Chris:
I do agree with you that concepts are more important than style. I must disagree again, however, that this idea of specialization will make one a better fighter. You mentioned Bruce Lee, so I do want to use him as an example. Bruce Lee focused on being able to defeat an opponent in multiple ranges. He did indeed come up with several concepts that are important regardless of one's style (faking a strike or movement to force your opponent to open up his defence comes to mind). However, if you read the material that Bruce Lee has created, he studied many arts so that he could draw from them what was useful, and discard the rest. He did indeed study grappling (and I believe that I've read that he was fairly good at it). Here's a fantastic concept, and is in fact the core philosophy of my trainer: fight to your opponent's weakness. If you specialize in a stand up fighting style, and you believe that those principles will still apply when you are fighting a true grappler, I'm sorry to say that I believe you are mistaken. I've seen a lot of great Muay Thai fighters lose to grapplers, and I've seen a lot of grapplers never even try to protect their faces in an NHB fight. The specialists that I've seen fight end up losing quickly. |