29th April I had agreed to do one of my rare competition appearances fighting as part of a team representing the Tokei. As I am slightly older I now keep competition down to maybe a couple events a year so I had just started preparing myself for this event when I was advised of the competition being cancelled due to lack of entries. Now as I have said before, I have a long history in Judo as I head towards 50 years on the mat, so I remember doing competitions in the eighties and nineties when you would turn up to venues full of Judoka ready to compete. The one thing that was always lacking was large crowds of spectators. So all these years later we still don't have large crowds of spectators and now we seem to struggle to get competitors. Why is Judo struggling when other disciplines such as BJJ are booming ?
Firstly I will make a confession, I don't enjoy watching Judo competition because its boring. I can hear many screaming at their screen as they read that statement. Problem is that if I as an experienced Judoka I find modern competition boring, how are we going to attract non Judoka to watch our competitions. We won't and that's the first thing we have to accept. Judo is a participation sport and not a spectator sport. If I do watch competition Judo, I search out old masters from the past when we fought under a totally different rule base because the action was more exciting.
Going back to the eighties, I even remember then how the governing bodies were so obsessed with the idea of packing stadiums with spectators and so the obsession started with rule changing to make Judo more "exciting". Forty years on and we have this diluted competition Judo, which has moved so far away from the art and no longer appeals to participants let alone spectators.
BJJ is now the dominant force in UK grappling with participation levels way beyond what we see in Judo but is BJJ competition "exciting", I would say NO, the fact is that BJJ is chasing participation, through good marketing and constant evolution of the art. Governing bodies in Judo have become obsessed with pushing a pure form of competition Judo that does not appeal to true Judoka and does not hook spectators with no Judo knowledge.
I love Sumo and maybe it's a bit niche in this country but it does have a massive fanbase, world wide and that is because it is a fast action packed art with a very simple set of rules that have not really changed in centuries. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I know many will strongly disagree and support the current competition rule set up but the fact is that competitions are getting cancelled due to a lack of competitors, yes we have had the pandemic and we are still building back up from the damage that did to so many clubs but other disciplines do seem to be up and running again, while Judo is still struggling in the mud.
Kano created Judo to be a way of life not just a competitive sport, let us appreciate all the elements of Kano's art rather than just concentrate on the competition element, after all participation is the key to Judo survival and I have found that we can attract people to the Judo mat for those other elements, people that would never want to take part in competition. To me being a Judoka is the important thing, being a competitor is a secondary choice.