Nitpicking a bit here, but there wasn’t even a such thing as a 10th dan in karate before the 20th century.
If we’re talking literally any professional MMA fighter, even in an MMA rules fight in their weight class, I’d absolutely take that bet. Modern MMA may be very well adapted for its ruleset, but I wouldn’t give the average MMA pro, who works another job to support himself and never makes the big scene, much of a chance against, say, Mas Oyama.
Some of the old time karate masters were no joke. In modern martial arts, MMA may offer the most stringent feedback we can (legally) get, but some karate notables (such as Choki Motobu or Chotoko Kyan) were well known in their day for treating “go to bad neighborhoods, find people who think they’re tough, and beat the shit out of them” as a viable training method.
Doctors throughout the ages have been able to get paid whether their patients survived or not, and the effectiveness of any treatment can usually only be observed statistically in aggregate, but when you get in a fight, it’s usually easy to tell if you’ve won or lost. It’s not as if we invented the practice of taking fighting seriously in the last century.
Well, the professional leagues are separated from the amateur leagues by the fact that the competitors receive money in the professional leagues. The majority of those who compete in professional leagues don’t make enough money at it to live on.
By common usage, the same is true of most “professional” boxers.
Nitpicking a bit here, but there wasn’t even a such thing as a 10th dan in karate before the 20th century.
If we’re talking literally any professional MMA fighter, even in an MMA rules fight in their weight class, I’d absolutely take that bet. Modern MMA may be very well adapted for its ruleset, but I wouldn’t give the average MMA pro, who works another job to support himself and never makes the big scene, much of a chance against, say, Mas Oyama.
Some of the old time karate masters were no joke. In modern martial arts, MMA may offer the most stringent feedback we can (legally) get, but some karate notables (such as Choki Motobu or Chotoko Kyan) were well known in their day for treating “go to bad neighborhoods, find people who think they’re tough, and beat the shit out of them” as a viable training method.
Doctors throughout the ages have been able to get paid whether their patients survived or not, and the effectiveness of any treatment can usually only be observed statistically in aggregate, but when you get in a fight, it’s usually easy to tell if you’ve won or lost. It’s not as if we invented the practice of taking fighting seriously in the last century.
I guess we have different meanings in mind for “professional”—doesn’t it mean ‘someone who does something for a living’?
Well, the professional leagues are separated from the amateur leagues by the fact that the competitors receive money in the professional leagues. The majority of those who compete in professional leagues don’t make enough money at it to live on.
By common usage, the same is true of most “professional” boxers.
(And here I am revealed as one who hardly knows shit about any sport whatsoever.)