Martial Respect

[kuk sool won]

Martial Artists have always been respectful of each other but recently i realised how much this is so, especially in competitive matches. when you compare this to the likes of Football, American Football, Rugby, Ice Hockey even tennis Martial Arts has very few disrespectful instances in comparison. Logically this should be the complete opposite, surely when someone is decking you, you are likely to lose respect for them but in many of these circumstances the respect increases, a fighter gets KOed and his opposition goes over almost instanteously to see if hes ok, a prime example of this is when Le Banner stopped ..'KSW practioner'.. Gary Goodridge, immediately he went over to see if he was ok, spoke a few kind words and helped him out of the ring.

what i would like to know is why you think this is? Is it because fighting is the immediate reaction to a feeling of disatisfaction and fighting isn't a disrespectful action in MA? or that respect and honour goes hand in hand with learning martial arts so MOST MA students learn it as they train and therefore tend not to lash out? Or do you think what i just wrote was utter bull?

[Nemesis]

It takes a lot of guts to spar/roll with someone, much more so to compete. This is a special breed that in itself brings respect. In competition or sparring/rolling the object is to win/learn not to hurt the other individual. If someone is hurt it is unfortunate. It does not add to a win that someone is hurt.

[eXcessiveForce]

I think you are mistaken,

often respect if found when someone hits you. Many other sports or activities can have trash talk and such with little concern for personal safety. But in martial arts the other person has the chance to back up their words.

[Hardball]

Martial Artist are "Men of Respect"


Footnote ( And Woman of respect also)

[SamuraiGuy]

I think in most cases it is a false respect...

If you use your example of mma fights... after almost every bout the people hug or shake hands, raise the other guys hands, etc...

Do they really feel that way or want to...

I'm gonna use a recent fight as an example... Josh Burkman vs... ahh.. Drew Fickett I believe.. at UFN3... after he wins... Josh screams at Dana that hes the best, celebrates, trash talks, asks for tougher competition cause this guy wasnt up to snuff... than he congratulates the guy for doing a good job?

Doesnt make sense to me...

or even at the same show... after Lebens win... "it took franklin almost to the end to finish him", "david louiseau couldnt finish him"... "but I knocked him out in the first round"...

but right before he was congratulating him..

These are just a few examples, im not sure if I like the MANDATORY showing of respect, if you feel the other guy has earned it.. so be it..

I've given props to other people while training bjj/boxing/sparring... etc... didnt do it if I owned them though, I wasnt mean/rude or anything in that case.. but I didnt fake anything...

just some thoughts...

[Art of Soccer]

I think in general martial artists have respect for one another... but I really don't care what everyone else does in the ring. It's things like this that upsets me...

http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/04/news/story14.html

http://www.mmahawaii.com/content/view/21/30/

..

[Bigoldandslow]

respect

This to me would be an example of the difference between a martial "artist" and brutes. A martial artist develops his skills over time and approaches what he has learned with a degree of humility. A good martial arts school promotes values and discipline. This is entirely different than one who has learned to punch, kick and grapple but has no values, respect for others or really even self respect. They are instead arrogant, undisciplined and lack real values. They may be able to kick ass but they are in fact inferior human beings. I suspect if you really got down to their core being you would find some very fearful people who have tried very hard to hide this. They would probably be too out of touch with who they really are to recognize this, but that is what motivates them.

[Memnoch1207]

a prime example of this is when Le Banner stopped ..'KSW practioner'.. Gary Goodridge

I hate to burst your bubble but Gary Goodridge was not a 'KSW Practioner'. It's well documented in an interview he did with Sherdog.com.

