Last week Tiger Claw [1], a high-end martial arts [1] equipment maker, and Disney’s Martial Arts Festival [2] announced that they’ll be hosting a new national championship [3] together starting next year. This is going to be a new division of the martial arts competition that Disney has been hosting since 1999 in its Wide World of Sports [4] complex in Orlando, Florida’s Disneyworld campus––along with sports like volleyball, baseball, and soccer. That competition hosts 1,000 athletes watched by 5,500 spectators.

Apparently, Disney, a company that has perfected ersatz exoticism on screen [5] realized there’s money to be made and champions to be minted by providing a forum for something closer to the real thing. Competitors and coaches can select from among a number of packages including accommodations and event fees. And Disney can now genuinely claim to be “small world,” one in which Japanese and Chinese masters and their multi-cultural American protégées demonstrate their prowess at knocking each other to the floor. With nary a hint of irony, the Disney sports website introduces their martial arts section: “Discipline. Honor. Pride. [6]“

Besides providing another entree into Disney World, the new Tiger Claw Championships makes sport of traditional distinctions, encouraging cross-genre competing––”it’ll be tae kwon do vs. karate, kung fu vs. tae kwon do,” explained one organizer. Throughout 2006, amateur black belts will compete in 10 smaller qualifying tournaments across the U.S.––culminating in the Elite Championship at Disney World [7] in October. The idea is to cross-pollinate black-belt practitioners from a variety of schools, styles, and circuits and provide a chance for amateurs to compete, said organizers in a press release [8]. They’re looking for the most elite competitors in all of martial arts, the spokesman told me.

But if you’re thinking of training to win golden mouse ears or other booty, don’t quit your day job, it’s no different than most competitions of this ilk: “The champions of the 2006 Elite Championship will be eligible to become featured models for the following year,” reads their announcement, “as well as role models for younger martial artists.”

Photo: A participant in a recent Disney Martial Arts Festival.