A karate fighter finally wins UFC!

Evans falls to a lightning-fast barrage of punches that gives him no opportunity for recovery

In Las Vegas Nevada, during UFC 98 on Saturday May 23^rd 2009, Brazilian-born Lyoto Machida won a thrilling, if one-sided fight against reigning champion Rashad Evans in the 205 pound division by a knock out.

Lyoto has a style which is unorthodox amongst UFC fighters, but will be readily recognisable to karate tournament fighters. He dances outside kicking range feinting, circling, evading and inviting attack until in frustration, opponents become reckless and go for him, or become mesmerised, becoming easier targets. Lyoto round kicks to the thighs, body and head with cobra-like speed, defying his opponents to stay away and try to copy his game. But they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t, because they cannot match his leg speed, and he’s the master of the counter-attack.

What makes Lyoto especially dangerous, is that he combines a truly breath-taking ability to cover ground when charging forwards to capitalise on opponent vulnerability, with an almost feral ferociousness once he starts raining down punches with overwhelming speed and accuracy – 75% of punches on target; a statistic in clinical precision exceeded only by one other fighter in UFC history.

The final piece in the equation that makes Machida the least hit UFC champion ever, is that thanks to his jujitsu, his ground game is as good as his stand up, leaving him with no weak areas.

31 year old Machida has a 15-0 fight record in the UFC, and it’s all the more impressive because he has never lost a single round nor had a judge’s decision against him!

	The legendary Tito Ortiz fares no better against Machida in UFC 84

Machida’s father Shinzo is 5 foot 6 master of Shotokan karate who moved to Brazil when he was 22. Because of his height, Machida senior refined his Shotokan into a style of karate that enabled smaller fighters to take on larger ones. It is this karate, which Lyoto has been training since he was 5 years old, which has proved so devastating in the ring. Interestingly, philosophically, Shotokan karate (which is essentially one of the two styles that makes up GKR) is itself intended to be very direct and economical in dealing with opponents. Shinzo believed that the style was designed to deal with possibly armed opponents, and it is this strategy of patiently maintaining range and only pouncing when the time was optimal, that has provided Lyoto with his enviable fight record.

Some fighters have called Lyoto’s fight style boring, and perhaps to an audience hoping to see blood every 20 seconds, his patient manoeuvring may lack the immediacy that they crave, but to anyone interested in the tactics of life-and-death confrontation, or even someone who simply appreciates intelligent tactical fighting over crowd-pleasing recklessness, Lyoto’s disciplined adherence to a sound game plan is both refreshing and stimulating. In fairness, after a tentative first couple of minutes, this fight was anything but boring, and although there were a few minor skirmishes, when the action happened, it was explosive, and Lyoto was as unstoppable as runaway freight train!

What I found particularly invigorating, was the fact that there was nothing tactically in Lyoto’s monumental victory, that doesn’t adhere to the tactics I have heard taught in hundreds of GKR classes. Of course, he is a superb athlete and fighter, and he executed his game plan with masterful timing and effectiveness, but there is nothing in the way he fought, that causes me to change my beliefs or personal teachings on how karate can be used in the real world. I don’t mean to compare my humble efforts against his, but what we practice and believe is essentially the same, and that can make all karate students feel extremely happy about the art that we practice.

The Machida family trains in Shotokan, lead by their father, Master Shinzo Machida

Ever since a 5^th dan karate instructor stepped into one of the early UFCs as a last minute substitute and got his butt handed to him, karate ka have been trying to justify the woeful performance of classically trained martial artists in a competition which is as close to no-holds-barred fighting as is possible for public broadcast TV.

For a long time, it seemed as though classical karate just wasn’t all that effective against trained fighters, but then I started to develop the sneaking suspicion that the karate ka who entered simply weren’t that good or that well-prepared. The fact is, UFC is a very different arena to a karate tournament or street self-defence, and approaching it in the same way without intelligent training specifically for that style of fighting is arrogant and foolish.

The grappling and ground game changes everything, and I have always argued that karate’s katas are full of grappling work for a reason – because that’s where most fights end up, with many (but by no means all) transitioning down to the floor. For some time, Georges St-Pierre has demonstrated that classical karate blended with jujitsu and wrestling skills could be a potent mixture (for a while, Georges was a student of the full-contact Kyokushin style of karate). But it has taken until now for a martial artist whose primary discipline is karate to win the tournament.

Every so often, a fighter appears in UFC, who redefines the rulebook, and forces all the other fighters to re-evaluate their beliefs, causing a fundamental paradigm shift, after which all fighting is forever changed. From a commercial perspective, Dana White, President of UFC may be leery of a style of fighting that is less about going toe to toe, and more about working for that one perfect opportunity, but tactically it is sound, and it’s hard to imagine, having seen how effective it is, that many other fighters will not be quick to adopt it.

Whatever the future holds for UFC, Lyoto Machida has showed the world that karate can be devastatingly effective. It may not be the squeaky clean karate of the dojo, but nevertheless he has done us all a terrific service in restoring the credibility of an art which in the right hands, is awe-inspiring. There are no words to fully describe my gratitude to Machida for how he has helped our art. Thank you.