Wu vs. Chen fight

[Francesco]

Last week I saw the clip of the actual fight that took place in the fifties between two supposed martail artists. And to be honest I was shocked. As the Wu Stylist was no other than the "Gatekeeper" of the Wu Family system: Wu Kung Yi (son of Wu Chien Chuan). Witness where top masters such as Yip Man (Wing Chun), Tung Ying Jie and Yang Shen Duo.

The actual fight was pityful. Whatever you all may write about sticking energy, Fa jing, chin na etc, etc, this was not at all demonstrated by Wu. If this was a top master, how will his student look like?

Reading the stories about that fight, narrated by the Wu-family, it seems that they are even proud of it. The Grand Master against a youngster (white crane style, not even a top disciple of his own teacher!): from all the legendary stories about the martial abilities of the old masters, I really had expected something better!

Reading the stories about greats as Sun Lu Tang, Chen Fa Ke, Chang Ching Ling and of course Yang Cheng Fu, who, by touching his cotton hand would have an opponent fly five meters through the sky, I can only conclude three things:

1) Either these stories are simply untrue (or in best case highly exaggerated).
2) Either Wu Kung Yi was a fraud.
3) Either I am really stupid and have no understanding of what a tai chi chuan genius looks like.

Wherever I look on the internet, no where a negative comment on the match can be found. How would the public have reacted (2000 witnesses)? What would the witnessing top masters have thought?

What do you all think?

[scholar]

You have to remember it was a contest, not a fight. By the rules, he wasn't allowed to do throws or even to kick. It was basically a Western boxing match. Ch'en K'e-fu bled profusely from Kung-i's "pityful' punches and he said in several interviews that after the fight that he was covered in bruises for weeks.

There were 20,000 witnesses, and it was televised in HK and Macao as well. As you say, the leading masters of the day saw the fight, and were impressed. The download you saw was probably poor quality. If you can get a clean copy, slow it down and look at how Kung-i neutralises Ch'en's punches (and illegal kicks). Also, the obvious (on a good copy) look on Kung-i's face as he plays with the guy is priceless.

Western neo-ninjas see a crap copy and announce that they are better martial artists than someone who would easily turn them to dust. Don't you believe it. If you really think that Wu Kung-i was a fraud, go look up his grandson, Eddie Wu Kwong-yu (the current "gatekeeper" who Kung-i taught) and tell him so. He'll be happy to discuss it with you, I'm sure! ;-)

www.wustyle.com

[Francesco]

Hi Scholar,

Thank you for your quick reply. Your answer was what I was looking for.

I did not mean any disrespect to the martial artists. Having trained intensively Wing Chun (for 12 consecutive years), Chang Chuan and Pak mee pai and only recently switched to Tai Chi Chuan, I am sure not to be able to recognize an expert in the internal art. However, I was not at all impressed by the White Crane Stylist either.

What I saw was indeed a poor quality clip. Would you have any idea if a digital improved version exists at all?

Cheers!

[Brad]

A nice higher quality version of the fight would be nice... I doubt it would make Wu look like the superman some people claim he was (the vids floating around aren't THAT low quality), but it would be interesting to see.

[cerebus]

Heh, heh. You say you've never seen anything bad said about that fight? You just haven't been looking hard enough.

This forum and several others I've been to over the past 2 years have had extensive commentary on that fight. The truth is that neither of the participants in the fight had much sparring experience. Chan Hak Fu had some, but Wu Gong-I had none. His training regimen consisted of forms, applications practice (not sparring) and push hands. His own students have attested to this.

These days (due in large part to the pitiful results of the match in question) some Wu style schools have included more in the way of sparring and learning to use their art in an unrehearsed manner. In the end, I think it woke alot of people up and made them reconsider what they needed to do to be able to fight with their art.

[Francesco]

Originally posted by Cerebus:

This forum and several others I've been to over the past 2 years have had extensive commentary on that fight. The truth is that neither of the participants in the fight had much sparring experience. Chan Hak Fu had some, but Wu Gong-I had none. His training regimen consisted of forms, applications practice (not sparring) and push hands. His own students have attested to this.

