good point,its like that story of teh guy selling a spear that could penertrate anything, and across the road a guy was selling a shield that coulnd't be penertrated... so which is superior?

But not all martial arts train for defence, so it depends of the value of that martial art and its master

It's pretty easy just to punch past their shield of legs, I would say, and then hit them in the chin.

thing is with boxing you train to and aim to move into your opponents close space as fast as pos. also kicks such as round house are easily defended against by a clinch. thrusting kicks are just dodged, or you angle your self so they glance off you.
lotsa people say that the clinch isnt any good for defense, e.g. the opponents hand can slip between your arms and bop yah on the nose, but there are secret techniques not taught very much nowa days which make the defence boxers use superior to most ma's

Yeah, the high kicks are easy to slip and avoid, because boxers train to slip fast punches.

If you ever watch the UFC or other MMA, they use a variety of clinching tactics. Takedowns, clinch-and-pound, control, etc.

for one, it depends on the person, there are people in my club that don't want to grade, for them, achieving a pretty colour belt isn't important.
If your club limits you to your belt colour then yeah it will get boring, but if you're allowed to experiment and are taught more than your level then it won't be.

i think grading is more of a boost, to get you going. but without you knowing it, for example, if your a white belt in wushu, and your really want to go up to a red belt, you will try harder and harder to earn it. maybe that was the original reason ranks and belts were invented.

Belts, as a classification (the chinese wore sashs, but for internal organs, not for rank), was created by Judo. I forget his name, but he had too many students, and he couldn't keep up with who knew what. So for everyone who knew a certain number of techniques wore black belt, everyone else wore a white belt; this gave him a general idea. From there it just advanced. THats why White is generally teh first colour, and black at the top

i always hated the ranking system. in my schools we weren't promoted up in rank until we knew a certain amount of forms. i didn't think promotion should be based so much on forms instead of overall knowledge and skill. everyone in my class that was higher ranked than i was couldn't touch me in the tournaments. i was fighting red and black belts when i was just a green and purple belt. the ranking system was a lot better at my kung fu school, which is probably why i excelled in it more and got more recognition.

i was wondering if anybody has ever heard of bob leiker. he's one of the top teachers in the u.s. in jido kwon (sp?),tae kwon do and goju ryu. he was also my teacher for about 9 years.

check out this site: www.worldchampkarate.com