Is the IJF missing a key rule?

finarashi wrote:Solution is that the referee has a cane and if the score is slow in coming he starts beating the competitors with it.

Ricebale wrote:I agree no more penalties especially under the new rule set

If I throw and they turtle I must weigh up energy expenditure vs probability of getting the next throw vs time left in match and relative scores

If I am tired then I stand back up and go for the next throw, forcing newaza is very fatiguing and in general not always the best solutuon.

Cichorei Kano wrote:I agree with what Ben writes. One should not forget that competitive judo is a "strategic play", a play form of a budo, with the competitive element designed to make one's budo better. This is quite different from something developed for the mere purpose of being a competitive sport. As different as it is from a pure sport, as different it is from a pure combat form, hence why yotsunbai (position on knees and hands/forearms in Anglo-Saxon/American countries popularly referred to as 'turtling') is a valid strategic position in judo shiai but insane for the MMA-er who looks at is from a pure true fight point of view.

Judo as a competitive activity today has enormously changed not just by fighting rules of engagement but also by its competitive framework. When I started competing virtually all tournaments had a single tatami. This made the entire atmosphere entirely different. Now the final is usually the only contest where everybody is watching a single thing, but it does not create the same effect as then because the build-up towards that final simply is missing. Saying that 40 years ago the whole was more 'intimate' is probably not the right terminology, but as an audience you were far more a part of the game than you are today. Prewar tournaments in Japan had a crowd gathered around a single tatami often in open air. The contests lasted much longer, but despite some inevitable stalling the tension was tangible and when one scored there was a relief among the audience. The stalling usually was not anti-judo but the natural process of a heavy ongoing match; the stalling did not equal 'boredom'. I remember the 1979 European Championships. The Heavyweight final positioned Rougé against Kuznetsov. It was a slow contest, with lots of blocking. Finals were 7 minutes then. And then there was this sudden explosion by Rougé with a tomoe-nage that had Kuznetsov suspended in the air for a second before landing flat on his back. That was the only thing shown in the entire contest, but it was brilliant and worth the wait for, and we all jumped up elated by this fine display of judo technique. There were just 2 tatami and the audience was part of what happened on the tatami. As competitions grew and women's contests were held on the same day the number of mats grew and the judo more and more became "conveyor belt judo" with the audience being less and less part of the game. The whole thing got something unpersonal.

The multiple tatami is particularly disturbing in kata contests. A kata demonstration used to be something intense that could make you part of it too. Multiple kata contests going on at the same moment, different kata, with the noise of slapping the tatami while you are watching jû-no-kata is odd. Count in the disturbing noise of announcements in the middle of kata performances and there isn't much left of concentration and serenity. Judo's success or desire to expand into mass entertainment is the nail to its own coffin.

In 1979 we still had had tears in our eyes when Fujii during the Worlds in Paris won his 4th world title, and in 1981 in Maastricht we were in awe for the display of Kashiwazaki in his category and the absolute domination of Yamashita in the double (heavy/open). The difference was not just the rules on the tatami or the personalities, but the judo framework, the number of mats, the nature of the matches.

Around 1981 though there was a change. Penalties were increased, and the -95kg final was disturbed by a highly disputed chû'i (or was it still keikoku then, can't exactly remember) when one of the players attacked but the head referee decided that he positioned more than half of his body outside of the red border hence the action being interpreted as fleeing away from fighting, whereas the action in reality had been a sincere attempt to throw. In this way it became possible for the referees and the rules to literally destroy the flow and nature of a contest; the most offensive and leading player could lose the contest through a travesty of a rule that was being employed for something different than the spirit of that rule.

There had been precedents before. In the 1978 European Championships in Helsinki, Finland, a te-guruma was performed while the person throwing supported his body at one point by putting down his hand outside of the red border an action therefore to be awarded with keikoku, an impossible penalty score to recover from. Penalties in judo were considered as something quite apalling, something that manipulated the true course of the fight, and we were very apprehensive when in 1981 additional penalties were going to be introduced.

