| Friend,
Yes, WTF did happen to Olympic tae kwon do.
Not that--get your mind out of the social media gutter. :)
I mean the World Taekwondo Federation. Yeah, that WTF.
I've been watching some of the matches, including a gold medal match or two, streaming from NBC's website (horribly bad streaming, by the way) at:
And honestly, I am not impressed. Not that those athletes don't have skill; they do, all of them. Tremendous skill, in fact.
But for the most part they simply aren't displaying it in their matches. And why not, you might ask?
Because of the rules, which encourage excessive use of the front leg push kick, resulting in a conservative and boring match of "footsie."
You can blame the WTF for this debacle. By way of their maintaining a stranglehold over the sport, and their political wrangling that doesn't allow leaders from other taekwondo organizations any say-so in the rules (never mind the politics and financial corruption), well...
You end up with the mess we're seeing now. Boring, watered down competition that, instead of displaying the highest level of the art, is instead a confusing and tedious display of mostly very basic techniques and tactics.
Ugh. I'd rather watch Conor McGregor chuck water bottles at random people. At least there's more skill involved in that spectator sport.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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P.S. - I did compete and train in Oly TKD for a while. I never liked it because I couldn't punch to the face, but it was expected of me so I did it. Still, back then it was exciting to watch. Years later, I took teams to AAU nationals several years in a row, and it was knockout central in the black belt divisions. Now I watch these Oly matches and yawn.
P.S.S. - If you want to see some exciting matches, watch this highlight reel from the 2015 ITF World Championships. It's a little wild at times, but you can't say those folks don't mix it up. I'd much rather watch that than what I saw in Oly TKD competition this year: https://youtu.be/LbiZKrzvmz8 |
