No-judo Judo styles

With success of Dr. Kano’s Kodokan Judo, circa mid and late 20^th century the word “judo” itself became synonym of powerful combat in general. Books with titles like “Verbal Judo” and “American Combat Judo” were published and institutions established.

While Verbal Judo just using powerful catchword in its title^*, American Combat Judo is a relevant close-quarter-combat system of its own. Developed during WWII by Bernard J. Cosneck with participation from Jack Dempsey, it was targeted particular niche and became official system of the US Coast Guard. Even outdated and not actually Judo, it worth discussing and will be addressed there.

If we’ll interpret Judo in the general sense as superior (comparing to other available options) martial art, that many systems can be called Judo even they bear no relations to Dr. Kano’s system. Should we do this? No and Yes. No – because it’s not Judo and therefore not of our interest. Yes – because in the discussion of self-defense nothing should be omitted: we can borrow techniques and ideas to enrich ourselves or we can learn why we don’t need it and what we can stand against.

Let’s take quick look over this (by all means incomplete!) list of
"non-judo judo styles":

• Aikido
• Sumo
• Chinese martial arts: Kung-fu, Kuntao, Chinese wrestling
• Indonesian martial arts: Silat; Filipino Kali
• Olympic Greek-Roman and Freestyle wrestling
• Olympic and Professional Boxing
• Kickboxing: Savate, Muay-Thai
• Karate, Taekwondo
• Hapkido
• Military hand-to-hand combat systems
• Folk wrestling
• Mixed Martial Arts & Synthetic systems

^* Conflict de-escalation is a very important element of civilian self-defense and police conflict control methods, however at this point we're talking about judo as means of attaining physical superiority.

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