This came up in another thread and I think it's an interesting subject.

Back in the early 90's the UFC and BJJ exposed the striking arts weakness in grappling and ground fighting.

The question is how did this happen? It's not as if grappling and ground fighting was discovered in 1993 by Hoyce Gracie.

At some point the training was marginalized and even removed altogether. My thought is there had to be a reason.

I have some thoughts but before the thread becomes a take Kimo to woodshed event I am throwing the question out there to see who if anyone might have some insight or information on the subject.

Kimo,

I have no set-in-stone historical information. Wish I did. All I have are guestimates and my pet ideas. One-on-one, grappling and other martial arts integrating ranges, qualified by the folk actually fighting, were/are great.

But I would be willing to bet that historically, if you throw in multiple antagonists and weapons, the appeal of being on the ground becomes much less. If you figure on weapons use, then movement of that weapon and agility to perform with it offensively and defensively has a requisite need for the performer to have his feet under him.

If you sort of go with this particular mental flow, then move yourself back into a time and place where guns were not available, but a knife or bladed weapon was....my surmise is that folk focused mostly on standup because of the expediency presented in a framework for unarmed combat that recognized possible handheld weapons, even for unarmed defenders, which nixed a lot of groundwork and which filtered through to the modern derivates of these classical arts.

Interesting post, and I couldn't even pretend to know the answers for sure. But I have some suppositions. Obviously, changing the arts for sporting sake has resulted in narrow focus styles fit for specific competitions. But that doesn't speak as to one being better or more dangerous than the other - judo and TKD are both Olympic sports.

Culture may make some impact as well. On another post, cxt mentioned that the Okinawan karate tradition may have minimized groundfighting training in karate because various forms of wrestling were practiced in a widespread manner from childhood. Thus, the karate could be specialized for striking training.

I imagine the need for groundfighting could be related to the prevalence of weapon use in the society, or the degree of miltary prescence, or cultural taboos (or lack thereof) regarding 1-on-1 combat (as opposed to ritual or sport).

Tough question, possibly needing some particular temporal or cultural focus.

Its always been known that a good Wrestler or Judoka is hard to beat because they practice full resistance opposition in training.

Fighting can sometime be zone based or culture based method almost, people got locked into this is how you fight. There was a time when people would let someone stand back up. That was acceptable you fought standing up or you fought on the ground long enough to stand back up. A lot of vetarns knew that ground fighting was effective but they wanted to keep it to themselves (I have to admit the Gracies & before their time Gene Labell, refined Judos groundwork).

The Gracies/Labell bought out the value of Groundfighting and how it can be an advantage to a smaller man against a heavier stronger guy that didn't want to or unfamilar with ground fighting. And you knew how to relax and save your stamina.
I have to admitt nobody brought that out as clear as they did, with their weakest link Royce, people GF but not at that level. Now most people are adequate to defend against it.

One of the reason that I observed and still see today is ground fighting is great when you are in the know or in control and you don't make major mistakes. But if you make a mistake theres no place to regroup or back away or run. I notice back in the day that even though a grounder could take a taller or stronger person down and pound him, if he failed to or took the guy down and lost the upper hand he was beaten pretty brutally.

I see that today now that most can grapple if you try to stay with a ground game without weaken the opponent you can suffer brutally.

Standing if you get hit hard or hurt bad enough you can fake it better, move or escape, grappling if youre hurt they not only can they see it, they feel it, they got you until you make them let go!

Quite frankly standing has always been safer, espeicailly when or if everybody can grapple. At one point grappling was just a part of growing up lets say in Japan/Okinawa and you didn't want to be caught compromised, so other forms were stressed. IMHO.

Thats a important fact the use of the bladed weapons probably put a big hault to groundfighting, its said that Judo the sport repeitiour of GFing is larger then Jujitsu.

Wrestling has never been lost, any more than boxing has. It's alright to argue that submission fighting disappeared from wrestling as the form of the sport adapted to the rules of the sport. It's been said before by other people, at their high school, if you messed with the wrestlers you got put on the ground and pounded on. Few people think about wrestling or boxing as specifically "self defense" because the idea that wrestling and boxing are merely sports is headlined more in their minds.

Others have given their opinions on why non-ground fighting martial arts were more prominent, several sighted battlefield situations. I don't buy that. Armored men with no weapons on the battlefields of ancient japan probably had a ridiculously low survival rate. All the japanese jujitsu techniques were quick kills and restraints that would allow time for an ally to finish off the opponent or for the defender to find a weapon and end the encounter. None of that allows time for the positional wrangling of BJJ. It doesn't allow time for much of anything though. Assuming you haven't incapacitated your opponent with the opening throw the man who can get a knife or sword faster wins. In that scenario no striking art has any reason to exist at all.

I don't think it goes that far back. I lay the blame specifically on the karate/TKD explosion after World War 2, and on the Marquis of Queensbury rules of boxing. Karate and TKD are stand up arts. How long have people been talking about the hidden ground fighting of karate? Or anti-grappling hidden in the kata? Some of the old timers might chime in, but it's been my impression that that was fringe talk until the first UFC. If the Okinawans knew about the need for groundfighting and the need to counter groundfighting, and put answers into the kata, then why was it de-emphasized? Americans consider non-standup fighting dirty fighting. Kicking is dirty fighting. There was a time when not toeing up to the line and slugging it out was dirty fighting. How many boxer recently have bagged on MMA by calling it street fighting? Among the non-initiated there is a feeling that ground fighting is easily countered or not dangerous, and this was especially true before the first UFC. Pretty much everyone neglected their defense against the ground. I guess the only thing that makes ground fighting fall by the wayside it testing your own method in a non-realistic manner. Yeah, this includes boxing and karate competitions. If you only put what you know against other people who know the same things, theres never going to be any growth.

