7deuce

I used to train 5 days a week 5-6 hours a day. I started in Kickboxing, then to TaeKwonDo, and some Japanese Bujikon (ninja stuff similar to Aikido), then Hapkido -where my heart lives.

Martial arts was my life. I got so into nunchucks that when I went dancing I'd wear clear hooker heels and coordinating clear acrylic nunchucks. My house? nunchucks everywhere.

But I got sick so I stopped training and now I'm a fat lazy American living vicariously through UFC. But I was good. I'll never be that good again, but I really learned how to live in the art. I'm gonna cry now. You have no idea how much I miss it. Imagine someone taking away your daughter. That's how I feel.

Long answer to a short question.

If you've never studied a martial art it's hard to understand the difference between it and a sport or hobby. Like biking or wrestling...for you those are important things but theres a dimension in MA that simply does not exist in sports. Some people think TaeKwonDo isn't even a true martial art. It is and it isn't. That's why I went to Hapkido. TKD is an art the evolved into a fighting sport with much of it's original spirituality and lifestyle being shed.If you ever get the chance to really train in an art do it. There's not a way to explain the validity of the difference between a sport and a MA until you've achieved the level of understanding from training. That's kinda what makes me sad about a lot of mma fans. They think that putting a fighter in a cage makes an mma fight. No. A boxer is a boxer, a wrestler is a wrestler. MMa fighters can have a wrestling background, or a boxing background but they aren't an MMA fighter until they get the skills of mixing the aspects of different arts. Like Kit Cope was a Muay Thai fighter but he had to study other arts before he could be an MMA fighter. Do you agree?