Competition level

[Earl Weiss]

Physicaly proficient Black Belt trains in a new style. Wants to compete in that styles tournament. In your opinion he can spar at Black Belt level but only knows patterns up to your level color belt. At what level should he compete in the new style (for him) tournament?

 

[drop bear]

Black belt.

Sandbaggers irk me.

 

[TrueJim]

I would say Black Belt. For example: the Protocol of Accord says that an ITF black belt can compete as a black belt in WTF tournaments, and vice versa -- so that would seem to indicate that sparring proficiency is deemed to trump knowledge of forms.

Protocol of Accord

 

[CB Jones]

Compete but in the black belt division

 

[Headhunter]

Well what's he doing in the tournament fighting or form

 

[Earl Weiss]

Well what's he doing in the tournament fighting or form

Both

 

[Dirty Dog]

I'd have him compete at the Dan level. But I'm interested in good competition, not bling.

 

[Buka]

Black Belt.

 

[Gwai Lo Dan]

Physicaly proficient Black Belt trains in a new style. Wants to compete in that styles tournament. In your opinion he can spar at Black Belt level but only knows patterns up to your level colour belt. At what level should he compete in the new style (for him) tournament?

If you can, I'd have him spar in the tournament as a black belt, but do your classes as a colour belt. However, In WTF TKD, that's not an option for talented athletes from Karate, Hapkido, etc.

A new guy once showed up for TKD, and another kid said, "oh my god, he is the best white belt I've ever seen". It turned out he had 10 years of Hapkido and had trained the sport aspect with high-level TKD guys in the US.

Later he went to a tournament as an orange belt and won against a much bigger guy with 3 years of Karate.

From that point, I didn't see the value of TKD colour belt tournaments. It just seemed to be guys with years of other martial arts who would win.

 

[JP3]

Both

Could the guy be entered into black belt sparring but color belt forms competition?

That seems odd, but maybe.

I'd definitely allow him (put him?) in black belt sparring, you said it yourself hhis sparring at black belt level.

 

[Finlay]

Really I would say it depends on the styles

Are they both TKD styles? In which case competing as a black belt would be maybe a little bit more fair.

However,

It is a slippery slope, if we start taking people past into account then what about people from other less related arts... boxing for example?

Further to that, what about people who are just natural talent? I know of a couple of guys who were international class at maybe blue belt (ITF style).

It would be very interesting if people were placed according to ability rather than grade. We just erroneously assume that lower grades always have lesser ability. While there is reason for that and experience does count for a lot we can't always say that a yellow belt can't spar well.

All in competitions would be very interesting.

 

[Finlay]

Double posted somehow so using edit just to clarify by 'all in' I meant all belt grades in one division.

I know of an instructor in the UK who runs a competition with all belts grades. He devised a relative scoring system for each