Let me expound on the post as it ended up getting posted before I was finished (damn the international computer conspiracy
)
The crux for the previous post is that "Fights are simple really...just go watch a bunch on Youtube. close distance, clinch, takedown, submit. Say it again five times. (this is my mantra these days!)" This is incorrect, in my opinion. The original post's intent is to get people to break their attachment to how Aikido should look and realize that real fights look like MMA, but what the poster is doing is falling into his own attachment to MMA. Fights can manifest in a multitude of ways. Many do not involve any type of grappling whatsoever. Heck, even most UFC fights end in a "ground and pound" or a Knock out. So, free your mind and your ___ will follow. On most boards people associate MMA with real fighting because we're not really all that violent, but go behind the prison wall and see how many tap outs you'll find. No rules in a fight, but we don't make that association because we really don't fight. We compete, we practice, we play, but not fight. All the rest is just semantics.