That's No Way To Get Ahead In Life....

[thoughtwire]

The more I think about this, the angrier I get:

Matos faces lifetime ban after kicking referee following matchIt's not the fact that the WTF took something that wasn't supposed to be a sport and made a sport out of it. I can handle that

Comments

[pghkitten]

If life followed the rules of martial arts movie justice, then this guy's master would immediately have come down out of the stands and started beating the hell out of him with a staff. And then made him sleep on a bed of rocks and hold buckets of water over his head for a week. Unfortunately, TKD practitioners get coaches and trainers these days, not masters, and that's why the soul has gone out of it

[thoughtwire]

LOL... I wish I had seen that.

It is - or was recently - still possible to find the occasional decent WTF school, but they are becoming fewer and harder to find. Most of them have gone over to exclusively olympic-style tournament training. There are still the ATA and ITF though, which - last I checked - are at least making an effort to resist it.

[pghkitten]

Call me a total l33t-speaking dork, but I laugh nowadays every time I see a reference to a WTF taekwondo school. It translates in my mind to the "WTF? school," and then I begin thinking of the Tendo School of Anything Goes Martial Arts from Ranma 1/2. :)

Seriously, though, I'm glad to hear that there are some traditionalist holdouts. I wanted to bang my head against a brick wall the day I saw that the martial arts school in Squirrel Hill was advertising "Samurai Karate Birthday Pizza Parties." (Link: http://usaprokarate.cmasdirect.com/site/view/BirthdayParties.pml)

[thoughtwire]

Aaaugh! It makes my sanity hurt!

...

Sorry, I clicked on the link, despite... *shudder* ... oh, the horror, the horror!

Hm, looks like I need to watch more of Ranma 1/2. I've only seen the first few episodes, so I don't really recognize the name.

[guendolen_sama]

Wait, come again? This is the first I've heard of this! Honestly, to hear someone do such a thing.... It honestly is a disgrace. I bet Master Kim was appalled, when he heard this. I'm so glad that my school teaches us to do more than just spar.... There's such a complete difference, as well you know. Tournaments are a far cry from real fights. If only more schools paid any attention to the reality side of things. This is why I like studying under a traditional Korean master.

[thoughtwire]

Yeah, I had trouble completely wrapping my mind around this as well. Sounds like you were fortunate enough to find a good school though, where they understand these sorts of things.

Congratulations again on your recent promotion!

[guendolen_sama]

Thank you again. :) I consider myself very fortunate indeed in my choice of school. We do the sparring and so forth, but the following of the tenets and what not is also very important. That includes seeking to follow ideas of self-control, descipline, etc. Obviously this individual did not get any viable adherence to these notions, or he would not have acted as he did.

[thoughtwire]

It's sad, because it's actually getting hard to find a school where the students even know the tenets of Tae Kwon Do, much less have given any thought to what they mean in the context of martial arts.

[scholarinexile]

This kind of crap is what pisses me off about the dumbing down of martial arts in America in general. I'm glad I didn't bother watching the Olympic TKD...I'd basically be watching kickboxing. That man is a disgrace to the art.

[thoughtwire]

Pretty much, yeah. It's fairly maddening to watch.