> That’s why FIE introduced the Unwillingness to Fight rule in 2019. It dictates that when a minute elapses without a point, the fencer who is behind receives a yellow. Repeated offenses lead to a red.
Just paint 2 lines midway to the center - whoever crosses first gets the attacker designation and the 5 second window during which his opponent's point if such scored would be good only to break the attack and wouldn't be counted. Add to that that the fencers in many situations wouldn't be completely sure who crossed first.
So, the very first attack gets better protection on their attack than a foil fencer? And simultaneous attacks just look like sabre?
And what about subsequent attacks after that? They're just normal where the threat of the counter attack drags us back to fencers not doing anything for 2 minutes?
Or what if play is halted and restarted somewhere other than the centre en-garde lines?
I think humans are pretty good at finding the optimum strategy. It's only really recently that bots have overtaken us in a lot of highly environmentally complex games.
The first is that top-level classical time-control matches are draw-ish; there's really no solution to that other than playing some other game. If neither player blunders, often chess is just a draw. Top computer chess engines of equal strength draw even more often.
The second is "grandmaster draws" at shorter time controls; the Champions Chess Tour has had dozens of draws with the exact same 14-move Berlin opening repetition. The solution there is pretty simple: 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.
Competitive judo has grown a plethora of rules of this type - restricted holds, stalling penalties, 20 second timers for the ground game. My teacher participated in some of the conferences leading to those rule changes, and he said it boiled down to getting the bodies to fly for the TV cameras. A lot of combat sports end up being slow and passive without rules propelling them into action.
It’s also other sports. Basketball has a shot clock for a reason. American football also forces a play to begin within a certain amount of time. In fact I would say that football’s rules are almost a contrived set of constraints that force engagement and exciting action continuously.
The rules of the game aren't forcing ad breaks; the networks themselves are. Ultimately the broadcast director is in charge of the actual flow of the game, and tells the ref when the ads are finished so they can start the next play.
It's interesting to see the power dynamic here. Here in the UK there would be riots if soccer games were broken for ads (I'm really not exaggerating). Over COVID, a short timeout was added in the middle of each half, and this was conditional on there being no ads in the UK.
That said, I watch a fair amount of NFL and with the intensity of play I'm quite grateful for the pauses. American ads are irrelevant to me anyway.
That is fascinating. As someone who doesn't watch sports, I just assumed the match continued during advertisements. Does everyone just stop and stand around during breaks? Is there a director scripting the action, somehow?
I sort of want to attend a match in person to find out, now.
It’s more that the sport is strategically designed for lots of downtime. The match does sometimes continue during ad breaks, but only as long as the ad needs to finish playing. Aside from the “downs” system that stops the clock almost every play, the coaches are awarded gratuitous and lengthy timeouts with which they use strategically to do things such as interrupt successful streaks from the opposing team. And yes, during those plus the 4 quarter breaks there is a lot of just standing around.
The TV production squeezes commercials in during stoppages. But American football has a large number of stoppages (between every play, during timeouts called by the players/coach, after scoring, when a player has an injury, between quarters) so there are lots of chances to squeeze commercials in. They have also added stoppages basically so they can squeeze an additional commercial break, such as the "2 minute warning" at the end of the half, which is just an automatic timeout (and inevitable commercial break). Some say that the addition of video review (where referees review a contested call) was an excuse to add more commercial breaks.
There is no director, but there is a huge production team synchronizing everything and making sure that they squeeze in as many commercials as possible without missing any of the action.
As a British person visiting the US a few years ago, I was invited to watch a televised game of Baseball. The game would stop for what I thought was a random amount of time, asking my host what the hell they were doing - it turns out they were stopping due to the commercials within the TV broadcast. Honestly don't know how you guys put up with that level of advertising...it would drive me mad.
In the UK I've not watched a TV commercial in years (there are none on the BBC, Netflix, Prime or Disney+). All major sports events that are of importance are on the BBC. These are all paid-for subscriptions. I assume to watch Baseball on TV you would have to subscribe to cable? And to have ads on top of your paid subscription just seems greedy.
I've been somewhat taken aback that having paid for a subscription for Eurosport (in the UK) to watch more than the
two Olympic streams that the BBC are permitted, I still have to watch adverts.
I don't know, it's a sport that's supposed to test athletes against each other in certain skill sets. Finding ways to win with less exertion and less athletic (i.e., less risky) moves is sort of hacking the game and losing the point. If a guy came at you with a sword in real life (not sure how often this happens but still), you can't necessarily count on being able to get them to agree to rest for a round.
Like it or not, most of modern sport is for media. Almost all people at Olympic level are paid by media and marketing to perform for media and marketing. Some are paid by states to perform for their media and propaganda.
I think this is largely the point of competitive sports, the performance for a crowd. Sports which are done purely for those doing the actual activity are great, but tend to be more recreational than competitive.
I still find it fascinating (and linguistically a bit of a struggle) that sport and exercise are even different words in English. In my native German, there's only "Sport", which is used both to describe physical exercise as well the uncountable English "sports".
Professional sport is entertainment with extra steps. Same reason why Norwegian women's volleyball team was fined for wearing shorts instead of bikinis.
Great! Let's do judo next, seeing as the constant penalizing of almost every attack has made the sport semi-unwatchable. It's rare to see any scoring before overtime in international-level judo- why take the risk? Judo pretty desperately needs a rules upgrade
Because yea, for decades an epee bout was like watching paint dry. Just bouncing around in place for 9 minutes, and then finishing with nobody getting above 10 touches.
> For a fencer’s fourth P-card sanction, the fencer receives a P-black card.
This is quite severe. It means that if you do nothing for half the match (or have other infractions), you are disqualified.
I have mixed feelings about the implementation of the rule, because as I understand it, it penalizes the person who's behind, which in epee can be tactically not great. Less of a problem in foil with the right of way rules.
It's worth noting that saber bouts used to finish in under one minute. Consistently. This is like pre 2000 I forget when. They had to change the rules in the opposite direction - by allowing a viable strategy other than "RUN STRAIGHT AT THEM AS FAST AS POSSIBLE RAAAAAAAAAAAA" (I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a whole lot).
Foil had the non-combatant issue, but not nearly as bad.
Foil was not without its own brand of silliness too. A couple decades ago, top level foil was all about flicking people on the back. They changed the rules on that too.
Probably a good thing, because it was truly ridiculous
Watched some Saber bouts this Olympics and they still seem so fast as to be unfun to watch. At least for more than one or two in a row (so 5 min). Maybe I'm just used to watching Epee and Foil. I totally get why they changed the rule.
Reminds me of anime where two swordmasters do their super special move and you don't find out who won until the loser levels over. Except over and over.
I had the same impression. To the untrained eye it is hard to appreciate what’s going on or what makes one fencer better. All I see is a blur and then the winner screaming in a fury. The broadcasting is terrible - they should show slowed footage with annotations (like in football plays) explaining what’s going on.
This is so distasteful to me that I haven't been able to watch much fencing. Fencing is fast enough that it would take a lot of viewing to really understand what's going on. So, this has really hampered my appreciation. Appropriate automated video editing could really help me out.
Do they scream like this at practice? Do they practice the screaming? It would be one thing if they vocalized as they struck, as in many martial arts. But this delayed "maybe I got a touch I guess I should ask the judge by screaming" just seems silly.
When you do something physically intensive, fighting to hit
someone who's doing their damnedest to stop you and hit you back, in a high pressure situation, it can be really hard to not shout/scream when you succeed, or even just believe you succeeded.
Not many people are super-cool in that situation.
But, admittedly, the shouting can be a bit of a meme in the fencing community.
I have no problem with genuine celebration, in any sport. I have no problem with any vocalization that accompanies a vigorous action, such as in tennis or kendo. I'm sure that in many cases what seems to my untrained eye to be special pleading via emotional outburst is really just a reaction to a clearly valid touch that both opponents and all judges would acknowledge.
