Dirty fighting

[AndrewSimonsen]

I was a t a tournament today and saw a nasty example of dirty fighting, the two fighters were in the clinch, and the guy who was losing grabbed onto the back of his opponents head and brought it down into a roundhouse kick. Needless to say he was DQed, but have any of you seen any other displays of unsportsman like conduct like that?

[tkdcanada]

Very much so. Grabbing, pushing, low kicks... Keep in mind I'm talking about WTF Taekwondo. Those things are against the rules and therefore unsportsmanlike. In other styles, they may be perfectly acceptable.

[Eliz]

Yes, I've seen blatant examples of unsportsmanlike conduct and just plain bad attitudes in general. I'm really not sure which is worse. The illegal moves are dangerous, but the bad attitudes eat away at the very fabric of the sport.

[AndrewSimonsen]

Yeah I was talking about WTF sparring, what is disturbing is when two instructors have a rivalry between each other and each time their students face each other the two coaches almost fight each other. Other things I've seen happen was in the junior divisions some people will occasionally feign injury if they were tapped in the head to get the other guy point deductions.

[tkdcanada]

I've seen those things too. It's really sickening. The coaches/instructors are supposed to be the examples :rolleyes: Many times the coaches encourage/instruct their fighters to take part in these unsportsmanlike behaviours. I've also seen coaches chew out their fighters if they didn't win. The worst part is that those fighters were kids. These things are very, very embarrassing to all of the upstanding coaches and fighters who do it for the right reasons.

[Eliz]

I think they are actually trained to "milk" the match, rather than fight the match. How about when the parents start getting into it??? Any wonder there is a problem?

[Jerusalem]

When they started calling them 'players' instead of 'fighters' it became basketball.

[sidekick]

This has been an ongoing problem for many, many years. I stopped going to tournaments back in the late 80's because of all the unethical practices. The persons who practiced this were the Korean instructors themselves. I actually overheard, more than once, an instructor tell his student to foul his opponent hard (low kick or even a groin kick). The reason, either just a warning, or at most, a half point deduction. In the meantime, the opponent is weakened by the cheap shot and almost always lost when the match continued. Have watched many matches where the corner judges were over ruled by the head of court, because his Korean brethern's student was fighting. A Korean student would always win, unless he was knocked out. Even then, I have seen the person who knocked him out, get disqualified by the Korean head of court. The reason, something along the lines of illegal contact. I've watched a brown belt from a Japenese style, level the TKD practicioner with a good old straight right punch to the chest protector. The head of court would not allow the technique.........said it was "to high up on the protector" to be legal. Suffice to say, I got really tired of watching people paying, just to get cheated and all for a lousy $2.00 medal. :rolleyes:

Mike Dunn