Wu Kong Yi had learned the art from his father for over thirty years and also studied intensively with Yang Shao Hou. At least the latter was supposed to be a harsh teacher and undeafeted fighter. One should think that the training regimen would have included martial instruction.

Would you consider Wu Kong Yi an exception or does this feat shine a different light on the alleged abilities of his teachers?

[Brad]

I was thinking that Macao had some laws suppressive to martial arts which could've made some realistic training difficult (for a law abiding citizen).

[SevenStar]

I was the one that originally posted a link to this fight - I at one time had it hosted on my server - and it has also been posted once since then, with a total of at least four threads started about it. Everyone pretty much agreed that it looked pitiful and the "fight" was a joke. So, yeah, you can definitely find people saying bad things about it.

One comment I made on the original thread was that the guys opened up by doing forms... you would think that their fighting skill was on the same par as their skill with the forms was, but as someone made me aware, you could receive the title of "master" without ever once been in a fight, competition, etc. So, chances are, there were plenty of masters running around with no actual fighting experience. I'm not sure what the story on these two guys was, but it looks like they fell into that category.

[SevenStar]

Wu Kong Yi had learned the art from his father for over thirty years and also studied intensively with Yang Shao Hou. At least the latter was supposed to be a harsh teacher and undeafeted fighter. One should think that the training regimen would have included martial instruction.



I dunno... I wonder if sometimes we tend to over romanticize these things... a fighter who never fights is an undefeated fighter. A fighter who has only had one or two fights and won them both is an undefeated fighter. We tend to think "Whoa, he was undefeated!" assuming that the person has had hundreds of fights.

[Francesco]

Hi Sevenstar,

Good point!

Have you read my posted thread on the Wan Lai Sheng vs. Yang Cheng Fu? What do you think of that?

Cheers!

Francesco

[Francesco]

Originally posted by Scholar:

Western neo-ninjas see a crap copy and announce that they are better martial artists than someone who would easily turn them to dust. Don't you believe it. If you really think that Wu Kung-i was a fraud, go look up his grandson, Eddie Wu Kwong-yu (the current "gatekeeper" who Kung-i taught) and tell him so. He'll be happy to discuss it with you, I'm sure! ;-)


Hi!

I read an article today on Dan Docherty's website, in which the author refers to Eddie Wu and his grandfather:

http://www.taichichuan.co.uk/information/articles/requiem.html

[SevenStar]

I haven't read that thread yet, but I'll check it out. Here's the original thread I started back on 2003:

http://martial.best.vwh.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27361

there have been a few more since then, one as recently as a few months ago.

[Shooter]

If you really think that Wu Kung-i was a fraud, go look up his grandson, Eddie Wu Kwong-yu (the current "gatekeeper" who Kung-i taught) and tell him so. He'll be happy to discuss it with you, I'm sure

Why don't you walk on your own legs instead of challenging people to test your teacher? If you keep making open invites like that here and at CK, don't be surprised when someone takes you up on it.

I'm sure Eddie Wu will be impressed to know that you're speaking for him in that capacity.

[BAI HE]

Wu Gong Yi wasn't as much known for his fighting skill.
His Son on the other hand really wanted to accept the challenge.
That could have got very nasty. Wu's son was bull****.

I really never understood why Wu didn't let his son fight. Chan Hak Fu was not of the same generation and the match "challenge" was rather inappropriate.
They say that Wu's son liked to hurt people and that wouldn't be good for the art. (don't know why?)

Also, Chan Hak Fu had not reached his prime (martially) at this point. He hadn't been in the WC system for too long.

The bout to me looked rather confused and that neither guy really knew what to expect from the other and were more interested in not losing, than fighting. This whole situation snowballed in the press. These men truly had nothing against each other, nor did the two schools.

[fiercest tiger]

The answer is pretty easy non of these two fighters trained there systems as a reality fighting art just forms and basic pads and conditioning if that!?

FT

[Colloid]

Girl fight!