But, do they have to take off their face shields after every point? Surely that gets at least as tiresome for experienced fencers as it does for relatively ignorant observers?
> This is so distasteful to me that I haven't been able to watch much fencing. Fencing is fast enough that it would take a lot of viewing to really understand what's going on.
Yea it's terrible.
Now imagine going to summer nationals, or JOs, or any of other big circuit tournaments, and going near the saber section, where there's like 40+ consecutive bouts going on all at the same time, with each person yelling and screeching every 10 seconds.
> Do they scream like this at practice?
no
> Do they practice the screaming?
no
Fencing really is a terrible spectator sport. Second probably only to bullseye target shooting without electronic targets lol.
To really appreciate sabre you have to have done some refereeing yourself unfortunately. It doesn't help that Olympic coverage is usually diabolically awful i.e. fencing is done with the feet but they always focus on the blades.
This seems like a common problem in all martial arts. We saw the same thing in the early UFC too.
The best way to not lose is to stall forever, essentially. It makes for terrible television, but it seems to be built into the nature of fighting.
> It makes for terrible television, but it seems to be built into the nature of fighting.
I think you probably mean “fighting sport” rather than just fighting. Fighting in real life is over in seconds typically. Sports have rules around them that can be gamed, hence why there’s stalling to “win”
In real life if your defending yourself you want the confrontation over as quickly as possible or to exit the situation, delays only put you more in danger. I believe on average it’s something like over in 15 seconds, after that it typically ends up on the ground and even then it’s over in less than a minute.
Probably being pedantic, but people sometimes confuse UFC and other martial arts contests with real self defense/street fighting.
Here are the things that you can’t do in UFC for instance that would otherwise end a fight quickly:
Depends on the time period and how rich/sell equipped the fighters were.
Basically just before guns became popular armor was so good that sword fights usually turned into wrestling followed trying to stick a small knife into some small gap. Various hammers/clubs (or using the pommel of your sword as a hammer) were much more efficient weapons against a person in full plate.
You wouldn't even bother using swords in a battle of plate wearers. Simply too ineffective. That's when they'd use the knightly pollaxe. Now that'll do the job.
I think you're referring to foil, which was invented as a discipline to prevent "making two widows" during duels (or so my master of arms said, I never bothered to check)
Yep OP has it backwards. Epee is the one-hit, entire-body-is-a-target, double-touch-counts sport.
These sorts of rules should be good for the sport, so long as they don't encourage excessive aggression and risk-taking. From what little epee I've actually done, defensive strategies (which to the camera might look like doing nothing), can be effective depending on the opponent's strategy.
Hmm, for longsword, some schools (like Kunst des Fechtens, the school descended from Master Lichtenauer of Northern Germany and was active until the 1620s) advocate seizing the initiative and there are a few special techniques that cover your body while attacking at the same time.
For rapiers, I think the same applies. Meyer advocates the same with single-hand sword, with more emphasis on feinting. I studied Thibault for a few weeks and while I am no expert, his style focuses on geometrical relationship between your sword and body with the enemy's.
All are fun, though if the fight is lethal they would be horrendous to see.
The most important thing I learned across my ~30 years of training (various incantations of self defence) was to keep my 110 m hurdles skills top notch. Running away is always the best solution long term.
This is also what I insisted on with my teen children. They were training since 4 years old and the rare times they got into a confrontation they said sorry and left. 10 minutes of humiliation is better than a life long death.
There were very rare cases when either me or them had no other way than fight (a total of maybe four cases). The fight was over after 3 or 5 seconds, with the adversary trying not to choke on his teeth and looking for his testicles while hopping.
It was fast, brutal and nobody was proud of that because it could have ended with a bad strike or a knife in the stomach.
