YongChun
05-13-2004, 11:21 AM
The mixed martial arts idea is not something new, is not something bad and is not something good. Throughout history fighting styles have always been combined, expanded, simplified and on and on it goes. Choy Lee Fut was one of the last major Chinese styles to have been invented and it consisted of the best of 18 different styles of combat. The end result was a form of fighting containing more than 100 different forms.
The Filipino arts are another fine example of art combination. Over the years the best things from many bladed and non bladed fighting arts have been combined together to form a very impressive fighting mix that really does go together more than say a Kenpo mix. So the idea of Mixed Martial Arts is nothing really new.
Wing Chun I feel went the other way to strip down to the very basic core essentials for fighting. However it was left open such that if anything more was required then it could be added. For myself I don’t find anything needs to be added to suit my needs. I have done wrestling Karate, Hung style, Escrima, Tai Chi and all kinds of things but for my current path, Wing Chun is perfectly fine.
Definitely Wing Chun does not suit all tastes. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone just as I wouldn’t recommend that every person interested in dance study Ballet (although that might form a good basis for many kinds of dance). The beauty of some kinds of Wu Shu is not to be found in Wing Chun. Yet in the right hands, Wing Chun has it’s own kind of beauty and elegance.
The argument: Which is better: "boxing or wrestling?" is age old. We will always have these kind of unresolvable questions. No matter who beats who today, the result could be different tomorrow. I think every art has some incredible fighters. If you put them all in a ring together, only one guy will walk out. If you do it again the next day then very likely a different guy will walk out.
I think also that sometimes fighter A can beat fighter B, fighter B can beat fighter C and fighter C can beat fighter A. So then there is no best fighter. It's a paper, scissors, rock thing (Foreman beats Fraser, Fraser beat Ali and Ali beats Foreman).
A lot depends on what you want to achieve? Do you want to do a martial art the rest of your life for health? Or do you want to compete a few short years in a Thai boxing ring? Or do you want to fight some gang in Los Angeles? Or do you want to just study an art the same way as you might study Chess? Are you small, large, placid, and aggressive? All these factors can help decide what is a best fit for martial arts.
They say there are no bad martial art but just bad martial artists. Many of us also have lives where we go to work or raise a family. So we cannot compare against those professional martial artists who have the luxury to train 12 hours a day for 12 years and then proclaim their system as superior when in fact it is only the hard work that is superior. No matter what art such an individual chose he would be good at it. There are no secret tricks that can be obtained from some esoteric art to easily defeat a hard trained fighter. Kung Fu, Karate, Boxing is just a skill derived from lots of hard work. Luck and circumstance are also factors in the outcome of any real fight.
These days a lot of clubs have students who can only come once a week. So what can they achieve? Maybe they can still learn a lot about a little. In the limit they used to say for a joke that some PhD's got so specialized that they knew more and more about less and less until eventually they knew everything about nothing.
For every individual there is something that fits his or her mentality. A young, unschooled, hot tempered, impatient guy will have different tastes than the older, schooled, calm guy who is in no hurry ti get anywhere.
Martial arts comes down to hard work and a lot of effort to make the theories of whatever artwork. Lots of things can be made to work. If you only know one punch but practice the deliver of that punch 10,000 times, then probably you would be quite formidable. Someone who trains just one technique 10,000 times may be more formidable than the guy who tries to train 10,000 techniques. Who would win, the guy who only trains on the Western boxing jab or the guy who only trains on the Karate front kick? I think the answer is not clear as it depends on distancing, timing, the set up, experience and other factors that would make each technique work. Both techniques have pros and cons.
Of course there are bad ideas and good ideas in any martial art and that why we talk on these forums to sort those things out.
People who say my art is the best or art XYZ is the best, how do they know? Every art has a weakness, every person has some weakness. Everyone gets older. Everyone's body wears out. What is good for a 20 year old is not necessarily good for a 50 year old. A training routine that builds up the body of the young guy might destroy the body of an old guy, so you have to be careful and understand what you are doing.
At the moment I practice Wing Chun. Some people say it is no good. Yet I have seen very good fighters from many other kinds of arts join Wing Chun. Then these fighters found a way to make their new art work. The art itself does not do magic for you, the person in the art has to make it work through hard work, study, trial and error, and many losses and some wins. In it's simplest form, the core of Wing Chun can be compared to Western boxing or fencing. It is simple yet can have something substantial and has enough substance for a lifetime of study. However the same can be said for Karate, Aikido, Judo, Tai Chi or anything else. Different strokes for different folks.
