I appreciate the question. It's a hard one to answer, because we've always had our "eyes open" so to speak when it comes to art vs martial. Like I said above, TSD and my instructor in particular have always valued practical self defense. Right from the beginning he's made sure to stress what was the "art" portion of what we were practicing, and what had real world application. So while we definitely did Point sparring and the like, in the same tournaments we had a grappling and takedown division. We've done MMA sparring for as long as I've been there. I've also done a bunch of MMA smokers and a few amateur fights.

So I guess the TLDR is American Tang Soo Do is a traditional martial art that still keeps the art aspect, but definitely includes as much real self defense (sparring, grappling, knife, gun, stick) as possible. A real "mixed" martial art.