"By-the-way, karate has also been subject to a long decline. The results have been likewise similar, with young, aspiring male karate practitioners wanting to practice their art in the MMA arena rather than on the karate circuit. You might visit ten local karate schools and be lucky to find three athletic young men. What was once a hardcore extreme sport has become largely daycare and women’s fitness.”

– James Lafond,“The Seven Eras of Boxing”, 12/26/2012

“Too many amateur instructors have forgotten entirely that the purpose of boxing lessons is to teach a fellow to defend himself with his fists; not to point him toward amateur or professional competition with boxing gloves.”

– Jack Dempsey. “Championship Fighting” (1950) Chapter 2, Page 11

“Martial Arts has kept her active since suffering a heart attack twelve years ago.”

A 72-year-old grandmother from Canada became the third person in her family to become a Tae Kwon Do black belt, following in the footsteps of her daughter and granddaughter.

It’s a shame that karate and associated martial arts like Tae Kwon Do have lost so much credibility as fighting systems. Of course much of this disenchantment is the fault of the martial arts organizations themselves, since they over-sold their arts and cloaked them in way too much oriental mysticism. The masters portrayed it as something magic, that size and athletic ability were irrelevant and thus created unrealistic expectations in the minds of young karateka, as well as the general public. When those expectations weren’t met, young athletes looked elsewhere. MMA has captured their imagination now. Boxing on the other hand started to lose much public interest in America when it ceased to be a scholastic sport practiced in high school and college after 1960. After that there was no venue for white youth in the suburbs and rural areas to learn the sport and develop proficiency in it. About that time the oriental martials art really started promoting themselves in America. Martial arts instruction developed into a business (especially Tae Kwon Do), so you couldn’t make the instruction TOO athletically demanding or physically punishing if you wanted to attract paying clients. The oriental martial arts purported to show people a new and more effective way to defend themselves with their bare hands. This was happening at a time when crime rates were rising, criminal assaults were becoming commonplace on our big city streets and thus average people started to feel more of a need to learn how to fight back. I often wonder how the oriental martial arts would have fared if more young white men had been learning boxing in school during this period. As it was they had little competition from traditional western combat arts when they hit the American marketplace.

Karate still performs a function as "active mediation”, as well as exercise. Not unlike Yoga and Tai Chi. A form of Zen “mindfulness” training, wherein the practitioner strives to develop a calm and peaceful mind. To not ruminate, worry or think about themselves and their troubles by engaging in mind-clearing mediation and focusing on performing demanding physical tasks and developing new physical skills. You might learn some skills that you could use to defend yourself from a physical attack, but if you think you’ll be able to clean out a biker bar just because you’ve earned a black belt, you’ve been watching too many movies.

“Subjecting yourself to vigorous training is more for the sake of forging a resolute spirit that can vanquish the self than it is for developing a strong body.”

– Masutatsu “Mas” Oyama, 1923-1994, Founder of Kyokushin Karate