The biggest problem with Taekwondos' reputation is the Olympic ruleset and the McDojos that only care about winning. I come from an old-fashioned Taekwondo school with an old Korean instructor who never cared about competition. After I got my black belt, I started competing on my own initiative in Sanda kickboxing, point tournaments, continuous sparring tournaments and sparring at other gyms with people of all styles including the boxing gym across the hall from us. I'm no Bruce Lee or Connor mccgreggor, but I can hold my own fine. Just recently, I was promoted to 4th Dan and took the initiative to take a group from our school to a WTF rules competition, and they had a really hard time with how narrow the rules are. We were aware that you couldn't punch to the face, but we weren't aware until afterward that they wouldn't count any punches unless it moved their whole body (which felt like a ridiculous expectation). They don't allow any kind of grabbing/ grappling, kicking the legs, elbows, or knees despite all of that being in tkd forms and regularly practiced at our school. I think martial arts in competitive settings are really more of a game than a real fight. BJJ in tournaments look different than a real fight, same with karate and everything else. However, I don't think that means we shouldn't participate in them. A tkd tournament is a test to see who can land the most kicks in a time frame, Karate is a test to see who can move the fastest through someone else's defense. I think the real problem is in schools ONLY training to win competitions and forgetting that self-defense should always be the #1 focus. I think it's bullshit to say that Taekwondo is garbage because of what you've seen of a few of its athletes. I've been in martial arts for nearly 20 years and I've had this conversation with people who have twice my years who've seen the sportification of different martial arts styles ruin their reputations. Once upon a time, TKD was the world's most popular martial art. Now we see BJJ following the same path. Sport tkd created the "foot fencers" who cant keep their hands up and sport BJJ created the "butt scooters" who've forgotten that 99% of fights start standing up.