Karate vs. Kung Fu (Fighting Black Kings)

[HanshiClayton]

We know that Matsumura, inventor of linear karate, set out to fight every sifu in Okinawa, and humiliated them so badly that no one would agree to fight with him. This is how he got his position as the Minister of Military Affairs in the Shuri government.

So we know he created hard-style karate, and we know he beat up a lot of soft stylists, but how do those two ideas connect?

In 1975, Mas Oyama filmed a very self-serving movie about a kyokushinkai full-contact tournament in Japan, intended as a marketing project for his world-wide kyokushinkai karate organization. Oyama had been a student of Funakoshi at one point, and then went yamabushi and invented his own kind of karate. The film is called Fighting Black Kings, for no apparent reason. You can view it in ten segments on YouTube.

In segment four of Fighting Black Kings, around 6:57 into the segment, there is a full-contact match between a kyokushinkai fighter and a Chinese stylist from Hong Kong. There is a similar match at the beginning of segment five.

It's a massacre. The Chinese fighters absolutely rained punches on the Japanese fighters, and the punches just bounced off. In the second match, the karate fighter just stood there in apparent astonishment while his opponent chain-punched him in the chest. Then, losing patience, the karateka threw a single reverse-punch and the fight was over. The Chinese guy had to be helped out of the ring.

At first I thought I might be seeing a replay of Matsumura's victory over the Chinese fighters of Okinawa, but on reflection I realized that the tournament rules were playing against the Chinese fighters. Kyokushinkai rules prohibited punches to the face. I didn't see any bloody noses in this lengthy and brutal tournament. If a chain-puncher can't hit you in the face, he's fatally handicapped. The rapid-fire, uncommitted punches have little effect when directed at the opponent's chest. They need to be hitting mouth, nose and eyes in order to produce the effect they expect.

Add to that the fact that the kyokushin guys tend to be big, and have taken literally thousands of blows to the torso in their training. The Chinese fighters were kind of skinny.

Fighting Black Kings is full of karate demos, meaning every kind of breaking stunt. For instance, here is the stunt where the fighter does a flying side kick entirely over a speeding car, lengthwise. Better get the timing right on that one, buckaroos.

[Philip Sneyd]

Dr Clayton,

I was intrigued when I noticed you had posted an article related to my style of karate. Cool!

I too was puzzled by the title "Fighting Black Kings". Could it be that the Japanese production crew really meant "Fighting Black Belt Kings" and it was misleadingly marketed in the U.S. by distributors who didn't watch the whole thing? Who knows.

The documentary itself is dated and shoddy, but it is a remarkable glimpse into a landmark in karate's history. In the 70's Muay Thai kickboxing began to earn a reputation as a brutal underground stand-up fighting sport. They weren't impressed with Hollywood Kung Fu antics or Japan's claim as martial arts capital of the world, so they issued a challenge to all schools of karate in Japan to meet Muay Thai fighters full-contact in the ring (with prescribed rules, of course - forget Frank Dux's fantasy tales of organized death matches).

Only Kyokushin kai answered that challenge, and sent fighters to Bangkok to fight the Thais on home turf. There were three matches, of which two were won by the Japanese karateka.

After that, Kyokushin decided to host regular World Open Karate Tournaments. Despite the inclusion of the word 'Karate', the most important was 'Open' because they were open to all styles who wished to participate with an agreed set of rules.

Those early fights in Thailand were an important learning experience for both styles - the Thai's learned not to underestimate karate, and karate discovered and incorporated some powerful knee strikes, crippling leg kicks, and so on. I have nothing but admiration for Muay Thai and its dedicated athletes. It is a powerful, effective style, but not overly complex and with a fairly limited number of techniques, even though its tournaments have fewer restrictions than most (and therefore more permitted techniques).

I read once in a Muay Thai book that the style was originally created as an effective hand-to-hand combat system for military use. In times of war, when troops needed to be conscripted quickly from peasants and farmers etc., they simply didn't have time to teach them to execute "perfect kicks" which required correct chambering of the leg and years of stretching. The power in Muay Thai kicks comes in pelvis rotation - the leg is usually quite straight throughout the kick's motion.*

This is why karate is more suitable as a "Do", because it is difficult to perfect and requires years of dedication and hard work. We can enjoy perfecting our art over our entire lifetimes. Muay Thai, on the other hand, is simple, powerful, and effective for its intended use (either brief military duty, or the short career of a Professional Thai Boxer).

This is also the main reason that there are no face punches allowed in most Kyokushin tournaments - there is limited amount of high impact blows the human brain can endure, so it is not conducive to a Do - a life's journey studying a martial art. It is true that high kicks and knees to the head are allowed in competition, but realistically they are harder to apply than punches and easier to block (for a trained practitioner). Who can deny that an average boxer in his career receives more head punches than a karateka receives head kicks during his/her lifetime? If not, the karateka ought to look for a new hobby!

That is not to say that Kyokushin has eliminated head punches and elbow strikes from it's daily curriculum. That is one of the biggest misconceptions about Kyokushin. All karate techniques are practised and studied in the dojo, in kihon keiko, in controlled strikes during sparring, against pads, sandbags, etc. It is only in bare-knuckle full-contact tournaments that the most dangerous techniques are disallowed, for obvious reasons.





* PS: Some Muay Thai practitioners argue that the Muay Thai roundhouse kick is more powerful than karate's because they have thousands of recorded tournament KO's as evidence. But I would argue that the Thai kick lands home more regularly because it is easier in theory to execute. The karate roundhouse with chamber and snap is in fact much more devastating when executed correctly, but because it is so difficult to execute perfectly it is more rarely seen.