bikes/en-ederny/)

It really is terrible. Basically a game of tig with your feet.

But of course the guys in Gluptons local club could batter everyone in the UFC 😆

I think it is because the event is all about point scoring which puts the focus on trying to counter attack rather than block.

I'm still waiting for this to become an Olympic sport
[youtube]O1A2zPqVq5w[/youtube]

The Olympics fights look so different to the regionals and nationals from the 1990s, for sure, not just the lack of a traditional arm posture but also fancy sensors for scoring hits (with the exception of kicks to the face).

One GB gold in the bag last night and retained from London from Jones, her roommate Walden (Aaron Cook's GF) still to come on Saturday as well as Cho, plus bronze medal winner from London (Muhammed) starting today.

Cook is representing Maldova after his major fallout with the 2012 GB selection process!

As I said on the "things you don't understand in sport" thread I thought it was an arse kicking competition in which the rules and premise of had been incompletely relayed to the participants.

It really was terrible to watch (I only watched the semi finals last night).

Bizarre and terrible to watch in equal measure. And then the Egyptian girl started her high-pitched, prolonged screaming..

But of course the guys in Gluptons local club could batter everyone in the UFC

It wasn't Glupton was it?

The Club was The Edinburgh League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the top boys were earning £300 - £500k per year and still had time to train to be World Champions. The training was full contact as well, broken jaws were not uncommon in training.

Hilarious.

How the Egyptian girl fought in her -57Kg matches was definitely not spectator friendly, but fair play to her, the relatively defensive tactics she used got her a bronze after beating the other losing semi-finalist.

In contrast, the -57Kg final between Jones and Gomez was a pretty decent fight to watch, with everything to play for in the final round, where Jones used her speed to get some decisive head scoring shots.
Their final starts at ~2hrs8mins http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p042z8p2/olympic-taekwondo-finals-mens-68kg-womens-57kg-featuring-jade-jones

The Olympic TKD has reminded my why I was never impressed with TKD 'black belts' when sparring across disciplines in the late 90's. (I was a Thai boxer)

TKD is the perfect example of a functional martial art turning into a sport and forgetting what it was.

I did TKD back in the day and did one competition, a mate was british champion for a while. I agree some of the fights so far have been awful with very little skill demonstrated other than front pushing kicks. The Jordanian that jumped off the mat to avoid defeat made me laugh, but he should have been DQed.

[quote=thegreatape ]I don't think we have any TKD expertise on the forum. These days.

😆

there are some defence and you could see it - it looked largely like hold you leg up high so they cannot kick you

did see some blocking of kicks near the head with the hands

Its good to know that i can lose both my arms and still do a martial art 😉

TKD is the perfect example of a functional martial art turning into a sport and forgetting what it was.

God it's awful. Just shockingly awful. Many would say Judo has been similarly ruined. I can't speak to that with any authority but there does seem to be a trend of sports being watered don to conform to Olympic standards.

I only know a little about taekwondo but there are two competitive branches of taekwondo, WTF and ITF. The Olympics use WTF. ITF allows punches to the head/face whereas WTF doesn't. ITF is more similar to what you would expect when you think of kickboxing.

itf fight

WTF indeed

Sad to say but the TKD has gone the same way as alot of other martial arts in higher championship matches, alot of the 'finesse' has become redundant with max points minimal effort the norm.

I tbh would much rather watch two very good club fighters of a martial art spar than whatch the 'pinnacle' of the sport as you will tend to see a much larger range of skills employed when its not all about THE point.

Should be awarded points for artistic ability and whether the audience yawned during a bout..

cloudnine
Should be awarded points for artistic ability

Presumably this is where Olympic TKD is heading. There's no way it'll ever move towards more realism, more contact so they'll just keep migrating toward fencing with feet crossed with gymnastics.

[img] [/img]

Well, I have a bit of experience from 97-05 fought a few internationals and won a world CDK in 2001. WTF when it was known as full contact. You used to have to physical move an opponent to score, even then often they wouldn't mark you. No way all the front leg jab business scored unless you caught the guy in the face as they came in. I used to be a relatively nasty fighter in that if someone pranced about with open hands I'd aim to try to break their fingers, punches never scored but you could try to give dead arms / kidney punches (if the ref didn't see) to set up for a kicking strike. Dropping the elbow onto a poor roundhouse was also a favourite. That said I remember a lot of "cuddling" from my days, people would get in close so you couldn't kick and hug you, that's why I practised doing damage with punching from clinch. That seems to have virtually vanished from modern tkd, as does the full contact bit.

It really has been ruined I watched some and turned over to the boxing.

The modern Taekwondo we are seeing is a very watered down of the oldskool WTF rules, it is now basically ITF rules but with no legal punching to the head. Some of the scoring head shots in this Olympics have been rediculous, such light head/face touches with no "trembling blow" (how points were scored in the 1990s), yet they score 3 points today.

It's almost as if they are banned from using their hands? They seem to block with outstretched arms?

Looks like a Monty Python skit rather than a martial art....

[quote=jimjam ]God it's awful. Just shockingly awful. Many would say Judo has been similarly ruined.

I know slightly more about judo than TKD, but it's been far too many years to have much of a clue. What they do at the Olympics is certainly similarly rubbish to watch.

Is it just that the Olympics ruins all sports?

arghhh. China through to the gold match. We've been so close to a couple of more golds. Another Brit on now.

