full contact point sparring???

[Becca]

Have any of you ever read the rules for the Sabaki Full Contack Karate Turnament?

I was interested and was thinking about going just to check it out. The rules section was a bit amusing. What they call "full contact" is what we call point sparring in my school. True full contact would not disallow hits to the face, IMO.

What'd you guys think? Would it be worth $25 to go see, or would it be like evry other Karate event?

[cerebus]

Well, I don't know what the rules set that you read says, but the Sabaki Challenge is the real deal. I've seen some of their matches and they are pretty interesting.

The ones I saw were 3 rounds per fight. The first round was full-contact karate with no pads. No hand blows are allowed to the head, but punches to the body and kicks and knee strikes to the head, body & legs are all allowed as are throws & takedowns. Knockouts are not uncommon.

The second round, the fighters put on boxing gloves and fight according to Thai Kickboxing rules (minus elbow strikes).

The final round (for those who make it there) the fighters put on MMA gloves and fight under NHB match rules, including grappling and submissions.

It's pretty cool stuff.

[wdl]

Odd, but it doesn't sound like a typical karate point sparring match. I didn't see in the rules were they break between points. It says the points are cumulative.

"One point will be awarded to a fighter who causes his opponent to turn away after a stunning kick to the head."

Sounds like they allow head contact Becca, granted it doesn't say punch only kick, which is very TKDish.

-Will

[cerebus]

Wellll, it's like boxing. If you don't knock the guy out and the match lasts the full number of rounds, then the decision is made by points. Same as with any full-contact Karate match.

[cerebus]

I see from looking at the link that Becca posted that they don't say anything about the alternate rules that were being used for rounds 2 & 3 when I saw it a few years back. The method described on the website is the same format as is used in Kyokushin Karate (Ninomiya being an ex-Kyokushin guy). Any of you ever watch "Fighting Black Kings"?

[cerebus]

And "YouKnowWho", you CAN grab his kicking leg & throw him. You just can't do the knee drop on his groin after...

[Becca]

Cool! I think I will go, then. I just didn't want to fork over $25 per person to watch borring, plain-jane point sparring.

[cerebus]

Let us know what you think of it afterwards.

[rogue]

cerebus, I think you were describing Shidokan not sabaki.

[norther practitioner]

I was thinking about going... my b-day is thursday, so I was thinking of buying a ticket as a b-day present to myself.

[cerebus]

Hey Rogue, I do believe you're right! I get all the various Kyokushin offshoots mixed up sometimes. But still, the Sabaki guys follow the Kyokushin format (the "bare-knuckle" full contact, not the Muay Thai & NHB stuff like Shidokan), so it's pretty cool (and you sometimes see some pretty impressive knockouts).

[wdl]

Interesting, sounds almost violent.

-Will

[BeiTangLang]

I couldn't get past that stinking music long enough to read all the rules! LOL!

[IronFist]

Wow, that site had annoying music.

[chessman71]

Where I live, we get lots of Kyokushin fights from Japan on TV. At first, I was really excited to see these but they quickly became boring. I guess the rules are set up to prevent reverse punches to head, but when you take the most devastating karate move out, the competition quickly becomes boring to watch.

Most of the fights involve lots of punching to the body that no one even tries to block. Being Kyokushin guys, they're usually tough enough to take that. The only way to really score a knockout, then, is a kick to the head which everyone is on the lookout for. So it degenerates into who can get in the headkick first.

Not very interesting in my opinion but good enough for a one-time look.

Dave C.