With the growing popularity of MMA or Mixed Martial Arts competitions there is a sentiment that the traditional martial arts are less efficient and some just plain don’t work. I think a lot of these views originated from the progression of no holds barred fighting. When the Ultimate Fighting Championship had their first competition back in November of 1993 it was a style verses style competition that was supposed to show which style was best. What we saw happening was that an almost unheard of form of jiu jitsu from Brazil (Brazilian jiu jitsu or bjj) was able to take the other martial artist out of their element and to the ground where the jiu jitsu practitioner specialized and the other stylist would in effect lose the fight.
This was the first shift in people’s perception on what was effective in fighting and what wasn’t. People saw that in the majority of fights the two combatants usually ended up on the ground where jiu jitsu techniques were able to overcome most of their challengers. In fact the jiu jitsu practitioners would wear their GIs (uniform worn in grappling arts made of a heavy canvas material) specifically to entice their opponents to want to grab them. It was the go to game plan to avoid taking damage and to end the fight decisively.
The ground game of fighting was now starting to gain in popularity and people recognized their need to be proficient in this area of the game to complete. Soon fighters who were primarily using stand up based fighting arts like Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and Kung Fu were cross training in these ground fighting techniques in order to compete. By this the practitioners who were only doing jiu jitsu now also had to train in stand up fighting because their adversary’s now knew their moves. Gradually what we’ve had happen is the competitors have taken the most efficient readily applicable techniques from the various traditional martial arts that they practiced and fused them into the ground fighting techniques that they learned from jiu jitsu (as well as wrestling, judo, sambo, and other grappling based martial arts) to for what is now known as Mixed Martial Arts, a discipline in itself.
MMA was developed in modern times in an ever evolving arena of competition, and is quite effective in what it does. So, is MMA better than the traditional martial arts that it was derived from? I think that some things need to be taken into consideration when comparing the two. Traditional martial arts were developed during times when there was a high probability that you would be using these techniques on a battlefield and in survival situations. I believe that they were developed to extreme proficiency during these times as fights could not last long and injuries could potentially cripple you for life. There was a different mentality during these times. It was life or death, people trained very hard and conditioned their bodies. With the advent of guns the need for this type of combat lessened and along with that the training lessened. The need to develop fighting skills within the ancient context was no longer necessary in modern society. Fast forward to where we’re are now in 2018, professional MMA fighters train 6 hours per day 5 to 6 days a week in order to compete. Traditional martial arts practitioners train 2 to 3 days a week if that and usually only an hour or 2 at a time. You get out of things what you put in. There is no way that a martial artist training 6 hours a week can compete with one training 6 hours a day every day. Also, with the traditional martial arts not being used in their original context ( Martial means War), the knowledge of the application of these techniques becomes lost.
In conclusion, I do believe that Traditional martial arts were and still are effective fighting systems. A lot of the variables are on the practitioners and the training. However, as time goes on and the knowledge of the old fighting systems is lost I think that the effectiveness of MMA will ultimately outlive the remaining martial arts. If the world becomes a place that would call for fighting arts to be used as they were in the times of old I believe they will be rediscovered or reinvented when the time is right.