It is odd and looks like lots of "oooo don't hit me" but it's the tension and the danger that as soon as you leave yourself open you are gone. Look at the gold medal match just now the British girl losing to golden point

I agree it's like an Olympic Sport for Skippy but when Muhammed lost in the final second last night did he block the kick and lose our did it make contact? Gutted for him tho.

aracer
I know slightly more about judo than TKD, but it's been far too many years to have much of a clue. What they do at the Olympics is certainly similarly rubbish to watch.

Is it just that the Olympics ruins all spor

A while back they banned double leg takedowns and any lifting/hoisting throws iirc in the name of safety and at some point in the past they banned torquing or applying pressure to any joint other than the elbow. For this Olympic year they've banned any grip or touching below the belt or on the leg. Which is a bit farcical.

The obvious intention is to encourage spectacular throws but it just sets up a path towards total abstraction.

they banned torquing or applying pressure to any joint other than the elbow

Some lad in the early round got penalised for trying flying arm bars 8)

Still can't understand why they didn't have BJJ in Rio

With Judo the IJF have made quite a few changes with no leg grabs being the most obvious one. I believe it was to try and combat the very negative sambo style fighting of the Russians and Stans which resulted in a more wrestling style grip.

They also made it penalisable to avoid taking a grip or preventing your opponent from gripping to actually encourage more throws.

I'm sure this has resulted in more upright or classical judo which suits the Japanese or Koreans but like in so many sports Defense can outweigh attack and counter throws are often the most likely way to score. I stil enjoy watching it but wouldn't subject my friends to it other than highlight reels.

I'm lead to believe that the introduction of the electronic scoring has greatly affected how TKD is fought as before the kick or punch had to obviously move the opponent and make the reverse or more attacking moves higher risk as it is easier to wait and then counter those.

All these changes were likely made to try and broaden the appeal and make it more TV friendly but have had unplanned conequences.

BoardinBob

Still can't understand why they didn't have BJJ in Rio

I'm glad they didn't. I can't imagine watching some get choked out or their arm snapped.....and now over to Clare Balding with Beach Volleyball.
It wouldn't work and they'd immediately start removing dangerous or violent looking techniques. You'd soon end up with the Olympic sport of arm bars.

because judo is in ??

My friend is the female heavy weight TKD world champion, when I asked her why doesn't she try for the olympics she said you can't punch and I like to punch. its pretty boring to watch compared to what she does.

Could she also beat up the entire UFC fighter roster?

I'm a 1st Dan ITF Taekwondo trainee, I've got to say that this sport looks absolutely nothing like the day to day sparring, and not even world championship ITF fights. It's completely unwatchable and in most cases unfathomable.
I'm afraid I'm quite old school, if you're taking part in a fighting sport, expect to fight, not play a game of tag.
Of course, there's going to be a skill set and I don't doubt it's bloody hard to do at that level but I can't help but think it's so far away from being a martial art that it's become pointless.

jimjam - Member

Could she also beat up the entire UFC fighter roster?

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jimjam - Member
Could she also beat up the entire UFC fighter roster?

Poah - Member
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I've only just seen the highlights of this years TKD and now it has electric scoring it looked pretty pathetic to my untraned eyes. MHO it'd be miles better going back to traditional TKD or, even better, replaced with muay thai.

The Judo didn't look that bad, at least it is still physical.

I thought it was commonly known that SLSTKD (Street Lethal Scotch Tae Kwon Do) practitioners would easily ko any UFC fighter.

It wasn't great but was way better than the Judo (at least the few matches I watched). Judo just seems to be about tugging each others dressing gowns whilst trying not to get a penalty for not doing anything and then maybe going for a throw every couple of minutes.

Ah well maybe I've lost any objectivity because eons ago I did a bit of Judo.

The Judo to me was still physical and using some real world grappling techniques, whereas the TKD just looked like leg waving, some impressive flexibility but far removed from something that relates to real world self defence.

twisty - Member

Ah well maybe I've lost any objectivity because eons ago I did a bit of Judo.

The Judo to me was still physical and using some real world grappling techniques, whereas the TKD just looked like leg waving, some impressive flexibility but far removed from something that relates to [b]real world self defence.[/b]

As deep a rabbit hole as that term may be, I agree with you. If a judoka grabs a hold of you it's a short flight with a quick stop. Or they'll just murder you with your own clothes.

I think that the 'sparring' side of each art is what you see. The sparring side of Judo is useful as self defence. The sparring side of TKD is not. It's a sport and fitness thing. There whole other bits of TKD but they are not on display at tournaments and in fairness, due to that, also not taught at some clubs that put tournaments as a highest priority.

And the answer to which is best is always 'it depends on the fighter' but UFC (particularly the earlier ones where dedicated single art fighters fought each other) showed that majority grapplers won over the striking fighters, but even that's not self defence...,.

Edit: again, I'm a biased TKD practitioner.

Olympic TKD is as close to real world self defense as olympic fencing is to a knife fight - but that's completely missing the point...

I watched some of it and it just made me think of this (except that the film was more entertaining than the sport)

[img] [/img]

I_did_dab

Olympic TKD is as close to real world self defense as olympic fencing is to a knife fight - but that's completely missing the point...

Silly us thinking TKD was a martial art.

Olympic TKD is as close to real world self defense as olympic fencing is to a knife fight

Very ot but I was chatting to a colleague who trains SF guys and he said they were changing some of their "proactive" knife fighting to be more like fencing, side on lunging etc