Vale Tudo literally means "anything goes". It is where Martial Artists meet to try all out fighting. It is very different from the watered down safety ruled MMA of today. See original UFCs 1 to 5 for details.
Vale Tudo is to MMA what bare knuckle boxing is to boxing or original Muay Thai, with rope bound hands and full contact elbows is to modern Europen Thai Boxing.
MMA sparring is a safe way to combine kb and grappling.
MMA, in it's basic form it is a combination of kb and rolling.
OK, we deal with the vertical grappling phase with Thai HKE and we practice various throws. But, if you watch MMA, you rarely see a skilled throw, and never an "ippon" that finishes the fight - it kind of just goes to the ground and it is there that you need rolling skill to finish.
We do this by sparring until a clinch occurred generically. As you know from boxing matches, this happens all the time.
We remove the vertical grappling deliberately by freezing at this point, then kneeling, to continue with rolling. This practice also gives the fighter who prefers to wear boxing gloves for the kb phase to remove them for grappling.
We examine the element that in MMA and VT there will be striking in the ground phase, not just submission wrestling.
We capitalise on the MMA on the mat by having the usual "wood" kb, mat rolling, and then Mixed Martial Arts on mat mixing the martial arts of kb and grappling.
(Maybe we could call this MWTMA - Mixed White Tiger Martial Arts!?)
What we also do is look at the throws and takedowns phase seperately.
If you watch UFC and MMA contests you don't see skilled throws as you do in Judo or wrestling.
The reason for this is the striking at the vertical grappling phase. In Judo you grab on and then fight for throws. The same in wrestling. When your opponent is hitting you with knees it changes the game.
You do get a lot of improvised takedowns -when the knee-er is on one leg he is easier to off balance. Also the leg can be caught. But the grappler needs to be wary of being hit with that knee.
And in VT or street combat you will also have to worry about the elbow and the head, the full HKE.
So we will drill skilled throwing, and those who want can practice Judo randori and wrestling freestyle.
However for MMA we need to do realistic drilling that incorporates the HKE in the vertical grappling phase. Once we have this we won't need to "stop and kneel" everytime.
(Though stop and kneel is a good isolation exercise)
Similarly, in the kb we play the Thai knee phase.
In Thai, there is knee sparring where you tie up and fight with just knees, which is an important phase of Thai and a great skill in itself. If the opponent goes to the floor in knee spar, in Thai you break. In MMA, VT or Street, you would follow in with a strike - a drop knee or kick.
The Thai "throw" is called a "thum" and is a very effective throw for VT.