For a fight in a specific environment you need to have specialized skills. Even in fencing a foil master will lose in Epee or Saber. To the untrained eye all three of these arts look almost the same. But every different kind of fighting has it's own subtleties. Wing Chun street fighting tactics did not work very well in tournament competition. The tactics and training for success for these different venues were not the same. If people are worried about handling grapplers then the best is to study grappling. If you are worried about handling knife fighters then the best is to study knife fighting. I stead of wondering and making up all kinds of theories one should just give those other arts a shot. However again we are time limited so that's why it is easier just to talk.
The reality of combat these days is one of bombs, guns and terrorist tactics. How do you train for that? You go to some terrorist camp for that. That's the real world. All the rest are just academic arguments. Reality fighting is going to war. We don't have gladiator fights anymore so we can never know the effectiveness of the various weapons arts. The Dog brothers attempted to do some testing of these things. Lots of debate resulted with no firm conclusions drawn as to the effectiveness of all this.
Most of us have a life beyond fighting and so we can only hope to get good at some small aspect of the fighting world. I think the best is not to worry about these things and just pick some art that is available and do it forever. Then as opportunity arises go to any seminar to further expand one's mind. Martial art can be a lifelong study no matter which art is chosen. These are no time to master them all or even to master the variations contained in any one style.
In all likelihood the founder of Karate, Wing Chun, Aikido, Judo etc. would not do well in the ultimate fighting competitions against some of these monster steroid guys. But in my mind that doesn't negate the usefulness of all these arts. That same steroid guy could probably make any of those arts work against some other steroid guy. So I don't really believe in hero worship or to follow some particular lineage because the head of that lineage had X number of undefeated fights. Still his practicular brand of fighting may not suit your personality and body type.
In Wing Chun you may have talk about which lineage has the best guy. I think it is all very much like chess. Different masters in Chess have different theories of what is good and what isn’t good. They are all interesting and can be equally valid. Maybe Emin Boztepe is like Kasparov and Kenneth Chung is like Karpov and Wong Shun Leung is like Bobby Fisher etc. etc. There is no need to proclaim anyone as the best. In Chess all these guys were considered good when it was their time. I think all these Wing Chun guys are good in their way, the main thing is they all put in their time and made some contribution to the art by way of example, by way of teaching or by way of fighting.
Wing Chun is not mathematics or Chess so you can never conclusively prove anything. The whole art is just a theory that we try to make work. No matter who wins or loses in some fight, it doesn’t mean our skill has anything to do with that. Someone’s loss doesn’t mean the art is no good, someone’s win doesn’t mean the art is good. Winning or losing depends on who you are fighting. When you turn something into a sport then you can have some measurable results against known standards. In life or death combat there are no measures to say whether an untested fighter is good or not.
The Filipino arts are another fine example of art combination. Over the years the best things from many bladed and non bladed fighting arts have been combined together to form a very impressive fighting mix that really does go together more than say a Kenpo mix. So the idea of Mixed Martial Arts is nothing really new.
Wing Chun I feel went the other way to strip down to the very basic core essentials for fighting. However it was left open such that if anything more was required then it could be added. For myself I don’t find anything needs to be added to suit my needs. I have done wrestling Karate, Hung style, Escrima, Tai Chi and all kinds of things but for my current path, Wing Chun is perfectly fine.
Definitely Wing Chun does not suit all tastes. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone just as I wouldn’t recommend that every person interested in dance study Ballet (although that might form a good basis for many kinds of dance). The beauty of some kinds of Wu Shu is not to be found in Wing Chun. Yet in the right hands, Wing Chun has it’s own kind of beauty and elegance.
The argument: Which is better: "boxing or wrestling?" is age old. We will always have these kind of unresolvable questions. No matter who beats who today, the result could be different tomorrow. I think every art has some incredible fighters. If you put them all in a ring together, only one guy will walk out. If you do it again the next day then very likely a different guy will walk out.
I think also that sometimes fighter A can beat fighter B, fighter B can beat fighter C and fighter C can beat fighter A. So then there is no best fighter. It's a paper, scissors, rock thing (Foreman beats Fraser, Fraser beat Ali and Ali beats Foreman).
A lot depends on what you want to achieve? Do you want to do a martial art the rest of your life for health? Or do you want to compete a few short years in a Thai boxing ring? Or do you want to fight some gang in Los Angeles? Or do you want to just study an art the same way as you might study Chess? Are you small, large, placid, and aggressive? All these factors can help decide what is a best fit for martial arts.
They say there are no bad martial art but just bad martial artists. Many of us also have lives where we go to work or raise a family. So we cannot compare against those professional martial artists who have the luxury to train 12 hours a day for 12 years and then proclaim their system as superior when in fact it is only the hard work that is superior. No matter what art such an individual chose he would be good at it. There are no secret tricks that can be obtained from some esoteric art to easily defeat a hard trained fighter. Kung Fu, Karate, Boxing is just a skill derived from lots of hard work. Luck and circumstance are also factors in the outcome of any real fight.