Looking back the number of penalties and number of events in contests that attracted penalties were nothing compared with what it is today. Contests had something much more spontaneous then.

Another part that isn't really the judo itself but the framework is the availability of video equipment. The availability of video has increased and intensified the studying of opponents in a way that may have affected the spontaneity of fights. Potential opponents can now be studied and studied over and over again, analyzed in a way that previously was not possible.

The problems judo is facing are multifactorial. It isn't just the last IJF rules that destroyed judo. It has been a slow, yet steadily ongoing process that has been going on for 30 years but that now has been pushed so far to the other side that it no longer can spontaneously recover. Judo shiai today is not a patient who is sick, but a patient in coma that is just there as a study object to experiment with rather than attract the attention of genuine human concern and efforts to make the patient healthy again.

judoratt wrote:let's kill 2 birds with 1 stone here.I think we need to bring back atemi waza but only for the bellydown. If uke turns away in newaza I should be able to beat the heck out of him until he either turns to face me, is knocked unconscious, or taps out.
.

BTW How did I beat Bill to this one .

finarashi wrote:So we have two guys. Player #1 does nothing. Player #2 tries to throw and during one of them ends up on the mat belly down. Tired form his attempts he does not do anything, nor does Player #1 attempt anything.

Then ... brilliant solution ... to make more action one punishes player #2

Actually I'm startinf to think this solution is something the IJF should take. Punishing the active player is sure way to improve Judo contests. Judoka on the belly is typically the active one not the passive one.

finarashi wrote:Solution is that the referee has a cane and if the score is slow in coming he starts beating the competitors with it.

hedgehogey wrote:Clearly we need to ban drop knee attacks completely. That way people won't use them to run down the clock. Thank you for illuminating this problem, Finarashi.

hedgehogey wrote:Those too.

hedgehogey wrote:Why do you hate proper judo, Ben?

genetic judoka wrote:proper judo? is that the stuff the dog judo fellas are always talking about?

Fritz wrote:There would be no need for such rule, it would be sufficient to give the other a
little bit more time to handle the turtle.

sodo wrote:

Fritz wrote:There would be no need for such rule, it would be sufficient to give the other a
little bit more time to handle the turtle.

for once we agree

There are too many rules and too much interference by the refs. The problems really started with the introduction of minor scores and penalties. get rid of them and you and lengthen the contest time and you will get rid of a lot of tactical play and better judo

atb

sodo

finarashi wrote:

sodo wrote:

Fritz wrote:There would be no need for such rule, it would be sufficient to give the other a
little bit more time to handle the turtle.

for once we agree

There are too many rules and too much interference by the refs. The problems really started with the introduction of minor scores and penalties. get rid of them and you and lengthen the contest time and you will get rid of a lot of tactical play and better judo

atb

sodo

Remeber the history. Have you asked for yourself why did the small scores come to play? Before they were displayed the small scores were supposedly kept in mind by the referees. Then when there was no waza-ari and no ippon they voted for the decision. Too many coaches and players were mad because the referees 'forgot' some scores and 'remebered' others. So having koka and yuko dispalyed was considered an advantage by all parties; players, coaches and referees were happy when that came into play.

finarashi wrote:[quote="sodoThe minor scores became important because the length of the contest was reduced and the no. and most of the tounaments dropped the pool system for the preliminaries.

The minor scores were not so much a problem as the minor penalties, I can still remember setting opponents up in the corner and forcing them to make a "wrong step" onto red to avoid an attack

atb

sodo

Stacey wrote:.......I remember walking 10 miles to school up hill both ways through blizzards with bare feet..........

Stacey wrote:.......I remember walking 10 miles to school up hill both ways through blizzards with bare feet..........

DCS wrote:Great. The Judo version of Monty Phyton's Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

finarashi wrote:Who is Monty Phyton?