Try it.
"why doesn't a taekwondo bod get in the ring and kick the opponents head off? "
tldr; - punches are faster than kicks.
Longer version:
It's been tried. When "mixed martial arts" was just starting out and purporting to represent what fighting is really like, you would see exactly that - some big gangly TKD player squaring off against a boxer, or a wiry little Wing Chun dude getting in the ring with someone who did Judo or whatever. People tied to a single system of fighting pretty quickly had the weaknesses of that system shown to them. TKD black belts can win fights against other, less skilled TKD fighters... but put them up against someone whose background is grappling, and those big kicks are just handing them something that's easy to grab.
What you see in the cage nowadays is the distilled essence of what actually works under that set of rules (and despite any hype there's a LOT of rules, and they're not all the same so take what follows as possibly over-specific) - and it looks NOTHING like TKD. From what I can make out (and I've never trained in MMA, although my ex's brother was/is pretty good) the things that seem to work are:
- kickboxing, more or less,
- jujitsu, more or less,
- er...
- that's it.
Fundamentally, when standing up you kick and punch like a kickboxer, but unless you can knock the guy out (which is less likely than it is in "normal" boxing because the gloves are thinner so you can't hit as hard) it almost invariably comes down to grappling sooner or later. No amount of TKD training will help when your opponent is choking you unconscious on the ground.
(, Tue 23 Aug 2016, 12:12, Share, Reply)
Cheers to above
Makes a bit more sense. Just boiled down into what will work against someone who knows what might be coming and is prepared.
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spazzcaptain Misses Valin @, Tue 23 Aug 2016, 20:43,
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