Can TKD Learn from MMA?

Despite its worldwide popularity and it’s rank as the most popular martial art in the United States,  (TKD) is beginning to lose some of it’s luster due to its perceived lack of success in Mixed Martial Arts.   (MMA) is the biggest thing to hit the martial arts world since Jigaro Kano decided to go to a colored and black belt system to denote rank within his school, the Kodokan.  The Ultimate Fighting Championships has over 10 million likes on Facebook alone.

I stated perceived lack of success because current UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson is a taekwondo black belt.  Anthony “Showtime” Pettis, a top lightweight and featherweight contender in the UFC, is also a taekwondo black belt and owns one of the most devastating spinning kick knockouts to the aforementioned Benson Henderson in the WEC.  Former UFC contenders Stephan Bonner and David Loiseau were also taekwondo black belts, who give TKD credit for making them devastating kickers.

However, taekwondo is generally not held in high esteem within MMA circle for a couple of reasons.  First, taekwondo is known for its powerful kicks, which are not much use against a good wrestler, who will use the opportunity to take you to the ground.  Second, most taekwondo fighters are considered to have poor hand striking skills, so you cannot use TKD as your striking base without supplementing with boxing or Muay Thai.

I recognized this fact, when I first started TKD, so I began doing boxing drills almost as soon as I started training.  Also, a number of people in the sport in a number of capacities have talked about how worthless TKD is as a martial art.

Joe Rogan, a really knowledgeable analyst, who holds black belts in TKD and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) has stated repeatedly that taekwondo is pretty worthless for real fighting.  I don’t completely agree with Joe because I think it does have a lot to offer, if you combine it with other elements such as boxing, shin kicks and some basic ground knowledge from Judo and BJJ.

Here is the real rub though because many TKD instructors want nothing to do with MMA.  The focus of most commercial schools is to produce an international competitor that can get into the Olympics.  The Olympic mania has hurt TKD in many ways.

I have heard many TKD instructors say that they have never seen an MMA match or think it is like some of the old Tough Man contests.  As one instructor told me one day, “We didn’t fight in cages back in Washington, D.C.”  I have heard this attitude more times than I care to count.

For all the instructors that feel this way, let me give you another example of short sighted thinking.  Eastman Kodak was a multi-million dollar company.  However, they almost went into bankruptcy because they failed to grasp how digital cameras were going to completely change how people took photos.  We should be embracing the lessons within MMA and fitting them into our programs.  It just increases the tools in a student’s tool bag.

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