exile, I understand what you're saying, but in your attempt to be even-handed you are taking a few giant steps away from reality. Fighting is certainly fighting no matter what you call it, but if there were "just one martial art" like you say we would all be doing exactly the same stuff. There are different systems for learning how to fight and different mixes of techniques and tactics which create a taxonomy of things we call styles.
What you are saying is that if anyone could, in theory, do anything and add it to style X, so saying that style X and style Y are different is a meaningless distinction.
??? Todd, I think you're seriously misreading me... I've never said anything like that. Of course there are different MAs, different systems for learning how to fight, as you put it. Where have I said that there's a single MA??
That's like saying that a musician could pick up an instrument and play any selection of notes, so there's no difference between drumming from Mali and throat-singing from Central Asia or 1920s theremin music from Europe. It's simply not true. Yes, yes, if enough people who do style X change what is in style X but keep the name at some point the thing called style X changes.
That's not what we're talking about.
There's a pretty clear idea of what constitutes TKD and Muay Thai curriculum and the ranges of training methods and tactics which fall within a standard deviation or two of each.
But this isn't the case at all. I'm baffled how you could derive this picture from what I'm saying. The following are historically documented facts about TKD:
(1) the original Kwans which constituted the direct ancestors of TKD were founded in
every case by MAists who were trained in Okinawan/Japanese karate styles. Several of them obtained dan ranking directly from Gichin Funakoshi or his senior students in the Shotokan.
(2) The Kwan founders returned to Korea in the prewar period and founded their schools, teaching `Kong Soo Do' and `Tang Soo Do', both of which were literal translations of Kara te under its two different transliterations (China/empty hand). Byung Jik Ro called his school Song Moo Kwan, an almost literal translation into Korean of Shotokan (`Pine Tree (Training) House). The techs they taught were indistinguishable from Shotokan/Shudokan/Gojo Ryu techncially, with slight differences of emphasis.
(3) During the Korean War, Gen. Choi took TKD techs and adapted them for battlefield use, emphasising killing techniques and disarms of enemies by soldiers separated from their weapons or out of ammo. TKD was known and feared by the North Koreans, and later the Viet Cong during the Vietnamese War. If you like, I can give you documentation for all of these statements, including captured VC field directives indicating just how intimidated the VC field command was by the Koreans' H2H fighting ability.
(4) It was not until Gen. Choi fell from power and the ROK government established the WTF to replace Choi's ITF that TKD became associated with the combat-irrelevant foot-tag tourament competition techs it is now known for
among sports fans. A lot of serious TKD practitioners know better, because we were trained under instructors who pass down the technical content of the KMA that was the platform for TKD. These techs aren't additions, as you seem to be implying. They are the techs that people like Byung Jik Ro, Lee Won Kuk and the other founders of modern KMAs brought back from Japan, trained in and taught to their senior students.
Part of that includes things that are mentioned or demonstrated but are not emphasised and things which are officially taught but not done in whatever training with real opposition or sparring that the systems engage in.
Systems don't engage in anything. Fighters do, and they do because of their training. What has happened in TKD is that originally present elements have been leeched out of it in the official Korean government effort over the past 40 years to transform TKD into a combat sport. Well, that's fine for them, but the technical repertoire of TKD—in the Song Moo Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan and all the other school lineages—was established long before the Korean governement scrapped its `military' conception of TKD and replaced it with an Olympic sport. What you seem to be saying is, TKD is whatever the WTF decides to define it as. Sorry, but I see no reason to accept that position.
Low kicks, punching to the head, elbows, knees and possibly the clinch absolutely fall into those categories for TKD as I am familiar with it. Spinning heel kicks, tornado kicks, axe kicks and so on would be similar in Muay Thai if they are taught at all.
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Wrong. Low kicks, punching to the head, elbows, knees, locks, throws, sweeps, etc. are part of the technical content of TKD as reflected in its hyungs and as taught to me and many other TKD practitioners by instructors who learned their arts from senior students of the original Kwans. So far as I know, the kicks you describe were never part of Muay Thai.
Just looking at how the two fighters stand anyone with some experience could tell who was who if you stripped them naked. That goes double if they move.
True, but irrelevant, since
TKD is not the same thing sport TKD. You're saying it is. You're saying that since you think of sport TKD as TKD, that that's how it is for all practitioners, including those who learned the full technical content of the original combat-effective MA. This is, as I suggested earlier, equivalent to someone who denies that carved turns and stepping to adjust your line in a slalom aren't parts of alpine skiing technique because that person thinks of skiing as freestyle aerials. There is a huge technical history to TKD, and the
late, specialized branch of it that is WTF sparring competition is only a very tiny portion of it. It's the best publicized portion of it... but does that have the slightest bearing on its
content???
