There are several sets of rules of kickboxing variants that do not allow any kind of head strikes, but they are not popular. I agree that such rules are the only acceptable with the exception of the matches between professionals who are fully aware of the risks, but who are willing to risk their health against an appropriate compensation.
Among the sets of rules that allow head strikes, traditional boxing is the worst.
It is much more dangerous than any kind of kickboxing or MMA, because the boxers have few methods to defend themselves and few other means of winning, except by a knockout that is easiest to achieve by a head strike. Even during the Greek antiquity, pancration (i.e. MMA) was considered to have a much lower risk of injury than pugilism (i.e. boxing).
But they distinguished between that and stand up striking aka pugilism? Though the latter is a Latin word hmm
I'd be very uninterested by non head striking martial arts.
Martial Arts is a search for truth. It's not only about fighting as it is also about discipline, self improvement, peace, community and some spritualism
But if you care about combat them you have to fight/spar. No point pretending taichi is a combat skill if no one in two generations or more have applied it practically.
MMA is the closest we can get to a controlled safe arena to facilitate that search for truth.
Do what works. Love him or hate him, the Conor McGregor shoulder punch was a great moment of reminding people that the spirit of MMA should be formless.
For that reason I find it frustrating that UFC has banned 12oclock elbows and football kicks and grounded knees. Not because I want to see people's heads getting smashed but because the obvious desire to not get struck by those would promote less risky takedowns and would probably make the sport less wrestling dominant.
Most ancient Greek games, including the Olympic Games, had 3 separate competitions of combat sports, wrestling, pankration and pugilism. Some people competed in more than one of them, so pugilism was usually scheduled to be the last of the 3, because otherwise those injured in pugilism would not have been able to compete in the following competition.
Pankration allowed striking, kicking, wrestling and submission grappling, so it was very similar to the MMA of today.
However, the pankration fighters did not bandage their hands with leather straps, like the pugilists, so they were not able to hit as hard the head of the opponent.
Moreover, they had plenty of other options for winning a match, so striking was not as emphasized as in pugilism, which remains true today in MMA vs. boxing.
> I'd be very uninterested by non head striking martial arts.
> Martial Arts is a search for truth.
> But if you care about combat them you have to fight/spar.
> Do what works.
The truth is that barehanded fighting has been obsolete since the invention of rocks.
If you want to see what works, expect to see a lot of strikes that break the opponent's knee, and wrestlers putting their opponent's eyes out.
If you don't want to see that, how are head strikes supposed to be different?
> No point pretending taichi is a combat skill if
Huh? Nobody does pretend it's a combat skill. It's a set of exercises† practiced voluntarily by grandmothers, and imposed upon schoolchildren, for notional health reasons. If you suggested to either group that it might be relevant in combat, they would find that hilarious. (In fact, I have read a Chinese comic series in which there's a running joke that someone is seen as a martial artist when, in reality, all they can do is morning exercises. That person eventually defeats a gorilla -- the gorilla has been beating up actual martial artists by copying their moves, faster and stronger -- by doing some morning exercises, which it copies. Their total uselessness in combat means that the gorilla is no longer threatening.)
It is best known for the funny narrations that people make up to accompany and describe the exercises.
"I have a watermelon."
"Here you go."
† Well, really, tai ji is the interaction between yin and yang. The exercises are tai ji quan.
I think taiji gets a bad rap. Although I haven't done explicitly taiji, when I did some shaolin quan which included baduanjin I was very impressed with how holistic the training was (with the exception of combat application). I think the training was "boring" but has the necessary ingredients for preparing the body to be conditioned for very fluid movement which turns out is very good for long term health and preservation of your MSK system. I came away impressed that we've had so much of this figured out for so long well before we had the science to explain it. Baduanjin was actually designed to be accessible regardless of age or prior skill level.
> The truth is that barehanded fighting has been obsolete since the invention of rocks.
So with a rock or even a rock weapon like an axe or whatever you are telling me you think you could take on Khabib? That rocks have completely obsoleted physicality and skill so now you will win.
> If you want to see what works, expect to see a lot of strikes that break the opponent's knee, and wrestlers putting their opponent's eyes out.
This quora post captures exactly what I think is about the search for truth in martial arts - there's so much "theory" that struggles to hold up in practice where a bouncer/martial artist reflects on how knee breaks are a low percentage high risk technique when trying to execute in real life.
https://www.quora.com/Are-knee-destructions-illegal-in-MMA
I think non practitioners routinely underestimate the difficulty in executing these kinds of techniques under duress. I mean, a proper liver strike is a 1 hit KO and karate teaches the liver kick where you strike the liver with the ball of your foot. How often do you see that technique used? It's like the mma equivalent of the football bicycle kick.
IIRC Jon Jones used knee kicks and they werent so effective that they were banned or changed the face of the sport.
Eye gouging is weird, I'm unsure how it would change MMA and we'll never find out. If they're good as a strike people will stop engaging and resort to kick range but kicks can make you more liable to take downs which then brings you into gouging range in wrestling.
If anything UFC rules has shown that physicality kind of trumps skill unless the skill gap is very large. Which is a frustrating outcome but a truth nonetheless - martial arts is only useful if you're also strong
Among the sets of rules that allow head strikes, traditional boxing is the worst.
It is much more dangerous than any kind of kickboxing or MMA, because the boxers have few methods to defend themselves and few other means of winning, except by a knockout that is easiest to achieve by a head strike. Even during the Greek antiquity, pancration (i.e. MMA) was considered to have a much lower risk of injury than pugilism (i.e. boxing).