White Dragon
USA Today Article Discusses The Bull—- That Is Current Olympic Taekwondo
I was looking up Taekwondo stuff on google and came across an interesting article on USA Today’s website about Taekwondo in the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Olympics. There are so many unrealistic, non-combative techniques being employed to score on their silly electronic scoring gear that Taekwondo is not about fighting anymore. Athletes like Steven Lopez even complain about it.
The article is titled “Is that a kick? Taekwondo fighters devise new ways to score.” Check it out.
So many dumb kicks that have no real combat application are now going to be taught at many Taekwondo gyms in order to score points and try to win gold medals at tournaments. The World Taekwondo Federation is making so may stupid decisions on sport Taekwondo. So many people online are talking about this and uploading videos contrasting the difference between oldschool Olympic Taekwondo sparring and and the newschool tap, foot-fencing for electronic scoring gear.
Oldschool Taekwondo was what it was. It was limited somewhat, but the spirit and ideas and concepts of it and the way competitors fought kept the integrity of the martial art. I know back then many people still were full martial artists who did poomsae, self defense and everything else Taekwondo along with sparring competitions. Now days you see mainly sparring athletes ONLY wanting to do WTF sparring, and not master the poomsae or self defense, or anything else that makes Taekwondo a real martial art. The other half is busy doing idiotic things like Taekwondo-dance and performance art from gymnastics and hip hop dancing. Not martial arts.
I competed in many Olympic style Taekwondo tournaments and fought hard. I even made it to the Junior Olympics at age 14. The sport was dangerous and you got hurt while hurting your opponent. It was a combat sport. This instills fighting spirit in the Taekwondo practitioner and is an aid to get them into combat thinking. Taekwondo translates well into kickboxing and MMA and this has been proven. The WTF is truly bastardizing Taekwondo and making it kill itself in a slow and painful suicide. The WTF needs to get rid of its directors and leaders and get actual martial artists to come in. Throw out the silly electronic gear, give more punches points (heck change the rules to head punches being allowed! Karate is now an Olympic sport and will now claim to own face punching over Taekwondo and Taekwondo will slowly fade in popularity even more), and make Taekwondo sport a combat sport again! There should also be advanced options for people outside of the Olympics to spar without gear. Also whoever came up with the idea to wear national colored dobok pants was stupid. It looks dumb and looks like sport karate with their multi-colored gi’s that are ugly as hell. Get tradition back into Taekwondo!
I wish the Kukkiwon would admit the failing of the WTF and get them to start promoting more serious combat sports, or at least provide an avenue for what Koreans would call Kyeoktuki (Kickboxing MMA style fighting).
Olympic Taekwondo now looks so awful, so dumb, so boring that nobody wants to watch it. Dojangs around the world already lost money because of MMA and the rise of the UFC and it’s #1 status in martial arts sports. The dumb rules of WTF sparring and their electronic gear and ideas are not developing Taekwondo or making it more effective or interesting. The techniques are regressing Taekwondo and making it ineffective for self defense and something the average person who wants to take up martial arts has no interest in doing. This is why dojangs will lose even more money and students to MMA, Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, Boxing etc. Heck even Karate, Kung Fu and the ITF will get more students now and have more ammo to mock Kukki-Taekwondo and WTF. After seeing the Rio Olympics ask all of your friends if they are interested in Taekwondo or think it looks like a very effective style of fighting. 99% will say no.
Fix the problem WTF!!! Do something! Make Taekwondo about fighting again!! Stop the madness! Kukkiwon PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE start promoting Taekwondo as a fighting art again…PLEASE! Many masters trained so hard and are only told they trained in dancing and how to show off and not true martial arts or true self defense. I beg you, PLEASE do something! Stop being PC and saying Taekwondo is about “spirit and culture” which are ambiguous terms that say absolutely nothing ,and are nonsense, and start saying “Taekwondo is a serious Korean martial art for effective combat using the feet and fists to smash enemies” like it was originally created to be.
Taekwondo is actually being developed and evolving into the future through MMA and Kickboxing fighting events. Taekwondo fighters are using techniques and footwork against live opponents actually trying to do more than jump spin kick their head gear for 4 points. Punches to the face, clinches, takedowns, knees, elbows and more are being thrown at them and they are using oldschool Taekwondo, even Olympic style, footwork and combinations that are winning fights. They are not using newschool techniques to knock anyone out. True Taekwondo as combat is actually being used, yet the World Taekwondo Federation is ignoring it and instead praising “scorpion kicks” and flippy tappy foot slaps on chest gear. Go figure. Everyone respects Olympic Wrestling. Everyone respects Olympic Judo. Everyone respects Olympic boxing. Nobody respects Olympic Taekwondo.
