The Fighting Clips
I am a Wing Chun practitioner but have also trained Karate, Hung style and Tai Chi. I asked some experienced Wing Chun people what they thought about the clips and for the most part the comments were similar like "where is the Wing Chun?, Where is the Preying Mantis?" Sometimes these comments do come from people who have not sparred that much against other styles. Often they are used to classroom techniques which are very stylistic and look good. Wing Chun people have found out through many losses that classroom Chi sau practice just doesn't translate to tournament and free sparring skills. So this may account for some of the "Where's the Wing Chun?" However every lineage, teacher and student is different so there may be some who could pull off a free style sparring match and have it look like someone's ideal for the art.
One person who had seen a lot of the Wing Chun fights in Hong Kong said that the fights he saw were really not that different from the clip in this forum. He said free style sparring was really not emphasized at all. Perhaps Chi sau gives sort of a comfort level and is a very organized known entitiy whereas freestyle sparring brings a lot of uncertainty into the equation where contact reflexes developed by Chi sau play a mimimum role.
I remember using my Karate background to spar with a person doing Hung style. This person was very fast and did beautiful Hung style routines that were very fast ,powerful and precise. He wouldn't take second place to Jet Li in his execution. However in a sparring match, a lot of that went out the window and a low percentage of what he performed in the forms coild be applied. The entry against a good kicker with mobility is not easy. Many Kung Fu people have found that out against the Thai's.
In sparring I think it is not easy to have execution that looks like movie fighting or doing form work. Perhaps that is a fantasy.
Once we had a Wing Chun seminar with two top students from the late Grandmaster Yip Man. At least one had a very good reputation for real fighting. The other was very good at technical Wing Chun. One lady asked the two to spar. She expected something like she would see in a Kung Fu movie but the result was not that impressive. In fact it looked worse than the students playing around at our club. Then the one teacher explained that with two equal player's the results will look like that. So when we see Olympic Judo for example, sometimes or maybe often it looks very messy. Only when a high ranking player plays with an amateur will you see the very nice spectacular by the book throws. The rest often looks like a school boy tug of war, half executed techniques, a mistake an messy sweep and then some struggling on the ground and finally a choke out.
In the early Ultimate fighting competitions there were various competitors who said they were from TaeKwonDo or one was a tenth degree black belt in something but none of that showed up in the fights.
A long time ago there was a famous fight between a White crane master and a u style Tai Chi master. The fight just looked like wild flailing of arms and a few simple front kicks. Eventually the fight was declared as a draw. Boxing sometimes looks very clean but other times also can look like a mess with numerous clinches happening. I think in actual sparring with hard low Thai stryle kicks thrown in, it is not easy to make a nice clean safe entry and then perform a beautiful technique as is taught in a form or some drill. Against a lower level practitioner beautiful movie style techniques from any style can be made to work. But against an opponent who can match your skills, timing, speed etc., such clean execution is very difficult. I talked with a fencing coach once and he said even the top guy get hit all the time but they just are able to score a higher percentage of the time.
This clip just shows two people working on their distancing and timing in a light sparring session. Maybe it's the first time they played together and it's nice to see such friendly matches. I think if they played more and also played in a learning environment where each side was allowed to practice their ideal techeniques then slowly over time the fight might look different. But then against a strange new opponent the fight might look the same again.
This tape can maybe be some standard and hopefully someone can give a clip of Preying Mantis vs Wing Chun that does meet everyone's expectations. I would like to see that also. Until then I have to be happy that someone offered any clip and other than that watch other martial artists fight or keep enjoying my Kung Fu movies.
Victoria, British Columbia, Wing Chun