Well for a start, "Professional fighting", where there's a purse and money involved is very different from amateur MA competitions, which you would do at a MA club. Even boxers who fight as amateurs in the ABAs, very few of them get their pro licence and fight for money.
"Cage fighting" is a bit of a misnomer. It's like calling boxing "ring fighting" or Judo "mat fighting". It's MMA, a watered down version of what was called Vale Tudo in my day, mixing kickboxing with grappling.
If you wanted to do Cage, from STMA, you'd have a big advantage, as we train through all the ranges for functionality, and do the proper blends. Using driving a car as an analogy, most so called "mixed" systems need you to put in the clutch and change gear manually. STMA is an "automatic" vehicle, the gear changing is smooth and natural.
I support anybody who wants to compete in any format, as it's a chance to take your pressure testing outside the dojo sparring environment, and test yourself against somebody totally uncompliant who is trying to beat you. He wants to win the plastic trophy, or, in a pro match, he wants the money. In many senses, you are fighting a "Real" opponent, albeit under set rules.
As for myself, I enjoyed competing in different clubs I was a member of, enjoyed the testing. The various trophies I won were meaningless and I gave them away, usually as prizes at the kid's classes (which we don't have at STMA).
I started in Points karate, at my karate club, competing against other karate clubs.
I later competed, in the 90s, in Open curcuit tournaments, where I fought against not just karate, but TKD, and Lau Gar as well, and all semi contact continuous, not points. It is this format that we base our core freestyle sparring at the STMA class on.
It was during this time I evolved my infamous "Psycho Steve" competition persona.
I competed in Full contact Kickboxing, which was all in the ring.
While training to be a boxing coach, I obtained my licence and boxed professionally for 7 fights.
While training for my Muay Thai khan qualifications I competed in Thai boxing.
At Judo you do your technical grading at the club then at the formal grading you fight randori. By the time I got my Judo Black Belt I had done a lot of randori. What I wanted to try was competition - shiai. So I then became part of my club's competition team and fought as a black belt Heavyweight.
I did some ground grappling club competitions when that sort of thing first started in the late 90s.
I never competed in Wrestling, Jujutsu Kumite or Brazilian Jujutsu.
Finally I had some cage matches in Birmingham.
These were Vale Tudo "Anything Goes" format and far more viscious than the watered down "MMA" you see today.
As I said, we can spar all these formats at class.
I have also competed in stick matches between clubs, and even some "Dog" matches where we don't wear armour.
I have never competed in fencing or kendo.
Anybody wanting to compete on any circuit in any format will be supported, and you can even represent "The White Tigers". We will help you train and some of us, definately myself, will come along to watch you.
But the main point is, we are not a "competition club", our training is for street combat. Competition is there for those who want to do it. I am not pushing it and am quite happy if nobody from STMA ever competes in anything. If you do it, it is for your personal growth only.
It seems to me that we're going to be developing the Vale Tudo along 2 lines - the "S - Street - Self Defence - Survival" side and the "Sparring - Sport" side as we have a few members who are interested in MMA competitions.
This is not a bad thing as it's what I've done at other clubs I've run, initially kickboxing, but with the dimension of grappling added to kb, which is what MMA is, that was how I developed the ST VT, and the reason I had those cage matches in Birmingham.
Yes, we'll be training your VT to make you functional unarmed fighters, which is what Koryo Jujutsu was originally intended for. We're training you to be Warriors as opposed to just civilians doing Self Defence, albeit for the "Octagonal arena".
With my door and security team I developed their VT for the street, again making them warriors for the "Pavement Arena".
So though our core is civilian Self defence, if you want to go to the "Other S" and fight on the Pavement or the Mat, we can certainly develop you for that.
I suggest you watch some MMA matches on TV or get some vids and DVDs. Also look at early UFCs, 1 to 5 if you can, when it was very brutal, before the safety rules came in.
MMA is actually as safe now as boxing, kb, thai, wrestling, or judo, which are it's seperate elements. With the proper gloves and gumshield you are no more likely to "get your teeth knocked out" than you would in boxing.
If you have the dedication we can train you to develop the skills.
If you have the bottle to get in the cage, you can do well and enjoy your competitive career, whether that be for 3 fights or 300.
Well my SAS post covers the point that we need to learn the ART first, then functionalise it for Street or Sport:
shirotoratiger.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=115
As I always said, I don't really care if you go in for a competition on Saturday and you come home without a plastic trophy.
That doesn't bother me.
However I DO care if you go out to a pub or club on Saturday and get your head kicked and you come home without your teeth.
That DOES bother me.
So I train people in Martial Arts - the White Tiger Martial Arts - so they can defend themselves if the need arises.
If you want to compete it's a good pressure testing arena.
But remember to keep it in context.
This was a conversation at the start of our current STMA dojo back in 2009 when Ren asked about fighting in matches and Chip gave his input.
As you know, nobody has ever competed "for" Shiro Tora, or competed at all after training here, and this was never discussed again and the route has never been examined.
I very rarely refer to my competition "career" as it was a long time ago and has no real relevance. I only ever saw competing as a form of sparring, another training exercise.
I have recently referred to Karate's progression through Kickboxing which I never elaborated on in this thread.
I trained in KyokushinKai and Shotokan and competed in both. The "trad karate" kumite sparring we do is what you see in Shotokan and most karate contests. The Kyukushin is full contact, knockdown and clicker and is more brutal and has no pads. There is a similarity in a Kyukushin knockdown to proper old style Muay Thai.
Kyukushi progressed to Seidokan when karate fighters put on boxing gloves to try Full Contact Karate. Similar things happened in other countries and America had a semi successful version of Full Contact in the early 80s. Anyway, it didn't really work so Seidokan fighters learnt proper boxing and that is where kickboxing started over here. Again, other countries had their own developments.
What became known as K1 came later, but it developed from Seidokan, just as MMA developed from Vale Tudo.
