Politics in Sport Karate

Let’s just be clear about one thing first. I am saying all of this because I love karate, i have done it for the vast majority of my life, all aspects too. I’ve been around through a number of changes, experienced many different circuits, competed in all aspects too. I have also trained in all areas of karate as well, traditional Japanese forms and Korean forms, weapons, XMA, point sparring, and continuous sparring. I have also traveled all around learning from different schools and teaching at different schools as well. I do all of this so I have some knowledge in everything when I talk. I want the experience to back up what I say. That being said, I have competed in all different circuits too (NBL, NASKA, USANKF, WKC, AAU, WAKO, and WKF) and see the same things. I want to point out some things to hopefully improve the sport. Not just for me, but also all of my students at my school and my private lessons all around the country. Now that that’s out of the way…

This discussion will primarily be based around forms because that’s where the most controversy comes in. Plus, it’s easy to political and bias with forms because so much of it is already opinion based. Even one of the US Olympic Athletes posted on instagram her frustration after an event. Sakura Kokumai posted and said her post that “Our sport is so subjective…” Do the judges like speed or power that day, etc. It’s easy to be bias and get away with it. At least with point sparring, it’s hard to negotiate. If you clearly hit the person, it’s hard to take that away from someone, unless it’s a clash where the techniques aren’t super clear, then you could argue. Point being, that it’s much harder than in a forms or weapons division.

Just like any sport, or anything really, Sport Karate has a load of politics all throughout. The politics aren’t really between the competitors but more between the judges and promoters than anything.

Honestly the judges are the biggest problem. It can really be broken down into two main issues. First off is that Judges don’t know what they are looking at, especially in CMX. Thats a broad statement but I will explain more. Just like anything, the sport evolves, things change. Therefore judges need to be up to date. Judges need to either keep up to speed or we need the judges to know all the tricks, basics, combos, etc. On the traditional side of things, the judges need to know the katas. How can we fix this, that’s another discussion.

Since we don’t have qualified judges, tournaments like NASKA use other Promoters to judge. Thats a huge issue. While the Promoters often have a martial arts background, some times they don’t have the correct background in what they are judging. Take Master Dennis Brown for example, he is a huge Wushu practitioner, and he makes that very well known, is judging CMX and Traditional Forms. While he has been around for a long time, he has openly admitted that he does not know traditional karate. He should have no business judging those divisions. He’s not the only one by any means. I just used him as an example because he is very well known throughout the NASKA world. There are tournaments where Kenpo practitioners are judging traditional Japanese/Okinawan forms… why? It doesn’t make sense. When you have a panel of judges who are not experts on what they are judging, they go based off of crowd reaction, names of the competitors, the team names on the competitor’s gi, and other criteria like that. If you look at CMX, it could be who did the most tricks or who got the most height. At Battle of Atlanta 2023, a judge came up to DG and Pia and told them that their team form did not score as high as Team JPM and Team AKA because he judges based on crowd reaction and entertainment and that those teams got better crowd engagement. These are martial arts tournaments, they should judge based on the Karate and in this case, the synchronicity. Tournaments should have the judges panel be filled by experts in the division they are judging. Mohammed Jahanvash does this right. He always brings in USANKF judges to judge the traditional challenge divisions at Compete Internationals.

This is where the politics come in, mainly with the names and team names. There’s no question that Team Paul Mitchell Martial Arts is the most widely known Sport Karate team and have some of the highest rated competitors in NASKA but that doesn’t mean they should win every division. They make mistakes and sometimes there are great competitors that can’t go to every single tournament that show up and deserve to win but because the names of the competitors on say JPM, the better competitors gets robbed. Sometimes even the best competitors make mistakes, fumble a catch, fail or fall out of a trick and still get the winning scores despite others nailing a perfect form. Not trying to take anything away from the competitors who worked their tail off to get noticed by JPM owners and eventually picked up on the team, but that doesn’t mean they should automatically win every division.