These days a lot of clubs have students who can only come once a week. So what can they achieve? Maybe they can still learn a lot about a little. In the limit they used to say for a joke that some PhD's got so specialized that they knew more and more about less and less until eventually they knew everything about nothing.
For every individual there is something that fits his or her mentality. A young, unschooled, hot tempered, impatient guy will have different tastes than the older, schooled, calm guy who is in no hurry ti get anywhere.
Martial arts comes down to hard work and a lot of effort to make the theories of whatever artwork. Lots of things can be made to work. If you only know one punch but practice the deliver of that punch 10,000 times, then probably you would be quite formidable. Someone who trains just one technique 10,000 times may be more formidable than the guy who tries to train 10,000 techniques. Who would win, the guy who only trains on the Western boxing jab or the guy who only trains on the Karate front kick? I think the answer is not clear as it depends on distancing, timing, the set up, experience and other factors that would make each technique work. Both techniques have pros and cons.
Of course there are bad ideas and good ideas in any martial art and that why we talk on these forums to sort those things out.
People who say my art is the best or art XYZ is the best, how do they know? Every art has a weakness, every person has some weakness. Everyone gets older. Everyone's body wears out. What is good for a 20 year old is not necessarily good for a 50 year old. A training routine that builds up the body of the young guy might destroy the body of an old guy, so you have to be careful and understand what you are doing.
At the moment I practice Wing Chun. Some people say it is no good. Yet I have seen very good fighters from many other kinds of arts join Wing Chun. Then these fighters found a way to make their new art work. The art itself does not do magic for you, the person in the art has to make it work through hard work, study, trial and error, and many losses and some wins. In it's simplest form, the core of Wing Chun can be compared to Western boxing or fencing. It is simple yet can have something substantial and has enough substance for a lifetime of study. However the same can be said for Karate, Aikido, Judo, Tai Chi or anything else. Different strokes for different folks.
For a fight in a specific environment you need to have specialized skills. Even in fencing a foil master will lose in Epee or Saber. To the untrained eye all three of these arts look almost the same. But every different kind of fighting has it's own subtleties. Wing Chun street fighting tactics did not work very well in tournament competition. The tactics and training for success for these different venues were not the same. If people are worried about handling grapplers then the best is to study grappling. If you are worried about handling knife fighters then the best is to study knife fighting. I stead of wondering and making up all kinds of theories one should just give those other arts a shot. However again we are time limited so that's why it is easier just to talk.
The reality of combat these days is one of bombs, guns and terrorist tactics. How do you train for that? You go to some terrorist camp for that. That's the real world. All the rest are just academic arguments. Reality fighting is going to war. We don't have gladiator fights anymore so we can never know the effectiveness of the various weapons arts. The Dog brothers attempted to do some testing of these things. Lots of debate resulted with no firm conclusions drawn as to the effectiveness of all this.
Most of us have a life beyond fighting and so we can only hope to get good at some small aspect of the fighting world. I think the best is not to worry about these things and just pick some art that is available and do it forever. Then as opportunity arises go to any seminar to further expand one's mind. Martial art can be a lifelong study no matter which art is chosen. These are no time to master them all or even to master the variations contained in any one style.
In all likelihood the founder of Karate, Wing Chun, Aikido, Judo etc. would not do well in the ultimate fighting competitions against some of these monster steroid guys. But in my mind that doesn't negate the usefulness of all these arts. That same steroid guy could probably make any of those arts work against some other steroid guy. So I don't really believe in hero worship or to follow some particular lineage because the head of that lineage had X number of undefeated fights. Still his practicular brand of fighting may not suit your personality and body type.
In Wing Chun you may have talk about which lineage has the best guy. I think it is all very much like chess. Different masters in Chess have different theories of what is good and what isn’t good. They are all interesting and can be equally valid. Maybe Emin Boztepe is like Kasparov and Kenneth Chung is like Karpov and Wong Shun Leung is like Bobby Fisher etc. etc. There is no need to proclaim anyone as the best. In Chess all these guys were considered good when it was their time. I think all these Wing Chun guys are good in their way, the main thing is they all put in their time and made some contribution to the art by way of example, by way of teaching or by way of fighting.
Wing Chun is not mathematics or Chess so you can never conclusively prove anything. The whole art is just a theory that we try to make work. No matter who wins or loses in some fight, it doesn’t mean our skill has anything to do with that. Someone’s loss doesn’t mean the art is no good, someone’s win doesn’t mean the art is good. Winning or losing depends on who you are fighting. When you turn something into a sport then you can have some measurable results against known standards. In life or death combat there are no measures to say whether an untested fighter is good or not.