Excerpt of interview:

'Gary Goodridge: Well, there was a Kuk Sool Won club in my area, and I told them I wanted to go into the UFC. They had a little 158 pound guy that wanted to go as well. They had a little donation thing to help this guy out too. Now, people are coming in to support the gym or whatever, giving change here and there trying to help this guy go to the UFC. I was thinking "This guy's 158 pounds!" And at the time, the UFC didnt have weight classes. He just wanted to go and try to beat up somebody. So, I'm 260, 275 lbs at the time, and I'm thinking, "You know, I could wrap this guy up into a pretzel and have him down on the grass sucking himself off in no time at all!" So I said "You know what, I'll beat up your boy, then I want all that money, and I'm going to the UFC!" So we had a little sparring session, and of course, I was on top of him all the time. I didn't know what do to, I was just on top of him. So we just wrestled around until we got tired.


Gary Goodridge celebrates after his win in the recent 2 Hot 2 Handle show.
So they said, "Are you goin to the UFC?" I said, "Yeah, I applied." They told me if I got in I could represent them, and they'd give me a 4th degree black belt. I said "No problem! I want it legal though, I want the paperwork." So they got me the paperwork for it from the Grand Pubah of Kuk Sool Won, from Korea, and he let me know I was the man. And about a month and 12 days later I was fighting in the UFC!

Sherdog.com: Wow, that's incredible. You wore the gi, was that part of the deal?

Gary Goodridge: I started training at the [Kook Sul Won] place about a month and a half before the UFC, and I started training in a gi, because Royce Gracie was in a gi. I was trying to assimilate what he was doing. My background was as a puncher, I'm a striker. I was trying to assimilate the gi, which was a far cry from what I should have done, but I didn't know that at the time. I thought "Hey, I'm a grappling expert!" So I went in the gi because thats all I had trained in.

Sherdog.com: So how long did you actually train that discipline?

Gary Goodridge: Kuk Sool Won? I may have trained a class or so.

Sherdog.com: Heh, so there was no Kuk Sool Won in the UFC huh?

Gary Goodridge: No.

[kuk sool won]

I hate to burst your bubble but Gary Goodridge was not a 'KSW Practioner'. It's well documented in an interview he did with Sherdog.com.

Excerpt of interview:

i know all too well he wasn't a kuk sool practioner, i know all about him, i know what ACTUALLY happened, i know the instructor who give him the belt - Master Lee. This man is one of the most kindest people you would ever meet, the fact that he would give a wondering stranger the chance to fight in the UFC says it with bounds.
No he didn't beat this 'guy' in a fight at all, they realised that due to the weight disadvantage it would be better for Gary to enter even though his fighting ability was far inferior to the KSW 'guy'. The only reason they were fundraising to put forward a KSW practioner was to promote KSW which at the time was a very contriversial decision amongst most KSW masters.
Once Gary finally got into the UFC he never went back to the Canadian school again, he didn't even say thank you to Master Lee, thusly Master Lee broke his ties with GG and left it as it was. Why didn't he take action? Because Master Lee is an amazing fella.

In conclusion i put the KSW practioner in quotation marks to reinforce this point.

[Tom Yum]

It takes a lot of guts to spar/roll with someone, much more so to compete.

Agreed. There's a threshold of courage.

[micro-ice]

i think that the way we act during a fight says alot about what kind of a person we are. i mean that if you fight someone regardless of age, rank, ability or art form and they honestly give it there all win lose or draw respect is not only shown but is rightly earned

[GranFire]

Like having an argument in real life, you abide by rules...you cross the line, you can never get back.
In Martial Arts even a small person has the ability to cause serious damage - even death. Respect is a means and mechanismn to avoyd this during non lifethreatening situations...

How the sport developes these days largely depends if the instructors of the individual schools aloow that Little League crap to continue. Everyonce in a while you see parent encouraging unsportmanlike conduct, you have to nip it in the butt, and of course, if the adults act the same way...

And then unfortunately, we have allowed a culture to grow where the thugs are hailed as heroes, because they can throw or hit a ball, a skill that is largly usless in real life...

[ledfut]

am i the only martial artist out there that is offended by the way that some in the ufc handle themselves in the name of mixed martial arts? granted mma is a sport, but imo, there is too much smack talk in the ufc.

[jubaji]

Don't be so naïve.