But does it really work???

[uchi mata]

Bjj is a sport?Who told you that?There is a sport venue in wich bjj is competitvely practiced.Have you ever been to a real bjj school?Let me break it down for you, there is training with a kimono for sport snd their is no kimono vale tudo training.Vale tudo means anything goes in portuguese.Try the no kimono training before you say its a sport.I could care less if bjj is considered a real martial art.As far as the so called nhb comment is concerned, if you need to bite or poke someones eyes out to win a fight then i guess you shouldn't enter a nhb tournament.I think you can learn those techniques in a rape prevention class.So why are you in martial arts in the first place.Anyone who has ever stepped into a ring or cage is light years ahead of any speculating armchair yoda who thinks that their techniques are too deadly for so called nhb.

[mild7]

The main reason why most martial artists lose fights is simply because they are'nt MARTIAL artists.
Martial = Warlike.

OVERPRACTICING kata, refusing to spar in a realistic manner, not pushing yourself during training, going for the fancy rather than the pragmatic.
This is the main reason why most "martial" artists can't fight for nuts nowadays. They are'nt martial artists anymore, they are just artists.
It's not an issue of traditional vs NHB style training. Both have their good points. But one should remember how warriors of the past trained. It was always with a martial intent, whether they were practicing shuto against bamboo trees, striking rocks with fingers, looking for fights, anything to prepare them(both mentally and physically) for the horrors of war

[kenpoman]

If the bjj competition goes until someone taps out then it's a sport. When people start killing each other we can reconsider its classification.

[uchi mata]

You have a valid point.Answer me this, what "martial art" actually follows through with killing eachother.?Sport bjj is what it is, a sport.Those sport techniques are the nearly identical (but with a different gameplan)to what I would use in the street.I guess by your definition all martial arts are sports.I wouldn't judge a style by whether the praticioners kill each other or not but I respect the term "to each his own".

[mild7]

I've never understood why there is so much rivalry between traditionalists and NHBers.
To everything there is some truth and some bull****.

To say that arts like BJJ are ineffective as they are sports is a lame argument. Of course they don't kill each other, why, do you kill your sparring partners in Kenpo? You don't, so it is a sport too I guess.

To say something like Kenpo is totally useless as they don't train fullcontact also does'nt hold up.
You can't train eyegouges and lethal techniques full contact. Does'nt mean you should not train in them at all though.

Most martial artists seem to take just one side. But imagine a fighter who is trained under fullcontact NHB fighting but also keeps an open mind to using eyegouges and other "lethal" techniques. IMO he'd be the best fighter of all.

[kenpoman]

Just about every system and style claim that they are not a sport, but an MA. If it's a competative activity then that falls under the guidlines of a sport, but now we're playing with semantics...and shouldn't waste too much time trying to figure out the nitty gritty definitions of words. I've never claimed that kenpo wasn't a sport while everything else is...on the contrary, I wouild argue that Kenpo becomes a sport as soon as the practitioners compete with each other. Also keep in mind that I have said nothing negative about anything being a 'sport'...I personally have more respect for the sport of boxing than most of the MA out there.