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Since we only had cable TV in less than 1 year it’s understandable that I have not seen this documentary in 2006. It’s National Geographic: Fight Science. It’s great that Nat Geo played a replay of this documentary.

What interested me is not how they compared the martial arts. In fact, the documentary hardly compared which martial art is the best. It only distinguished what are the qualities of the best martial art and what techniques delivers the most damage. They also proved that legendary techniques are true such as the legendary death punch. The goal is to separate fighting fact from martial myth.

The engineers used a $150,000 Hybrid III biofidelic crash test dummy filled with sensors. It can determine the strength of the impact and the damage to the tissue relative to the blow. In weapon testing, they used human torso made of a material that mimics the density of human flesh. They also used motion capture to simulate the action in full 3D.

Martial arts featured: boxing, tae kwon do, kung fu, karate, muay thai & jiu-jitsu. Weapons featured: kali (Arnis), bo staff, nunchaku, three-section staff, bow & arrow, shuriken (throwing star), dao (Chinese broadsword), jian (Chinese straight sword) and katana.

Link: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/fightscience