Why is it that AIKIDO was never recognized in international sports exhibition?

As the first poster has pointed out, Aikido is a self defense art not a sport. The techniques taught in Aikido are geared towards neutralizing an opponent%26#039;s attack while minimizing damage to him, therefore, except for atemi or transition strikes meant merely to stun or distract an opponent, there are little to no offensive striking techniques in Aikido. Now most sports follow the point system of scoring, But since Aikido has no attack techniques, how then do they score points against their opponent? And since they only defend, unless one Aikido practitoner feeds the other with an attack, they%26#039;re just gonna end up staring at each other all through the match waiting for the other to attack. Besides, a lot of Aikido techniques rely on small joint manipulation, which one can not safely apply in a full resistance competition without causing major crippling injury sooner or later, hence the ban on small joint manipulations even in MMA matches. It%26#039;s not because Traditional Aikido is so deadly that it%26#039;s not used in competition(although there is one branch of Aikido called Tomiki Aikido that has developed their own type of competition), it%26#039;s just that Aikido was designed that way by the founder O-Sensei Morehei Ueshiba for the purpose of promoting his peaceful philosophy of Love and Harmony and doing away with aggression. Obviously, turning it into a sports competition meant introducing aggression into the mindset of the practitioners which some would consider contrary to the philosophy of Aikido, hence the choice not to have competitions.|||There is (as far as I know) only one style of Aikido that has international tournaments - Tomiki Aikido, developed by Kenji Tomiki Shihan.





The concept is interesting, though I have had no formal introduction to the way that it actually works. I%26#039;ve attached the rules at the bottom if you%26#039;re interested in figuring out how they do a tournament for a defensive art (it seems to be rondori and kata based).|||O%26#039;Sensei (Morihei Ueshiba) didn%26#039;t want Aikido to be about winning or loosing. He wanted it to be about the resolution of conflict.





That said, the purpose of the art as O%26#039;Sensei created and taught it does not allow for competition.





Tomiki Ryu (developed by Tomiki Sensei - a student of O%26#039;Sensei) does have competition and is more sport like but beyond that, as a general rule, you won%26#039;t find it in the olympics or UFC or anything like that.





Even in Tomiki Ryu, there are two roles - attacker and defender. The attacker scores points with a sucessful hit using a wooden or rubber tanto. The defender scores point by neutralizing the attack with a throw or pin. I don%26#039;t know of any other fighting competition that has a setup where there are two roles with two different goals.|||It%26#039;s purely defensive. I%26#039;ve seen videos of Aikido classes that look quite energetic but the style itself isn%26#039;t meant for competition.





It%26#039;s guiding aim is to stop an attack without allowing lasting harm to befall yourself or your attacker. Consequently there are no offensive techniques (save the ones used to teach in class).





I%26#039;ve heard an expression that%26#039;s probably supposed to be joke, it goes like this;





%26quot;Two Aikido masters standing still in a room fighting%26quot;





The point of it is that neither can make a move without the other defending or countering it, so both wait for the other to attack first.|||Aikido (pronounced like: eye-key-doh) is not and never was a sport. What would be the point? What rules could possibly be used if it was to become a sport? The resulting sport would simply not be Aikido.|||Traditional Akido is a defensive art. There are no attacks, except for training purposes.Therefore it would be difficult for two Akido practitioners to compete.|||Probably the big aikido schools felt that competition was against there ideals...|||Because without Attacks it%26#039;s boring in competition?