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By Julian Forbes
CEO Karate Athlete, Inc.
After watching hours of footage I shot at the WKF World Championships in Tampere, Finland a few things struck me.
First off it was clear that the judging system is far from perfect. Even at this level huge mistakes were made in many, many calls. Hopefully it evens out in the end but as any of those who have been in the circuit will tell you, its more often a case of luck. It would seem that at this point the only sure way to guarantee perfect calls is to be so superior to your opponent that there is no question. Even then... time and time again, good techniques were not called, and other questionable ones got the point. How to improve the system is something I am researching and will get back to you on.
The other thing that struck me was that it seemed as if my eye was drawn to the actions of those wearing RED (or AKA) more so than BLUE (SHIRO). I decided to do some research and crunch some numbers to see if ultimately it made a difference what side and color a fighter was on or wore.
The results of my research are encouraging. Out of 707 fights reviewed from this year's World Championships in Finland, Red only slightly edged out Blue. It was close enough to assume that given any number of variables it could have easily gone the other way. I thus conclude based on this research that it truly doesn't matter what color you wear or what side you are on.
Below you will find a breakdown of my research and findings as well as the parameters of the study:
RESULTS
| Number of Fights Reviewed |
707
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|
| AKA Wins |
369
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52.2%
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| SHIRO Wins |
338
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47.8%
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- Results are based on information from the 2006 WKF World Championships
- "BYE" bouts were not included in the study for obvious reasons.
- TEAM bouts were counted but counted as 1 single bout for an entire TEAM's encounter against another TEAM (i.e. SPAIN vs. BOSNIA is counted as 1 FIGHT NOT 3)
- All of the below categories were factored in which encompass all Kumite (Fighting) categories
| Team Kumite Male |
Team Kumite Female |
Open Men |
| AKA |
23 |
45% |
| SHIRO |
28 |
55% |
| Total |
51 |
|
|
| AKA |
18 |
50% |
| SHIRO |
18 |
50% |
| Total |
36 |
|
|
| AKA |
39 |
57.4% |
| SHIRO |
29 |
42.6% |
| Total |
68 |
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|
| -60 Kg Men |
-65 Kg Men |
-70 Kg Men |
| AKA |
27 |
54% |
| SHIRO |
23 |
46% |
| Total |
50 |
|
|
| AKA |
29 |
49.2% |
| SHIRO |
30 |
50.8% |
| Total |
59 |
|
|
| AKA |
31 |
47% |
| SHIRO |
35 |
53% |
| Total |
66 |
|
|
| -75 Kg Men |
-80 Kg Men |
+80 Kg Men |
| AKA |
29 |
45% |
| SHIRO |
36 |
55% |
| Total |
65 |
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|
| AKA |
30 |
51.7% |
| SHIRO |
28 |
48.3% |
| Total |
58 |
|
|
| AKA |
32 |
55% |
| SHIRO |
26 |
45% |
| Total |
58 |
|
|
| -53 Kg Women |
-60 Kg Women |
+60 Kg Women |
| AKA |
26 |
51% |
| SHIRO |
25 |
49% |
| Total |
51 |
|
|
| AKA |
31 |
58.5% |
| SHIRO |
22 |
41.5% |
| Total |
53 |
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|
| AKA |
29 |
63% |
| SHIRO |
17 |
37% |
| Total |
46 |
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| Open Women |
Factors Which Can Cause Variations |
|
| AKA |
25 |
54.4% |
| SHIRO |
21 |
45.6% |
| Total |
46 |
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1. Specific Human Referree Subconscious Color or Left/Right preference |
2. Whether the 2 finalists start at the beginning or end of their pool, or somewhere in the middle. |
It was suggested to me by a leading US Karate official that perhaps the position itself, AKA being Right and Shiro being Left, could perhaps play a subliminal role in a referee's calls. She argued that as most of us are right handed we would subliminally favor all things coming from the right. The truth is that I had overlooked this angle and after thinking about it for awhile I pointed out that conversely, we tend to read and write left to right (in most countries - and I mean no disrespect to those who do the inverse). So perhaps our eyes are trained to go from Left to Right and thus favor the Shiro athlete... Regardless of the debate which in itself is fascinating, the results pretty much show that there is little or no advantage to either wearing the RED or BLUE mitts or to being on one side or the other.
I can tell you that the results come as quite a relief as I was already trying to figure out what to do if one side came out vastly preferred...
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