Sometimes it’s not even the team name and is more just the competitors name. They are seen on stage for another division and judges get in their head that they are great. Which can be true for one division but doesn’t mean there are the best in all the divisions they do. Other times if a competitor has been around for a long enough time and won for a long time doesn’t mean better competitors can’t come up and beat them. The way things are now, no matter who you are it takes time to start winning, even if you are the best or even in the top 3, you will not win. NASKA is money hungry and they want you to put your time in first. NASKA traps you in the circuit and gets you to start paying for seeding to get points. Then once you’re seeded, that’s when you will start placing higher. Judges often barely watch the division until the final 4 seeded competitors go which is another issue. Just. Because someone is seeded, that doesn’t mean they are the best in the division, that just means they go to the most tournaments. Someone can go to every tournament and place 5th through 8th and still be seeded just because they went to every single tournament. Now don’t get me wrong, there are rarities like at the AKA Warrior Cup, Jonah Meshell came out of a 1 year hiatus and Killed the 16-17 cmx forms divisions.

Now I know this has mainly been focused on NASKA but they do a lot of things right and are not the only culprits. Let’s go to WKC, country bias is a huge thing there. The past few years the judges have been distributed in a bias way. WKC does one thing right in that they rotate the judges. They usually have 4 judges at each ring and rotate one out and bring the judged sitting out back into the panel. Thats a big step up from NASKA which often has the same three judges in for all 6 CMX divisions in a row. However, when 3 of the judges are from the same country, that’s not right. For a circuit that releases the number of countries that attend, often being above 10 different countries, there’s no excuse to have the more than 1 judge from each country at each ring. That would be the fairest way to do that. Especially in grands. First of all, only having 3 judges for grands is a terrible idea, but this past year in WKC Worlds Orlando 2023, for half of the divisions on stage had 3 judges all from Canada. That is unacceptable. Of the 4 forms and weapons grands, 3 of the winners were from Canada. Only one winner, Tim Conkel, was from the US, and that judges pool had a mixture. It doesn’t help that WKC is a Canadian based circuit…

But even WKF is guilty of this. WKF is run and headed by Spain. Don’t get me wrong, Sandra Sanchez is undoubtedly the best in the female kata division. Her combination of speed and power is unmatched, along with her stance precision. Her rival at the time, Kiyou Shimizu, could arguably be faster in moments but never had the power Sandra did. Damien Quintero on the other hand was at one point the best but he was quickly surpassed by Ryo Kiyuna. Though he continued to medal. But about 3 years ago in 2021, there were premier league tournaments where he should not have placed as high as he did. He consistently won matches where people were arguably better. Even in one competition, Ariel Torres and Damien both did Ohan Dai back to back and so many people thought that Ariel was clearly better, yet he lost. I don’t think this is due to the judges having a lack of knowledge, these judges are highly qualified. They must pass a huge qualification test that they also much pay for. Though it is very easy to sit behind a computer and put in a score for a competitor and not have to face any confrontation later on since the competitors and judges are not allowed to interact, which I think is a great idea for other circuits to follow. They can easily give a score out to satisfy the federation. There is more too. The Japanese in the circuit are hailed like gods. They always score noticeably higher. Not always undeservingly but a full point higher than some is huge. Like if someone has the Japanese flag on their gi, they immediately get an extra point haha. Just kidding there but that’s what it feels like sometimes. But one thing that the Japanese do get away with is changing the kata. Especially Ryo Kiyuna. In the Olympics he changed how he did Ohan, Anan Dai, and Ohan Dai. Then later on he modified it again. This was because Sakamoto kept changing it. But you can’t argue with the him since he is the oldest living practitioner of Ryuei Ryu, and created Ohan and Ohan Dai. Even now, things are changing. The opening of Anan Dai has changed 5 times off the top of my head. One most recently was seen by Sakichi Abe and then later changed again week after Paris by Gakuji Tozaki, an American but trains under the Japanese. It’s frustrating to competitors because they don’t know if they should change how they do it or not. They dont want to do it wrong, especially in the WKF. But you can’t argue with the Japanese because that is where karate comes from.

Now I know a lot was said here but this does come from a place of love. As I said, i have done karate ever since I could walk. I have tried many other sports and activities but karate is something that I have always stuck with and never wanted to give up. I love competing in and teaching all aspects of it. Wouldn’t give it up for the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.