If you want to call the folks in Ray's clips weenies, be my guest. I thought it hilarious that yet another cyber warrior got on the YouTube clip and started talking trash about not lasting a second in the Octagon, blah, blah, blah. <Sigh...> Reminds me of the old days when it was boxing vs. karate, or "street fighting" vs. karate. There's always a boogeyman out there that'll trump any and everything we could hope to do or want to become.
I've concluded that these cyber jacka$$es want us all to practice the art of grabbing our ankles for them.
First... If you have never done real, hard randori, you have no f-ing idea what you are talking about. Been there, done that. I've had my shoulder separated. I've been that guy on the floor with three people making me look like nothing in ... oh ... about 5 seconds.
In my aikido dojo, everyone already was a karate dan (shotokan, goju, or uechi). And we were taught by a fellow who used to be a special forces instructor.
There's good and bad in everything. "It" isn't anywhere near as important as "how."
Second... You have no idea how good Steven Segal is. I can tell... I knew he was good, but I've never seen a clip of him in action. Holy schit! I hate him already.
It helps being six foot 15 or something. He is a big boy. (Even bigger these days with that gut...
)But the way he moves reminds me of how my instructor moved. (He was smaller than average, by the way.) Just when one of us thought the whole randori exercise was nothing more than an exercise in frustration and humiliation, he'd "tap in" and make it look easy - just like Segal.
But he had a lifetime of judo and then kyokushinkai and then goju under his belt before he started the aikido. That IMO is the way to do it. Aikido and this kind of randori training should be something you evolve to, and not something you start with.
And finally... NOW do people see why I'm not that impressed with long, drawn-out grappling sessions in the octagon? Two seconds on the ground in a 3-on-1, and you are toast. Comparatively speaking, these boys are being nice. There's no shoes to the head or kidney while in the fetal position on the floor.
What Segal is doing is the way to do it when facing the mob. The one thing missing for the street is the kind of nastiness you add when you mean business. Generally you totally f-ing waste the first guy you get your hands on. That tends to slow the others down a bit.
What we see in the randori clip is still a cooperative drill. It HAS to be. The only non-cooperative drill is the street. Go into a bar and tell a table full of rednecks that their women are butt ugly, and gave you the clap. There is your true uncooperative drill. Otherwise... We scenario train the best we can. It helps to have some cooperation. Even in the relatively "safe" environment, you're still going to get your a$$ kicked. As long as your scenario is one step more difficult than what you can handle, you are learning.
Good stuff. For once, a clip speaks for me. I feel their excitement, their occasional successes, and their many more days of pain and frustration.
- Bill
I still remember the Saturday when the fellow in my avatar came into class and told us that we must go see Above the Law starring some guy named Steven Segal. Even told us what scenes and what techniques to watch for. If the guy impressed Sensei Isaak, then he must have been good. 
/now if in your own mind you could substitute a good black belt at karate or judo standing there instead of the aiki bloke then what do you think would happen..me I think he'd cream them, some of the folks that I train with would .....the second thing is a general problem ( as I see it) with Aikido..........folks are racing at you from impossible distances to do silly attacks..in the real world if somenbody ran at you from that distance you could run away.because you have such a head start......but imagine somebody doesn't run at you, imagine they are standing right in front of you.and they throw a big right or a jab and a hook.....how do you get them moving 
