Is mercy a martial art and could a person train at mercy in an alive manner against a resistant partner and become a better fighter (in a very limited way)?
P.S. I am not the original Lu Tze and I hope to have my username changed as quickly as possible.
Mercy, yeah.
Mercy.
That’s what they wanted William Wallace to beg for at the end of Braveheart.
So, NO. Mercy is NOT a martial art.
What are the rules of this dojo?
Strike hard!
Strike fast!
Show no MERCY!
End of thread.
And they would have got it if they had bent his wrists back just a little further.
Mercy = t3h r34l akido?
I prefer to think of mercy as the RBSD branch of aikido.
It works for God.
He must be pretty good if he managed to discolate Jacob’s thigh just by applying pressure to his wrists.
Sorry Vince Tortilla but no.
Is mercy the one where you hold your opponents hands and try to put the hurt on them by any means necessary?
Not actually a martial art, a game, I would say, but great fun if you like trying to crush people’s hands or twisting their wrists into uncomfortable positions.
I never want to play mercy against an Aikidoka. Ever.
On second thought, I would be delighted to.
I wouldn’t say by any means necessary… But by crushing/squeezing their hands and bending their wrists back as far as possible. I used to love that game in elementary school.
The only mercy I want to see is the merciful retirement of this thread to Trollshido.
Or MAP.
Anyway, the game isn’t called Mercy where I live, it’s called “pretending to play mercy, but setting the other guy up for a special surprise headbutt”.
Much more fun that way.
The surprise headbutt might be a little more surprising if you didn’t mention it in the title of the game.
As for this thread going into Trollshido, if it happens I won’t make a fuss. But before that happens I’d like to point out that if I said “I know of a contest where two unarmed people attempt to hurt one another until one of them submits” some people here would probably think I was talking about a martial art. Now I’m pretty sure that no one here will seriously say that mercy is not a martial art because it doesn’t contain strikes and even the grappling crowd would probably have to admit that you can’t necessarily dismiss a style of grappling because it doesn’t train in every technique (sambo absence of chokeholds springs to mind).
So what reasons are left for denying mercy the status of a martial art? Is it because it won’t win you every single fight on the broken glass strewn aids needle infested deadly streets of real life? Perhaps. But then one would have to either ask what martial art does prepare you for every situation or why not learn mercy and crosstrain with another one or two martial arts to improve your chances in a fight.
Maybe it’s because children are known to compete against one another in games of mercy. But that falls flat as an explanation because children also play at the most of the martial arts that are regularly esteemed in these forums.
The only reason I can see that’s left for opposing mercy’s inclusion as a martial art is that its a game. But so are the olympics or rather its many games. Games such as boxing, wrestling, and judo.
ZOMG IDENTITY THEFT!
That set up is actually used in capoeira. No joke.
The problem is that there just aren’t many opportunities that present themselves to be able to use that(ose) technique(s). But then alot of MA’s out there fall into that category. I would say Mercy as a stand-up submission grappling art merely lacks organizational status, cultural tradition, and/or grading systems.
This is like asking if arm wrestling is a martial art, the only viable answer is “shut the fuck up”.
Trollshido, for sheer stupidity.