Point Fighting is Gay

[Mad_Mally]

I love the way point fighters think that they are hard core. Whenever I see one I just double over laughing. They start jumping up and down with their hand sdown trying to hit eachother with a backfist or lead roundhouse with no power behind it. Then later, when they talk about their "fight", they make it seem like they were in a brawl and their superior training allowed them to win. The whole situation is comical.

The reason I bring this up is because I just got into a fight with a point figther while I was out running. He saw me working some jabs while I was jogging and decided to make a very rude comment toward me. I guess he thought he was hard because his 2 friends were there. I asked him what his problem was he started name calling, so I said some not so nice things and then he said "I'm a second degree blackbelt in TKD and I fight in competions all the time so if you want to fight I'll kick the living S*@% out of you. Now, for the record I'm not a black belt in any system, however I'm currently train for my black belt exam in Goju, and I do have experience in other systems. I'm also not that big I'm 5'5 about 155 lbs but I am build fairly well. I decided to fight this guy, he came in trying to hit me a back fist rear roundhouse kick combo, I let his backhand hit my shoulder (I don't know where he was aiming) then I grabbed his kick and commenced one of the most spectacular ass kickings ever witnessed in the bronx.

I beat this guy so badly that his friends had to help him stand up. They by the way his friends wanted no part of me. I aattracted a crowd and some police officers. I was hand cuffed while they asked me what happened, and interviewed the witnesses. To make a long story short they let me go and I told them I wasn't going to press charges against the other guy, so they let him go too.

Thanks for letting me vent.

[HtTKar]

yeah, the main reason why point fighting is so stupid is because even a light tap counts as a point. Sparring; when he hit your shoulder he would have won. I lose all the time at point sparring. I condition my abs to be able to take pretty hard shots, or I'll angle my body to make a shot slide off. In point-sparring, I'd be done with. But that's the way we train. Full contact, and able to take shots. 2 totally different frames of mind.

[Mad_Mally]

I agree, In my dojo we don't train for point fighting because it's pointless. Sports Karate will get you killed in the street. I love the way I got my point across to this kid though.

[Garland]

WTF is point fighting?
boxers score points during a match, so do Thai kickboxers and Kyokushin guys...so...what's yo point?

[HtTKar]

Garland,
you've never been subjected to this?

You start out squared of in a dinky ring.
They yell start, You go in and start sparring.

Once ONE of the refs think that someone may have touched their opponent they stop the fight and they vote on who got the point. Either one person gets a point, an opponent stepped out of bounds, or noone gets a point.

Then they yell start again and you start sparring until a hit is landed.

So since there is no continuation past the point, there is no use for power.

Boxing for points is different in that it is still scheduled around ring time. The match stops when the bell rings-vs-stopping when a point is scored.

[SimonM]

WTF is point fighting?
boxers score points during a match, so do Thai kickboxers and Kyokushin guys...so...what's yo point?

They stop fighting and return to their corners as soon as 1 point is scored. It is pussy.

[Tom Yum]

Garland,
You've never been subjected to this?
Then they yell start again and you start sparring until a hit is landed.
So since there is no continuation past the point, there is no use for power.

Even better or worse is semi-contact.

Yes, that's all we had back in those days...

You could hit a guy hard enough to knock him down or rock him, but if you hurt him too bad (bloody nose, knockout or writhing over) you were penalized a point.

[Garland]

Even better or worse is semi-contact.

Yes, that's all we had back in those days...

You could hit a guy hard enough to knock him down or rock him, but if you hurt him too bad (bloody nose, knockout or writhing over) you were penalized a point.

HA! Point withdrawn for breaking a punk's nose? Good deal.
I think I'd have fun with that!
"Oh, my God guys....did you see this, I'm losing the fight! Whoops, here's another point gone, oh, shit, another, pop pop pop, crunch crunch (insert broken nasal slush sound)"

[Toudiyama[NL]]

Even better or worse is semi-contact.

Yes, that's all we had back in those days...

You could hit a guy hard enough to knock him down or rock him, but if you hurt him too bad (bloody nose, knockout or writhing over) you were penalized a point.

According to WKF rules you aren't even allowed to hit the body that hard but no ref would penalize for it
The rules state that a weak and a strong competitor should be able to have a match without the weaker being damaged or hurt

Seeing we are talking about SPORTS!, I don't find that rule a bad one

Karate Shiai ( and other non and semi contact MA events) are not a testingground, they are sports, in the beginning they were testinggrounds, like the early MMA events were, but only as a sport does it become sustainable
Come on people, complaining about these rules and calling the sport gay is like calling Amerrican Football gay because they stop everytime the ball hits the ground and the footballers are totally packed in safety equipment
BS of coarse, they are sports, with their own rules, you either like them or you don't and if you don't, that doesn't make them gay or something

In rings and Pancrase you can make a couple of rope escapes, would you or wouldn't you make use of them and do you think someone that does use this rule to his advantage, is gay?

[eXcessiveForce]

The good thing about point sparring is that it keeps the state boxing commision out of it. This lets people compete without paying 100 to 1000 dollars for a license and God knows how much for actually holding the fight, I think it's around 10K but I don't remember for sure.

Notice that it didn't take long for them to make UFC illegal in most states. So first came rules, then came sanctioning just like boxing.

[Mad_Mally]

Point fighting is still gay!!!

In my opinion point fighting has degraded a once hardcore art: Karate. Point fighting started because the Karate masters of the time thought that Karate was so deadly and dangerous that you could kill your opponent so they developed a way for students to test themselves against other systems by pretend fighting. In other words they would dance around a ring and points were scored to the person that would have made contact or done the most damage.

Now-a-days you go into a Karate Dojo, and all they train for is pussy point fighting, and they still hold on to this myth that Karate is so deadly that you can't have full contact competion. This isn't true at all, because no one in these places are being trained to be deadly or even trained effectively. My all time favorite dojos are the ones that have you sign-up for your black belt when you sign up for lessons.

Karate has become a shadow of what it once was, a weak mockery. Now if you want to train for point fighting that's fine, but don't go around thinking your hard, because you're not. My instructor teaches me for free in an attic. We train the old way, we work out till we drop then we fight full contact (with boxing equipment). Also, most of the students in the class workout at home too (because if you don't you won't last long in the class). I feel that this method of Karate is best because it has made me a better person by forcing me to push myself past my limits and become better.

[eXcessiveForce]

in the last 10 years or so, more than 10 people have been killed in point fighting tournaments.

Just thought I'd point that out. Mostly these have occurred due to strikes in the neck.

[eXcessiveForce]

When I started martial arts, when we sparred we didn't have equipment. Everything was thrown full force and pulled at the last moment. People had much more control than they do today and they could hit much harder.

Pulling a technique back then meant selecting the wrong target and hitting it. Today it seems to mean throwing a weak and slower technique at someone without really selecting a target.

[Mad_Mally]

Wow!!

You have to really bad to get killed in a point fighting tournment. I mean were these matches between heavyweights and children. I agree about the target areas, in point fighting it not about hitting the right targets it's just about making contact. Still Gay.

[Tom Yum]

I have to agree with you Mally. Point fighting doesn't do much for the practitioners, neither does semi-contact.

Most sparring (outside of close to fight prep) seems like it is semi-contact though. You can't spar full contact all the time without getting injured.