Bri. Your views remind me a lot of Matt Thornton, in that I agree with and support the vast majority of them, until the point where you drop into negative generalisations.
To support you, I don’t personally see a great deal of comparison between the JKD of today and the MMA arena. From my training I feel that the JKD taught in the latter day Chinatown era was more comparable to the concepts of MMA, i.e. a very stripped down approach to technique where conditioning and all out sparring were the focus. The JKD matrix today is one that draws from a vast myriad of arts, where the scope of knowledge takes more than a lifetime to absorb, and in many cases ownership comes down to the sheer talent of the individual. When an individual from JKD has moved into the MMA arena, this hasn’t proved that JKD can cut it in MMA, because these people have become MMA fighters, not JKDr’s. They have done so under their own ability, and they have been exceptional athletes that I believe would have succeeded without JKD. A few people that spring to mind are Erik Paulson, Shaun Sherk and Neil Mcleod here in the UK.
However, to go over some old ground for us Bri, every intelligent fighter knows that to train for sport your training has to be sport-specific. Therefore the drills from the Filipino Martial Arts are a totally different entity, and have nothing to do with whether a fighter with a JKD background will succeed or fail in MMA. Let the hubud thing go mate, let it go.
Moreover, all of the people I train with and surround myself with, have absolutely no need for “a desperate bid for credibility”. Have they proved it in the MMA arena? Some have, some haven't, so what.
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