Somewhat ashamed of myself
Hello,
I am somewhat ashamed of myself as I allowed my temper to get the better of me. Still, I thought I would share an experience today to illustrate that you can learn to be effective in real fights using Wing Chun or whatever art you chose, as long as your focus is correct.
This morning my wife and I were riding on my motorcycle and had just left Toys R Us. We bought a Slurpee mahine for one of our kids. As we were pulling out of the parking lot a car came around the corner very quickly and almost hit us. The driver made a rather rude gesture and then pulled over and signaled me to come over, he kind of gave me the finger. Anyhow, I know I should have riden on but I was a little ****ed so I pulled the bike over to him and got off. He and I excahgne words and they he actually got into a front stance. I laughed at him and proceded to take his knee out and knocked him down. He got up and tried to kick me from this same stance with his left leg as the lead. I stepped to his left and had perfect openings to hit him and kick him in the knee again. He then tried to throw a punch and I parried and applied an arm bar and dropped him to his knees, I then applied a rear choke and almost choked him out, but my wife stopped me.
Now I don't know how good this guy was, but I was not too impressed. At the same time I never really tried to seriously hurt him but there was plenty of opportunity to do so. Who knows, maybe if I had hit him instead of opting to control him, he would have gotten ****ed off and kicked my a** but I kind of doubt it.
I noticed that he was not prepared for the explosiveness of Wing Chun nor was he able to adapt to the rapid changes of our combat situation. His one sided stance allowed me to take advantage of his blind side and use it to my advantage.
I felt very comfortable in fighting him and felt that I could almost do whatever I wanted to with him. Once I applie the choke I effectively broke his balance and took away many of his options. He was quite a bit younger than I and in much better shape. As a matter of fact during our exchange of words he called me fat, which hurt far more than any of his ineffective attacks did. I am not thinking about getting back in shape:D .
For me, Wing Chun has always been an effective art and has served me well over the years. But, I believe that there is a mental aspect which is far more important than the specific shape of your techniques. You have to be willing to hurt someone, not saying you have to, but you need to be willing to cross that line if you have too. You also need to keep your head and not fight out of anger. Even though I allowed myself to get mad, I did not fight out of anger, at least I kept a cool head.
Please do not take this as some boastful attempt to make myself look bad. The truth is that I was wrong to even get into a fight. However, for me, Wing Chun is and continues to be an effective method of combat. If you train properly then even when you get old and out of shape like me, you may find you can deal with the average person you run into to.