The blueprint for achieving an elite level of success in mixed martial arts was created by UFC Hall of Famer Pat Miletich. He showed that you need a skill set broad enough to hang with national-class wrestlers in the wrestling room, roll with national-class BJJ players in a BJJ academy, and spar in a training ring with national-class kickboxers or even boxers.
It doesn’t mean you can tap terrific black belts, take down Div I wrestlers in practice, and beat the dog food out of a solid pro boxer in a 14′ training ring. It just means you can hang. When you put it all together, it works.
However, the sport continues to evolve. UFC color commentator and three combat sport black belt Joe Rogan has several times identified Sport Karate as the next style that will influence the play of the game.
In the early 1950s, Tsutomu Oshima developed the first sportive rules for karate sparring matches in Japan, inspired by the fact that there were a lot of pretty girls at baseball games. The theory was that like fencing with a real sword, a real karate blow was too dangerous to actually do full power on another person. So like fencing, a points system was developed.
Under Ohshima’s rule set, punches and kicks were thrown, but controlled to the body, and pulled just short of the face. The action was then stopped, and a center referee and four corner judges determined whether the pulled blow was thrown with sufficient power and speed.
Oshima brought his rules to the United States, and they spread worldwide. These traditional karate sparring rules continue to be used to this day with modifications and will feature at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
Here is Chuck Norris vs. Allen Steen in 1966 competing under these rules.
Oshima’s rules proved to be popular in the USA, and remained largely intact, until Pat Worley, a student of innovative pioneer Jhoon Rhee’s, suffered a broken jaw while sparring. Rhee, The Father of American Taekwondo, set out to develop protective gear for the hands and feet.
In 1974, he debuted his Safe-T-Gear – foam pool floaties for the hands and feet. They were widely adopted in the USA, and radically changed the play of game for those athletes that adopted them. Footwork increased, as did the distance at which the players competed, and variations on basic punches and kicks were developed. The sport was very much like fencing – the object was to dart in and land a clean, controlled punch or kick, all without being hit. It was called variously “point karate” or “point fighting” or “semi contact” or “sport karate.” Detractors called it “What’s The Point Karate.”
Simultaneously, athletes looking for more contact and realism were starting Full Contact Karate, a trend that actually began with karateka Joe Lewis in 1970, wearing conventional boxing gloves and sneakers.
This is Joe Lewis vs. Greg Baines on January 17, 1970, in Long Beach, California. It is the first kickboxing match in USA history.
Lewis’s innovation turned into PKA full contact karate – “The Kick of the 80s.” This is a preview by PKA president Joe Corley of Rick Roufus (Duke’s brother) vs. Mike McDonald.
The mix of karate kicks with boxing hand techniques, was almost entirely ignorant of low kicks, clinching, and Muay Thai, and was gone by the 1990s. Kickboxing in Japan rose and fell and rose. Muay Thai remained the national sport in Thailand. A number of European countries, notably Holland, developed world-class competitors. But kickboxing was and is not a real sport – it entirely lacks agreed-upon rules or champions. And kickboxing was largely gone from the USA.
However, point karate continued to evolve, with some rules allowing for continuous points, where the action was not stopped whenever a point was scored. The contact however still had to be limited.
This had a distinctively different style of play than kickboxing, as can be seen in this highlight clip from Michael ‘Venom’ Page.
Then this long-range, flashy, super fast, timing-based style of striking made its way into kickboxing. And now it has made its way into the elite level of mixed martial arts.
Although Lyoto Machida’s father realized the need for more footwork and added it to his Machida-Do Karate, it is still a distinctly different animal than Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson’s karate based fighting style.
Machida entered MMA with a world-class base in traditional karate and used strikes, set ups, and distances that were entirely new to anyone not intimately familiar with karate. Machida won 14 fights in a row without losing a round, taking out the likes of Stephan Bonnar, Rich Franklin, Sam Greco, BJ Penn, Sokoudjou, and Tito Ortiz. ‘The Dragon’ then took the light heavyweight belt from Rashad Evans.
Evans did not even bring in competent karate-trained sparring partners. The pattern has repeated itself.
Johny Hendricks fought Thompson earlier this year and looked entirely clueless about the long-range, kick heavy, side stance striking style that took him out in the first.
Thompson challenges champion Tyron Woodley for the title at UFC 205, and The Chosen One is not making the mistakes in his preparation that Hendricks did. On his really excellent Champ Camp vlog, Woodley can be seen sparring at RoufuSport with the karate-based Sage Northcutt.
“These young guys, man. Old man got to whip out those new tricks, because they come at you,” said Woodley as transcribed by Dan Hiergesell for MMA Mania. “I work with Sage. He’s obviously in a similar style as the opponent I will be fighting against.”
“He, just in my opinion, is just a little bit faster, and his strikes come with a little bit more force. His takedown defense should be better. His power should be better, so I’m actually training with a better version of what I’m going to compete with.”
Sage Northcutt is in fact of course not better than Stephen Thompson. However he is an excellent, perhaps the excellent choice to ready Woodley for a striking style that may become the norm, but as yet remains for most fighters as odd as was Royce Gracie, standing there in a cotton jacket with his fist held out in front at UFC 1.
