Hi jaa,
Boxing and MMA are very contextual sports with their own reference points and closed theatre of activity. And they are multi $$$$$$$ industries. But they are not Budo. By that fact alone, they will not attract serious practitioners on a Budo path. So I don't believe they represent the best fighters in the world. It's a big world out there. I think the great martial artists are basically unknown.
I mean, for example, I just couldn't find any footage of my teacher. It does't exist. Just a very boring clip of a mundane technique with a lackluster student. But off to the side, you may have noticed a couple of tattooed yudanshas. They are both professional MMA fighters. They know. They know to come to the little zen pebble and learn a thing or two about technique. I would say, for sure, grappling has mostly to do with technique.
Hey Regina,
Respectfully, I could not disagree more.
MMA is the closest sport we have to unarmed combat. And as you point out, it's a big $ industry. This means there's a huge incentive for humans to get good at fighting under an MMA ruleset (and no, the MMA ruleset does not allow eye gouging or groin striking, but these aren't fight enders and TMA practitioners do not have a huge edge in executing these moves because you can't spar with them).
Since the inception of the UFC 25 years ago, fighters from around the world have been figuring out the most effective strikes in unarmed combat fuelled by a cash incentive and a desire not to get beat up. Initially this was just style vs style, and we found out pretty quickly that if you take a high level (for the time) BJJ practitioner and pit them vs a high level american kickboxer, the BJJ practitioner will usually win. Then the big american wrestler entered the stage, and learned a few BJJ defenses and coupled that with an overhand and ruled the day. Next came the high level strikers, with some basic TDD and BJJ defence, who would usually put those guys out before they got taken down and beaten up. And on and on it iterated where today you have kids who start out training all the major styles and supplementing some TMA. Even the guys at the high levels who you would consider a representative of a certain style are still proficient in other aspects of the game. Damien Maia is a BJJ superstar and has found much success just smothering guys as of late, but he can strike, and he gets fights to the mat thanks to his wrestling abilities. But I digress.
You say it's a big world, which is true, but it's a whole lot smaller now. Back before the UFC and even in the early days of MMA people could get away with saying their TMA style would beat any other. You don't hear much of that any more as top MMA fighters are undefeated vs any style. Aside from UFC 1, when Royce Gracie showed the BJJ beats all other styles if no one else knows anything else, there hasn't been a single martial art that has shown it is superior to whatever the top MMA fighters of the day are doing. Not only that, but fighters today have many styles to choose techniques from and they choose a wide variety based on personal preference and what evolution has shown to work. A wise old master who is stuck in his ancient ways does not have this luxury. He is secluded, and a victim of his styles limitations. Bruce Lee identified that back in 1967. Just like the best boxer, or wrestler, or tkd, or muay thai, or bjj practitioner in the world cannot beat the best mma fighter in unarmed combat, it stands to reason the best [insert martial art] fighter in the world cannot either. In addition, an obscure art does not have the participants and training pool to hone it's fighters.
This is not to say there is nothing from your martial art a seasoned mma fighter could find useful. Quite the contrary. But these usually form supplements. A wrist lock here, and way to generate more power there. There is no reason to believe that someone from [insert martial art] is a better fighter than the top MMA fighters. There's all the evidence to the contrary. That doesn't mean it might not be true. It's theoretically possible, just extremely unlikely (like 10^-8 unlikely). If you believe it, you're just believing in belief. Unless you have some very good reasons like you've sparred regularly with top MMA fighters and have sparred with [insert martial art] and think the latter is way tougher. And even that should make you second guess yourself (was the MMA fighter taking it easy on you, were you taking it easy on [insert martial art] guy, etc).