Since MMA and extreme fightsports are normalized, every school should organize an MMA competition for kids who want to fight each other

Posted by 68024@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 13 comments

You often see videos online of kids in school fighting because of some lame reason. These fights then need to be broken up by adults and result in expulsions and other problems. So in order to properly manage this, schools should have an MMA ring on the school grounds where kids can sign up and go beat the shit out of each other if they want to MMA style, but with a ref and medical staff. Obviously they have to sign a waver and so on. They could also sell tickets to the event so the school even makes some money off of this. There wouldn't be any prize money though, because obviously we don't want to encourage this.

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Old-Buy1665@reddit

MMA is the best base for MMA. But that's a different question from what's best for a human being.

MMA does exactly what it says — it takes the most effective techniques from every style and builds the most efficient fighter for a ruleset. Striking, wrestling, submissions, transitions. It works. The results in the cage prove it.

But here's what gets lost: the philosophy.

Walk into a traditional dojo — judo, karate, Japanese jiu-jitsu, any Chinese art — and the first thing you do is bow to the founder's picture, then to your fellow practitioners. Class starts with a moment of respect. You're not just learning to fight, you're learning a way of conducting yourself.

I've trained MMA myself and I love it. But I've rarely met an MMA instructor whose lesson went beyond "win and beat your opponent." That's not a criticism — it's just what the system optimizes for.

In Japanese jiu-jitsu as a kid we didn't just learn joint locks — we learned how to put a dislocated joint back in. We learned responsibility for what we knew.

The finer points of any traditional style go deep. The philosophy, the ethics, the understanding that the technique is the least important part of what you're learning.

So — MMA as a base for fighting? Probably yes. MMA as a base for martial arts? That's a different conversation entirely.

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PassionNegative7617@reddit

As a teacher, on a serious level this is a horrible idea, but I also love this idea.

I have experienced a lot of fights. Very few of them involved people who seriously wanted to engage in it. It's really easy to break up most fights because the kids kind of use you breaking it up as an excuse to stop without showing cowardice. The very few fights I have experienced where both people really wanted to fight were the most serious fights (kind of obvious of course). I don't know if I truly could say it would be wrong to just let those people fight it out. It would be far better to be in a controlled environment than in my classroom. I also think it would cause kids to work on alternative conflict resolution skills because a fight would always be a more real more viable option and they have to face the fact that for most kids they really don't want to fight.v

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