A Word on Olympic Karate

There are better rules out there

The above Tweet shows a knockout that happened in Olympic Karate over the weekend where the competitor in red, Saudi Arabian Tareg Hamedi knocks out his opponent, Iranian Sajad Ganjzadeh in blue, and the blue got the gold medal because knocking out your opponent is not legal in the Olympic rule set.

I spoke to Elhadji N’Dour back in 2019 for Sherdog and he had something similar happen to him. “I got disqualified and I was in the semi-finals of the world championships. I lost because I knocked him out,” N’Dour told me and he was upset about it when he was recalling it because, if you’ve ever taken any true karate instruction, most strikes are intended to end the fight early by hitting hard enough to stop your opponent.

I took Ishin-Ryu karate for 11-years, while we were not knocking out each other in sparring, the point of the training was to deliver a finishing blow and like N’Dour’s story, accidents did happen.

I know the Olympic games are meant to be the best representation in the world for whatever sports are added to the games, but it might be time to update the rules, especially for something that comes from martial arts. Remember, the sport came out of the art, the art was not originally a…