Someone from Youtube asked me.

“Do you think Taekyun is practical?”

What does it mean by actual combat?

If you look at taekyun from MMA perspective which is regarded as the most practical martial arts, taekyun does lack practicality.

Taekyun, however, has fully acquired its practicality in terms of taekyun battle.

Then what about street fights that unexpectedly happen in real life?

I think taekyun still has enough practicality. It is only a matter of an individual’s ability and skill.

If you look at taekyun from a technical perspective, it does have enough practicality.

Yetobeop taekyun in particular is one of the most optimized martial arts to a street fight.

Actual combat is such a wide concept.

It is hard for us to define the range of actual combat.

When we talk about actual combat, it mostly means 1 on 1 unarmed combat.

Outside this premise, martial arts loses its meaning.

In front guns, knives and other weapons, the limit of unarmed martial arts is clear.

We can hear news of famous MMA fighter or jujitsu artist being beaten in a gang fight or killed by a knife on a street. (Of course, their stories were on the news because they were famous.)

Looking at it from a broad concept of actual combat, can we say their martial arts lacked practicality? I don’t think so.

The practicality of unarmed martial arts is to be proved in a rule-based match.

The ability to exchange attack and defense and execute techniques within a match should be enough to call the martial arts have practicality.

It becomes meaningless discussing which martial arts are better than others.

As it depends on an individual’s ability.

The main reason people think MMA, boxing, Muay Thai and jujitsu are practical is that they have drawn many people.

Having more people leads to better access, and better access means having outstanding people training the martial arts and various matches.

The crowd gets more chance to see the matches and it becomes a standard.

The fighters in K1, Pride, UFC which were the early mixed martial arts, all took the challenge after training their own martial arts.

That has become today’s MMA, then with its popularity many organizations were formed, and the fighters are now training under the rule of MMA.

There are, however, a lot of MMA fighters who still train their base martial arts.

Like I have once written in my column, I recognize that MMA is the most practical and outstanding martial arts in 1 on 1 unarmed fight.

There is neither the need nor the duty, however, for other martial arts to become like MMA.

Every martial art has its own identity.

People who train martial arts are putting a lot of effort to keep the identity of their martial arts and develop them at the same time.

When every martial art advances under such effort, the horizon of martial arts will widen, and MMA will further develop from it.

I hope my answer to the question which is a little long, becomes helpful.

Thank you.