Ranking Martial Arts

Ranking Martial Arts videos are extremely shallow and uninformative. First they are nowhere near specific enough. Second they have poorly considered critieria. Third the scales they use on YouTube are pure trash.

Specificity

A classic example of how these "ranking" videos are not specific enough to be meaningful, is they tend to put all Chinese Martial Arts into one or two categories, typically called "Kung Fu." Tai Chi, just one family of Kung Fu systems, is so vast that more people do Tai Chi than all other martial arts and combat sports combined.

So how specific would you have to get for these ranks to be meaningful? Even Kung Fu critic channel Fight Commentary Breakdowns has come to acknowledge that Choy Li Fut (CLF) is one of the premier fighting systems in traditional Chinese Martial Arts. But not all CLF schools are into free sparring, because of the vast encyclopedia of techniques within the system, there are hundreds of forms to the point were you either have to sacrifice forms practice time for free sparring, or free sparring time for forms practice time. 

In the late 90's, the Twin Tigers CLF school in Bremerton WA produced various combat sports fighters including Margaret McGregor. Meanwhile an hour away, the White Snake CLF school in Seattle WA didn't believe in free sparring because it created "sloppy technique," and sulked about not being invited to perform at Chinese cultural events. About 5 minutes away from White Snake, a Mak Fai CLF club dedicated Friday evenings to free sparring, even though they were more recognized for their Lion Dancing.

All quality control issues within Kung Fu aside, these Ranking Martial Arts videos have similar problems when describing other martial arts. They frequently consider Boxing to be a cohesive fighting system when in fact we see drastically different training methodologies, techniques, strategies and definitions from gym to gym within the same cities* (for example Bumble Bee's Boxing [side stance, jab-centric, everyone fights orthodox, spastic hard free sparring] vs Cappy's Boxing [more front stance, safer free sparring] in Seattle.) Another common mistake is considering "wrestling" to be a cohesive martial art without specifying weather they are talking about American Folkstyle, Greco Roman, or Freestyle, which all have very different implications for self defense strategy. This failure to specify continues as they consider Aikido, Karate, "kickboxing," etc.

Criteria

Typically what they are ranking, regardless of what they say they are ranking, is how effective these martial arts are in MMA. However MMA is not very appropriate for self defense because it doesn't address self defense issues outside of the cage or defending yourself with legally viable options. MMA is a horrible lens for evaluating martial arts when MMA strategy is so different from what you need for self defense training.  

Very little consideration is given to the types of grappling that is useful for self defense. The Internal Skill is taking people down while you remain standing and able to maneuver under hostile conditions. Escape Grappling is getting out of an entanglement on the ground if you get taken down or end up on the ground on accident. Most people making these Ranking videos do not even understand these self defense grappling issues in the first place.

Little consideration is given to the health aspects of how these martial arts impact the practitioner. Is being a brown belt in BJJ better than no training at all for self defense, if in your BJJ training you have earned yourself various back and joint problems? Is boxing helping you defend yourself if your speech is becoming slurred and you are developing potentially fatal neurological problems?

I have said this before, but more consideration needs to be given to weather or not the martial art teaches physical and practical skills of value in the first 100 lessons. Most of these Ranking Martial Arts videos are being made by life long martial artists who can devote a large amount of time to training. This makes it harder for them to see things from the average martial art consumer's view, who has considerably less time to devote to training. Judo can make you deadly in 5 years. Cool story, most do not want to do anything close to as dangerous as Judo, nor do they want to devote all of their spare time to learning any martial art for 5 years.

Scales

There is only so much of YOUR personal opinion that OTHERS find meaningful, and only so much precision actually matters. The scale they have been using in these videos is trash: S = Super, A = top grade, B = Good, C = mediocre, D = bad, F = total waste time. Some also include an "E" in there, being generally unfamiliar with the American grading system, though there's no "S" in that grading system either. Notice how they just can't settle with an A, they just have to have that extra special higher-than-A. That is the level of intellectual discipline these childish videos adhere to.

A Likert scale would be the appropriate way to scale in videos like this. Likert puts things on a 1 to 5 star scale, where agreement is what is being measured. Agreement is key because it is literally what is being evaluated (the opinion of the creator.) 1 to 5 is appropriate because any more precision then that (say "5++") is not actually meaningful to anyone besides the creator. 1 = I can't agree with this in any way. 2 = I think this is incorrect. 3 = This could be correct, but I am not convinced. 4 = This appears to be correct. 5 = I know this is correct.

When multiple authors come together, their scores can be averaged to give us a familiar 1 to 4 scale rating. Let's say I do a Ranking Martial Arts video on grappling styles, and include BJJ, Freestyle Wrestling, Judo, american Folkstyle and Greco Roman. Let's say I rate American Folkstyle at 5 stars, but the other person making the video ranks it at 4 stars. Now we have a shared ranking of 4.5 stars. This then translates to the following comprehensible evaluations: less than 2 stars = trash. 2+ stars = mediocre. 3+ stars = Good. 4+ stars = Amazing.

Conclusion

*If you are going to make a martial arts ranking video, use a Likert scale, use meaningful criteria, and be specific: