Wow. Most of these pages have some serious hostility flying around. Not like this one. This is just a massive dick-comparing contest. I do not understand what gratification you get out of saying that you’re right and offering up the same opinion that fifteen before you have, without adding to it, or in any way supporting your point.

Now, I am going to be the first person to say this on this forum, I don’t like or dislike Sumo. I am completely indifferent toward it. That’s mostly because i’m not really into sports in general. That’s right, I’m siding with those who say it’s not a martial-art, and is a sport… BUT it’s not over yet.

While I believe that Sumo is really a sport, and not an effective fighting style, I say that under the following addendum: It used to be a martial art, and I’m sure there are probably still martial practioners of the martial forms of it.

Now the poster who goes by THE MESSANGER, does bring up a good point, despite the annoying all caps thing that he had going. He asks is Muay Thai a sport or a martial art? Taekwondo as well. I pose the same question about boxing. Well, yes and no. Anything in a ring with rules is a sport art, and loses its lethality when taught strictly as a ring sport. Now, I could step into a ring with a good boxer or even a crappy boxer and probably at least lose, if he or she didn’t KO me. Same with a Muay Thai guy, or a Taekwondo guy or a cage fighter. I would lose the contest, because I don’t train for a contest, but I feel safe knowing that I do train for battle, for combat, for war. My martial art is designed for survival.

With that said, lets recap, I say that anything you put in a ring, or add rules to, is no longer a martial art, it is a sport. You can’t just pretend to fight and think you’re a brilliant warrior. It runs deeper than that. It’s not that you can’t do both, it just becomes hard to follow the rules of your sport when you are on the battlefield, and likewise, you cannot simply kill your opponent and expect your title in a sport.

Now I pose the following question to you: What is a martial art? You have to work it out for yourself. I simply believe that it must be developed and grown through battles and combat and wars. In essense, it must truly be martial, to be a martial art, and anything can be applied that way, you just can’t box yourself in with rules and time limits and arenas. It’s up to you to decide what is a real martial art, and it’s up to you to make it real.

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