DEAD HEAT ON THE MAT! Jiu-Jitsu and Judo Grab Each Other's Collars in the Most Popular Martial Art Brawl, and Karate Is Left Outside the Ropes

DING DING DING, fight fans! We're less than a day into the Most Globally Popular Martial Art showdown and the grapplers have already locked up in the centre of the mat. Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Judo are tied, deadlocked, nobody giving an inch. Meanwhile the strikers, Taekwondo, Karate and Muay Thai, are bouncing on their toes in the corner, wondering when somebody's going to let them throw a punch.

Here's the twist: the official scorecards are a mess. Japan's foreign ministry site Web Japan puts karate at around fifty million practitioners worldwide, while the World Karate Federation doubles that to a hundred million, according to Wikipedia's karate entry. Then a 2009 South Korean government estimate swings back with seventy million taekwondo practitioners across well over a hundred countries, as Wikipedia's martial arts page notes. And just to scramble the judges, Britannica's student encyclopedia calls karate the most widely practised martial art of all. Nobody has a clean side-by-side ranking of all five, so this one goes to the crowd.

History adds some spin to the replay. Judo hit the Olympic stage in 1964, taekwondo followed in 2000, and karate dojos popped up all over the world after the kung-fu-and-karate film boom of the 1960s and 1970s, to the point that English speakers started calling pretty much any Asian striking art "karate". Those are the strikers' credentials: medals, movies, and a dojo on every high street.

And yet the crowd on Morfi's opinion markets is going to the ground. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu sits at 24% consensus with 9 holders, and Judo matches it at 24% with 8 holders. Dead tie. Also on the card: 3 other sides. So far 12 traders have put $187,323 behind their picks. Those percentages measure how hard the crowd is backing each side, not a headcount, and right now that conviction is all wrapped up in chokes and throws, not kicks.

My call, and this is pure opinion from the commentary booth: the crowd is mixing up "coolest on the internet" with "most popular on Earth". Jiu-jitsu owns the highlight reels and the podcast mics, sure, but if the question is about schools on every block and kids in every town, the numbers on the table point to the strikers. Taekwondo and Karate are counting practitioners in the tens of millions while the grapplers are winning on vibes. I'm tipping a big striker comeback, and I'll happily eat my headset if the mat stays in charge.

What to watch: does anybody break the jiu-jitsu and judo tie, and when do Taekwondo and Karate fans wake up and show up? It's still the first round, the market is wide open, and your pick could tip the scorecard. Get in the ring and join the market on Morfi. Tap out or step up, fight fans!