1986 USA vs England

Interesting, although I don't fight this way when I ring fight, I didn't know that the US fought the English National team and I sure didn't know Terry Creamer beat then HWT World Champ Vic Charles. Creamer teaches Isshin Ryu in the St. Louis area and I remember attending a few of his tournaments a number of years ago. Here's the link.

Terry Creamer vs Vic Charles

I found this fight more interesting, although the video is labelled badly.

Shonuff, I'd be interested to know what you found interesting about this video.

It would help if I posted the link I was talking about

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=rclz-WzAZeY&NR=1

Sorry Guys

I didn't really enjoy this I don't know who was who but the guy in the red pants looked like this is where Olympic TKD came from

Point scoring on slappy techniques which would not have done any real damage in a Kyokushin Style Knockdown tournament

Thanks

Thats like saying a bunch of guys doing the 400m breast stroke would have terrible technique if they were in the 100m sprint.

True but its just my opinion

To me karate is about defending yourself, slappy techniques like that would NOT work on the street.

although quite a few knockdown Karate techniques would

Since Shotokan is know for their point competition and the shotokan guy is from a dojo that competes in such tournament heavily, here you go.

Shotokan vs Kyokushin

If you could not tell already when the video begins the guy on the left is Shotokan and the guy on the right is Kyokushin.

None of it looks great to me, not this or the previous clip you posted. The techniques look sloppy and indecisive, their bodies often very off balance and their hands tend to drop to leave the face very open, the Shotokan guy a bit more so (and I sympathise because I have done it and I am pretty sure I looked much the same trying to score points). Yes it can encourage guts by having the nerve to go and face off against someone but is it really any practical use except as a sport in its own right? I would far rather watch Western or Thai boxing if I am looking to watch a fighting sport.

Ben

The problem comes not in the competition themselves, but when training changes to only reflect the competitions they enter. The value in such things is testing one's self. How many times do you hear of people touting their ability to drop people with their body strikes. I say if you can do so then enter a kyokushin tournament and prove that you can against someone other than your dojo buddies. Its about using what you train in a controlled environment. Its not the rules of point tournaments that are bad, its the way in which they are applied. If people only received points for striking a downed opponent the comps would look different. If "vigorous application" was truly a condition for earning a point then the tippy tap stuff seen in both open class and traditional karate tournaments would not count. Yes there is value in such things, but the value is not in winning a trophy or medal.

I agree. Obviously point tournaments used to be based on the premise that the strikes were too strong to use with contact so you pull the punch very slightly short. When I started out, the dojo sparring was based on no contact to the face (often more theory than practice) but the non-contacting strikes still had to be powerful so that they would damage if they had hit. As you say, the tournament rules have altered the training so that it is a game of tag. That said, I suspect Kyokushin v Kyokushin would be a lot rougher than the clips and UK and Japanese Shotokan tournaments from the '70s and '80's often resulted in knockouts and hard contact despite the non-contact rule. WUKO seems to have changed all that.

After 25 pages of people comparing "karate" punching to boxing, this is the main event and the punching looks like a bunch of sloppy boxing learned off the tv. I saw no real distivitive puching "style" found in karate that is so oftern talked about.