If you were in a street fight with a professional fighter, and you used some of these techniques that 'would otherwise end a fight quickly', could you defeat them? Of course not. MMA is the fundamentals of one-on-one fighting, various dirty techniques are the 'extra' on top of that but don't constitute an entire methodology. If you're interested in self defense, just learning the fundamentals of MMA makes the most sense
MMA, is not itself a fighting technique, but the name of the sport. It is the official sport rules for using various martial arts techniques together in sporting competitions. UFC is the main organization that promotes the MMA sport.
But yes, if someone trained in kick boxing, judo, Jiu-jitsu etc was attacking me and didn’t use those techniques the fight would indeed end very quickly.
I train specifically to use those techniques first… (Krav Maga), to incapacitate the attacker as fast as possible, and then leave the situation. If for some reason I was unsuccessful, then my attempt would immediately cause the attacker to also attempt to use those techniques.
Either way it would end very fast. No matter how strong someone is, they can’t work out their eyes, grown, throat etc.
Krav Maga, btw can be used under the MMA sport rules, however it’s uncommon, since most of the techniques are banned.
> If you're interested in self defense, just learning the fundamentals of MMA makes the most sense
This is actually the misunderstanding. If you want to learn self defense then learn self defense, not a sport. If you’re focused on MMA your not going to learn how to deal with attackers with knives, guns, etc, or how to deal with attackers using the most incapacitating techniques. You’re also not going to learn how to end the confrontation as quickly as possible since MMA is all about entertainment and sport, meaning fights that last many rounds. Criminals and street fights are dirty by definition, and there’s no holding back.
The issue is that 'Krav Maga' or 'dirty techniques' are not immediately, 100% effective. This is fallacious/magical thinking. So is 'learning how to deal with attackers with knives, guns'. Just because a Krav Maga instructor told that you these things work, doesn't mean that they actually do. If you are unarmed, there are literally no techniques that are effective against a knife- I feel like I shouldn't have to even mention guns.
The earliest MMA events were vale tudo/'anything goes' matches in Brazil where there were no illegal strikes, and yet solid MMA technique prevailed. Guys could attack the eyes, kick the groin, etc., yet the BJJ guys won! No one won because they were solely a Krav Maga eye gouger or something
> The earliest MMA events were vale tudo/'anything goes' matches in Brazil where there were no illegal strikes, and yet solid MMA technique prevailed.
You’re still talking about a sport. Vale Tudo was a circus attraction meaning it was about making money. Opponents were pre-determined. On top of that knowing you’re not going to die makes a hell of a lot of difference. And I’m not saying martial arts have zero practical value, they do. Just that TV, sports shows, circus attractions, in no way mimic real life.
> No one won because they were solely a Krav Maga eye gouger or something
Except when early matches were ended after someone broke an arm, lost teeth etc? Things which are now banned because it makes the sport less fun.
> If you are unarmed, there are literally no techniques that are effective against a knife- I feel like I shouldn't have to even mention guns.
This is simply untrue. Law enforcement, military, body guards etc routinely practice this stuff. You may get stabbed, but the idea is to end the confrontation, as quickly as possible. That means distractions or incapacitation and then disarming/leaving/running, etc.
Knives are almost always hidden and shielded during an attack. So most of self defense against knives is being aware of the situation. You’re not practicing martial art move sets… your practicing how to keep your wits about you and react quickly.
Here’s a great example. There’s no protracted fight, and is an excellent example of how to end a knife attack before it begins. You need to train not to escalate, to act like you don’t want any trouble so their guard is down, and then quickly end it.
Basically my understanding is that high-level competitive Jiu Jitsu (Gi) can be extremely dull to watch, because of the point system disincentiving taking any risks. So that's when No-Gi submission-only competitions became popular to watch. 20+ minute rounds without any points scorable for the first half.
'Submission only' was popular to watch for the first few contests, then competitors realized they could just stall until the end of the match and then get rewarded in overtime. The rules just became a different disincentive to not take any risks
Though, with Smash Bros. tournaments using a standard double-elimination format that doesn’t care about margins of victory, at least the losing player is always incentivized to try to stop losing - unlike in fencing.
