Okay so I have had some time to watch the Olympics and in particular a little Boxing, Wrestling, Judo and Tae Kwon Do. Wrestling was wrestling as always which is great to compete in but not that exciting to watch on TV. Still it was fun to see woman wrestlers taking on each other because it is cool that they have their own division in the Olympics. Boxing in Olympics is just not to exciting because quite often the boxers are not going for knockouts but just trying to score with non-powerful punches. Judo was okay to watch. Not great by any means. unfortunately the matches that I saw involved players getting minor takedown that really barely could be called a takedown and then stalling on and on through the match. Really that is boring as all get out. However, compared to Tae Kwon Do it was exciting. Because the match that I watched with Diana Lopez facing a Chinese player was so bad that after three rounds there was no score and guess what no action either. It was just plain boring!!! I mean really boring it would be more exciting to watch grass grow or even golf for that matter. (not a fan of watching golf but it is fun to play) Unfortunately these four martial sports in the Olympics seem to just not be very exciting to watch anymore. Maybe that is why they get so little airtime on the NBC networks. One can only hope that some day MMA is included in the Olympics and that they do not find a way to water it down. MMA could save martial sports in the Olympics in a big way because right now as an avid martial sport fan I am not interested in watching any of them ever again. This is from someone who used to really enjoy watching Olympic Boxing and Judo. I hope some thing can be done but I won’t hold my breath!
Brian R. VanCise
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Sadly, one of the quickest ways to ruin an MA these days is to throw the word Olympic in front of it
I saw the Diana Lopez match except for the OT. Ya, it was boring. You might want to check out the men’s and women’s semi-final and gold medal bouts, they were great; lots of techniques. I think it was the guy from Turkey in the semis was really aggressive and did a great job of getting behind his opponent.
Hey Scott I will do that and hope that they are better! I have seen some great Olympic Tae Kwon Do in the distant past featuring Great Britain but have been very, very disapointed with what is coming out of the US. Clearly Diana Lopez should not have been on the Olympic team if that was here best effort. However, that is another story. Some how, some way the combat sports in the Olympics need to come up with a way where the athletes are rewarded for going after it. Maybe they get a point for being the most aggressive, etc. I think this is important because what I witnessed in particularly in Judo and Tae Kwon Do was way to much stalling or inaction!