I think its simply because not many martial artists or people deliberatly go out or did deliberatly go out and engage in fights with different stylist types,boxers,Wrestlers,kickboxers,etc with few or no rules.The ones that do or did ,will come to realise whats important in fighting.The fights would of told them what they need to know.

Kimo,

Let me give some of a karate perspective to your question.

Okinawa has an old tradition of 'Sumo' (not to be mistaken with Japanese mainland Sumo) as a competitive sport between different villages. (BTW some modern Okinawan Sumo matches can be found from time to time at OkinawanBBTV.com.) It was mostly a standing grappling thworing sport.

Nagamine Shoshin wrote about the relatinship between Okinawn Sumo and Karate in his last book "Tales of the Great Okinawan Masters "(I think that's the title.)

In part that was Okinawa's grappling tradition and karate developed to cover other techniques. Most young men had some experience in their village grappling tradition.

Karate definately has some techniques in its kata directed towards someone trying to ground you. How much that was emphasized probably depends on instrucotor, etc.

My first day studying Isshinryu began working on defending yourself on the ground (and I still teach the art that way).

This does not imply karate's traditions are those of wrestling, but there are some parallels if an instructor chooses to use them or not.

Lkiewise the Okinawa Ti tradition involves their own form of grappling techniques, as I've read.

One of my seniors in Isshinryu was a Deleware State Wrestling champion, and continued foro years afterwards to work with the University of Deleware wrestling team, but wrestling was not part of his Isshinryu curricula. Likewise I know of jujutsu black belts that joined his Isshinryu program, and it wasn't for the grappling aspects.

The reasons for and against have been discussed fully. The issue is each program makes its choices, with an infinite number of study possibilites, no matter what you choose the likelihood is their remain an infinite number of things you don't have the time to study too.

When Karate was transplanated into Japan in the 1920's it was designed for a specific market, the Universities. As almost all of the young men had already studied judo in school, there was little incentive to work at Karate's grappling tradition in those arts. Many of the Japanese karate seniors were also senior judo-ka. As their tradition offered them as separate arts, why would they mix them together?

Funakoshi, btw, showed karate grappling techniques from his earliest books. He never hid their existence. But taking his program and focusing on students 4 years of University study, it would no make sense to try and include grappling into their traditions.

Then times changed, but the arts each developed in different paths.

In Japan the martial arts (trad. Japanese and Okinawan import) are a very minor practice in the population. There is a wide variety of Japanese traditions too.

There isn't one simple answer.

pleasantly,

If you only put what you know against other people who know the same things, theres never going to be any growth.


I don't think it was growth it was recapturing what was, I spoke about this coming full circle in the 90s. I stated that once the strikers get accustom to grappling. Grappling would only be part of the cirriculum not the activity. I don't believe anything is new to fighting just reinvented by process. I don't think Grappling was layed to wayside I believe that the version of martial art striking we became used to lacked it, because it was taken out of its enviornment and we beleived it to be original.

I wrestled in high school and practiced Judo afterwards and and see how they intergrate using the best weapon at the right range is important.

The Gracies or in Brazil experimented for years before bring Judo ground fighting to the UFC, but it was not new Labelle was choking out boxers and wrestlers back in the 60s and 70s, when they challenged him. The Gracies and Labell almost squared off, Labell wanted Helois (closer to his age but not his size) instead of one of the young bucks. Thats another story.

Its just a constant circle of improvement and acknowledging what works. Those who don't believe weapons would stop groundfight obviously never trained it. In just training its startling death defying, You don't want to be on the ground aganist a weapon, unless you have to.

Victor and weapon mentined pegged it I think, I sure theres other reasons.

Kimo

I always find it really funny that Old Style "English Boxing" was even rougher than the UFC--they could and did pretty much everything in terms of strikign and kicking and grappling--plus stuff like headbutting and even naster stuff.
Plus they had to be skilled with weapons as well--several major bouts were decided thu weapons work.
But over the years as more people got into it--they had to change the nature of the fight--the grappling etc kinda fell by the wayside--until you had to ADD it all back in to create MMA.

You can see it happen in MMA right now as well--its not the art it was even 10 years ago.
And you can bet the farm that once the soccar moms start pushing their kids into it it will change even more.

So I think that there is probabaly a social component to the issue.

Another thing is that any number of Military combat teachers from about WW1 on rightly steered away from wanting to their students to grapple with anyone--a very dangerous thing with even marginally trained people--throw in knives and guns and you have a really dangerous situation.

NOTE, there still wasy grappling taught--they just spent time/focus on other thna ground games.

Strikeing/kicking is simply a better tactic in some situation than going to the ground---just as going to the ground is ALSO the best tactic for other situations.

I guess that what I'm getting at is their is probabaly NO one set reason--but likley a NUMBER of reasons that ground fighting kinda went by the wayside.

I've talked to several people about this in my karate school. The consensus we had (opinion and not fact here)was that grappling and ground fighting was great when your in a fight with one person but it's bad to the extreme when your in a fight with 2+.

My understanding of most martial training 50-100 years ago was that it was more combat based than sport or controlled encounter based.

In the end, if I'm attacked by 2+ people, if I hit the gorund I die (assuming the situation is that bad of course).