An acquaintance of mine who did US college fencing quit because of the avoidance of actual fighting. He said it's like watching 2 rabbits in lockstep bouncing back and forth 6' apart.
Was the title changed? Presently, the post title here matches the article's title: "Fencers Refused to Fight. Then Came the Rule That Changed the Sport"
That seems reasonably accurate to me given the content of the article, which describes a growing trend of mutual non-agression in epee fencing and various rule changes targeted at putting an end to it.
There was always an inactivity rule - basically the ref could call inactivity and move the fight to the last minute (as I remember it), but it was rarely done. Giving a yellow to the fencer that's behind is a good innovation. They should dump the off target element in foil and make it on targets only though.
Can we apply this game theory to developer salaries ? In other words, ( and as we have seen ) without forcing companies for compete for talent...They will end up under explicit or implicit ( non fighting ) a.k.a non salary compete agreements.
90 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 389 ms ] threadIncentives matter.
The rule was primarily aimed at epee though, where there is no such thing as "counter attack point", since there's no right-of-way rules.
Unless I'm gravely misunderstanding your idea.
And what about subsequent attacks after that? They're just normal where the threat of the counter attack drags us back to fencers not doing anything for 2 minutes?
Or what if play is halted and restarted somewhere other than the centre en-garde lines?
Which, as a foil fencer in a prior life, I am totally on board with. But I don't see it happening lol.
https://academyoffencingmasters.com/blog/new-unwillingness-t...
The first is that top-level classical time-control matches are draw-ish; there's really no solution to that other than playing some other game. If neither player blunders, often chess is just a draw. Top computer chess engines of equal strength draw even more often.
The second is "grandmaster draws" at shorter time controls; the Champions Chess Tour has had dozens of draws with the exact same 14-move Berlin opening repetition. The solution there is pretty simple: 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.
Or some different timing control that will force victories by timeout.
Now, if we could just enforce some speed in baseball, and bring the average game length down nearer two and a half hours.
It's interesting to see the power dynamic here. Here in the UK there would be riots if soccer games were broken for ads (I'm really not exaggerating). Over COVID, a short timeout was added in the middle of each half, and this was conditional on there being no ads in the UK.
That said, I watch a fair amount of NFL and with the intensity of play I'm quite grateful for the pauses. American ads are irrelevant to me anyway.
I sort of want to attend a match in person to find out, now.
There is no director, but there is a huge production team synchronizing everything and making sure that they squeeze in as many commercials as possible without missing any of the action.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-football-is-ev...
Once I got into more free flowing sports, like soccer and rugby, I can't really watch American football anymore.
Same goes for basketball, where the last few minutes of game time are stretched out by timeouts, free throws, and video reviews.
In the UK I've not watched a TV commercial in years (there are none on the BBC, Netflix, Prime or Disney+). All major sports events that are of importance are on the BBC. These are all paid-for subscriptions. I assume to watch Baseball on TV you would have to subscribe to cable? And to have ads on top of your paid subscription just seems greedy.
It only became boring when the stakes got very high and your entire career could be decided on a single engagement and people started overthinking it.
The rulebook says that they have to wear tight-fitting top and bikini bottom, which must not be more than 10cm (4 inches) on the sides.
Epee fencers refused to fight
Because yea, for decades an epee bout was like watching paint dry. Just bouncing around in place for 9 minutes, and then finishing with nobody getting above 10 touches.
> For a fencer’s fourth P-card sanction, the fencer receives a P-black card.
This is quite severe. It means that if you do nothing for half the match (or have other infractions), you are disqualified.
I have mixed feelings about the implementation of the rule, because as I understand it, it penalizes the person who's behind, which in epee can be tactically not great. Less of a problem in foil with the right of way rules.
It's worth noting that saber bouts used to finish in under one minute. Consistently. This is like pre 2000 I forget when. They had to change the rules in the opposite direction - by allowing a viable strategy other than "RUN STRAIGHT AT THEM AS FAST AS POSSIBLE RAAAAAAAAAAAA" (I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a whole lot).
Foil had the non-combatant issue, but not nearly as bad.
Foil was not without its own brand of silliness too. A couple decades ago, top level foil was all about flicking people on the back. They changed the rules on that too. Probably a good thing, because it was truly ridiculous
Reminds me of anime where two swordmasters do their super special move and you don't find out who won until the loser levels over. Except over and over.
This is so distasteful to me that I haven't been able to watch much fencing. Fencing is fast enough that it would take a lot of viewing to really understand what's going on. So, this has really hampered my appreciation. Appropriate automated video editing could really help me out.
Do they scream like this at practice? Do they practice the screaming? It would be one thing if they vocalized as they struck, as in many martial arts. But this delayed "maybe I got a touch I guess I should ask the judge by screaming" just seems silly.
Not many people are super-cool in that situation.
But, admittedly, the shouting can be a bit of a meme in the fencing community.
But, do they have to take off their face shields after every point? Surely that gets at least as tiresome for experienced fencers as it does for relatively ignorant observers?
Yea it's terrible.
Now imagine going to summer nationals, or JOs, or any of other big circuit tournaments, and going near the saber section, where there's like 40+ consecutive bouts going on all at the same time, with each person yelling and screeching every 10 seconds.
> Do they scream like this at practice?
no
> Do they practice the screaming?
no
Fencing really is a terrible spectator sport. Second probably only to bullseye target shooting without electronic targets lol.
Most of us want to punch the yeller, but he's got a weapon. Oh wait, so do we!
I mean... yea I could see that, if you haven't fenced a lot.
It used to be so much worse though. Like a bout would literally be over in 45 seconds of match time, with a score of 15-10 or something.
The routine would be:
1. Allez!
2. Both fencers charge full tilt at each other, running
3. Some sword stuff as they pass like jousters
4. Both fencers turn around, look at the ref, and yell loudly
5. Ref tries to piece together what they think they saw
1-5 used to happen in like 1 second every time
Now 1-5 happen in like 5+ seconds, and importantly there's a rule that prohibits actual running.
I think you probably mean “fighting sport” rather than just fighting. Fighting in real life is over in seconds typically. Sports have rules around them that can be gamed, hence why there’s stalling to “win”
In real life if your defending yourself you want the confrontation over as quickly as possible or to exit the situation, delays only put you more in danger. I believe on average it’s something like over in 15 seconds, after that it typically ends up on the ground and even then it’s over in less than a minute.
Probably being pedantic, but people sometimes confuse UFC and other martial arts contests with real self defense/street fighting.
Here are the things that you can’t do in UFC for instance that would otherwise end a fight quickly:
https://www.ufc.com/unified-rules-mixed-martial-arts
1. parry
2. thrust
3. game over
Check out Akira Kurosawa’s films for some fairly accurate samurai fights.
https://youtu.be/GF5U83UIX1o
https://youtu.be/zCjsazHO0c0
Basically just before guns became popular armor was so good that sword fights usually turned into wrestling followed trying to stick a small knife into some small gap. Various hammers/clubs (or using the pommel of your sword as a hammer) were much more efficient weapons against a person in full plate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLLv8E2pWdk
It does seem like swords were more decorative than actual effective weapons...they do look cool when wielded though.
It's part of the modern Pentathlon.
Note, I'm a foil fencer.
These sorts of rules should be good for the sport, so long as they don't encourage excessive aggression and risk-taking. From what little epee I've actually done, defensive strategies (which to the camera might look like doing nothing), can be effective depending on the opponent's strategy.
1. Block the sword (parry) 2. Draw dagger 3. Stab opponent to death
For rapiers, I think the same applies. Meyer advocates the same with single-hand sword, with more emphasis on feinting. I studied Thibault for a few weeks and while I am no expert, his style focuses on geometrical relationship between your sword and body with the enemy's.
All are fun, though if the fight is lethal they would be horrendous to see.
This is also what I insisted on with my teen children. They were training since 4 years old and the rare times they got into a confrontation they said sorry and left. 10 minutes of humiliation is better than a life long death.