I wish the Kukkiwon and WTF would not publicly ignore MMA and K1. Oh they know it exists and they know the problem. They know Taekwondo is not the world’s most popular martial art anymore and people love watching real fights. They know it. Yet, they want to act like it’s not effecting Taekwondo at all. The late 1990’s they focused on children and being politically correct. What is interesting that other martial arts that still have a grasp on combat such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are very popular and full of children participating at gyms everywhere. Even MMA gyms have kids classes and are making tons of money. It is possible to keep Taekwondo combative and serious but also teach children as well and build positive character. I will never understand the logic of many of the people running the current organizations of Taekwondo and their excuses not to focus on Kyeoktuki (MMA, Kickboxing, self defense) and have allowed groups like the Ktigers to bastardize Taekwondo even more with silly performances. That added onto what the WTF has done is a double kill.
There is still hope for the WTF and Taekwondo sport if they just get a clue now and fix the problem. If this crap happens again in the next Olympics Taekwondo Sparring will official die as a sport worth anyone’s attention.
White Dragon Dojang 
Amen.
As a Taekwondo practitioner of about 8 years it’s really frustrating to see our competitions IN THE OLYMPICS look so silly. I really wish the WTF would allow clinching/grabbing and leg sweeps. It’s something we’ve done just for fun in my dojang and it made sparring much more realistic with just those two rule changes. Oh and get rid of those stupid electronic hogus.
I do that too. Kickboxing style and developing Taekwondo for real fighting.
The new rules and the dumb eletronics make oldschool hard Taekwondo technques obsolete for sport. There is no point in doing those old drills anymore. No we have to figure out how to “trigger” the eletronics and hopefuly go for 4 points by doing a jumping twirling kick that is stupid and then fall on the ground afterward then mae sure you cheer to let the judges know you scrored a point no matter what.
I REALLY hate the cheering they do after a stupid kick. In the old days that was a foul and you would get a warning for being disrespectful and arrogant for cheering. Now it is acceptable. So stupid.
I liked it when Olympic TKD was one point for ANY score no matter what. It was so much simpler. Ties were easily broken by power of technique or difficulty or aggression. Common sense. Electronics do not stop corruption either or bad judging.
Hard style Olympic sparring will survive on the local level for a time…but eventually that will die, too, if the Kukkiwon & WTF don’t do anything about it. Maybe it already has died (I haven’t seen local comp footage in a while).
I know the game has changed a lot since I took a grassroots sparring seminar 3 or 4 years ago. Cut kick was less emphasized, and the use of both legs was important. It was also important to kick a lot, not just guard up and try try to foot fence off one leg.
I think this is just the trend but if they won’t put a stop to it then we will see more silly kicks for score.
Man, this is why I love sparring other Marines. It is so much fun to tell them before we fight that I’m a black belt in taekwondo. Oh my god, the laughs I get when I tell them that. It’s even worse now that I’ve been taking boxing lessons from my new Master and one of my GySgts. People who’ve done pure Muay Thai or MMA or Dutch style kick boxing expect a taekwondoin to be a complete pushover in a stand up fight.
Bell rings, and they don’t know what hit them. Things I have come to the conclusion of over the past four months:
1. No one knows how to deal with a good back kick.
2. No one knows how to deal with taekwondo style round kicks, where you snap back instead of swinging it like a baseball bat.
3. Axe kicks confuse the crap out of people.
4. One you tag people a couple of times in the gut with a back kick, they start dropping their hands and head shots become super easy to acquire.
And of course, my absolute favorite thing to hear after a fight is: “What the hell kind of taekwondo is that?”
Because the answer is always: “Real taekwondo.”
That’s awesome dude! I have been sparring MMA fighters here and there. You can see video of friendly sparring of me in the Philippines on my youtube. Also recently I sparred a local MMA fighter in Alabama gently and spin kicked him in the head and also did a downward round kick to his face. Of course nobody here wants to acknowledge that TKD kicks their ass or really give me the time of day for training. Only 1 guy who is an amateur fighter wants me to train him. The rest pretend they don’t need me even though I kick their asses or show them why their kicking techniques suck.
I bet in the Marines you guys do more full contact sparring right? I always play it safe here.
Yeah. There’s a lot of full contact. Granted, it’s gloves, shin gear, cup, flak jacket without plates and head gear, but ain’t no peace of canvas and padding stopping the damage of a full force back kick.