There were very rare cases when either me or them had no other way than fight (a total of maybe four cases). The fight was over after 3 or 5 seconds, with the adversary trying not to choke on his teeth and looking for his testicles while hopping.
It was fast, brutal and nobody was proud of that because it could have ended with a bad strike or a knife in the stomach.
Real fighting is dangerous.
MMA, is not itself a fighting technique, but the name of the sport. It is the official sport rules for using various martial arts techniques together in sporting competitions. UFC is the main organization that promotes the MMA sport.
But yes, if someone trained in kick boxing, judo, Jiu-jitsu etc was attacking me and didn’t use those techniques the fight would indeed end very quickly.
I train specifically to use those techniques first… (Krav Maga), to incapacitate the attacker as fast as possible, and then leave the situation. If for some reason I was unsuccessful, then my attempt would immediately cause the attacker to also attempt to use those techniques.
Either way it would end very fast. No matter how strong someone is, they can’t work out their eyes, grown, throat etc.
Krav Maga, btw can be used under the MMA sport rules, however it’s uncommon, since most of the techniques are banned.
> If you're interested in self defense, just learning the fundamentals of MMA makes the most sense
This is actually the misunderstanding. If you want to learn self defense then learn self defense, not a sport. If you’re focused on MMA your not going to learn how to deal with attackers with knives, guns, etc, or how to deal with attackers using the most incapacitating techniques. You’re also not going to learn how to end the confrontation as quickly as possible since MMA is all about entertainment and sport, meaning fights that last many rounds. Criminals and street fights are dirty by definition, and there’s no holding back.
The earliest MMA events were vale tudo/'anything goes' matches in Brazil where there were no illegal strikes, and yet solid MMA technique prevailed. Guys could attack the eyes, kick the groin, etc., yet the BJJ guys won! No one won because they were solely a Krav Maga eye gouger or something
You’re still talking about a sport. Vale Tudo was a circus attraction meaning it was about making money. Opponents were pre-determined. On top of that knowing you’re not going to die makes a hell of a lot of difference. And I’m not saying martial arts have zero practical value, they do. Just that TV, sports shows, circus attractions, in no way mimic real life.
> No one won because they were solely a Krav Maga eye gouger or something
Except when early matches were ended after someone broke an arm, lost teeth etc? Things which are now banned because it makes the sport less fun.
> If you are unarmed, there are literally no techniques that are effective against a knife- I feel like I shouldn't have to even mention guns.
This is simply untrue. Law enforcement, military, body guards etc routinely practice this stuff. You may get stabbed, but the idea is to end the confrontation, as quickly as possible. That means distractions or incapacitation and then disarming/leaving/running, etc.
Knives are almost always hidden and shielded during an attack. So most of self defense against knives is being aware of the situation. You’re not practicing martial art move sets… your practicing how to keep your wits about you and react quickly.
Here’s a great example. There’s no protracted fight, and is an excellent example of how to end a knife attack before it begins. You need to train not to escalate, to act like you don’t want any trouble so their guard is down, and then quickly end it.
https://youtu.be/Z5FLYdJA3y4
And here’s a rundown of how knife attacks happen, the things good self defense teaches:
https://www.urbanfitandfearless.com/2016/09/self-defence-aga...
Basically my understanding is that high-level competitive Jiu Jitsu (Gi) can be extremely dull to watch, because of the point system disincentiving taking any risks. So that's when No-Gi submission-only competitions became popular to watch. 20+ minute rounds without any points scorable for the first half.
Here's an incredible short documentary on one particularly notable match that's relevant.
https://youtu.be/z8llYT7KGdI
An acquaintance of mine who did US college fencing quit because of the avoidance of actual fighting. He said it's like watching 2 rabbits in lockstep bouncing back and forth 6' apart.
That seems reasonably accurate to me given the content of the article, which describes a growing trend of mutual non-agression in epee fencing and various rule changes targeted at putting an end to it.