Does WC answer the question......

[tbone]

Oh yeah, I learned today that Alan Orr's guys don't do Wing Chun in their MMA fights.

Hey Alan, I know you visit this forum from time to time, are your guys using Wing Chun in their MMA events? If not, then what are they using?

I'm going to start a new thread about what is and isn't Wing Chun.

[Ultimatewingchun]

"Everyone's first hand experience should just be ignored." (tbone)


***NOT TRUE. Speaking for myself...HARD and REALISTIC sparring against quality, resisting opponents will tell alot. But regardless of how much training/hard sparring I've done through the years...by far the most important indicator to me of what it is that I know/can do - or thought I knew at the time - of what works or doesn't work...

have been actual streetfights that I've had since beginning my wing chun/martial art training over 30 years ago. There have only been 4 or 5 - and one of them very recently, as a matter of fact.

But they are the biggest testing/training ground of all.

Some will argue that they're relatively meaningless if the opponent is just some dumb-ass knucklehead streetfighter with no real martial skills - but they overlook the unknown factor.

You don't know this guy (or his friends). There are no rules, regs, or gear of any kind. The terrain might be treacherous. It could be pitch black night time. You don't know what he has in his pocket.

And the heart rate goes up...which means that everything you ever trained for is at a whole new level of intensity and danger.

That's when you find out what's what.

[Nick Forrer]

Oh yeah, I learned today that Alan Orr's guys don't do Wing Chun in their MMA fights.

No you didnt learn that..you heard it and took it as the truth without any first hand experience

They use WC for stand up and clinch and BJJ/Catch for ground...I know this from first hand experience of training with them

[YongChun]

Who fights with Wing Chun for a living?

One guy I had in mind was the number two body guard of a Hong Kong underground boss. Number two means he wasn't as good as the number one guy. This was from the Jiu Wan lineage.

Another guy I knew was an enforcer for an Asian drug gang in Vancouver. This person learned some Lok Yiu lineage Wing Chun but also had some KyokoShin Karate in his background and a bit of Choy Lee Fut. He said the Wing Chun saved his life on a few occasions. The head of the gang was also a Wing Chun man. I don't know what kind. One day this guy stole some ladies purse in a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver. The lady was screaming in Cantonese that someone was making off with her purse. It so happened that the robber ran past a table where the head of the Asian gang was sitting. So as the guy was about to run past his table, the Wing Chun man knocked the guy out with one punch and returned the purse to the lady.

A third is a correctional officer who has used his skills on numerous times to control inmates. In one instance when he was still a newbie he was sent into a room of out of control inmates and was told to handle it (probably to get a laugh). He told his superiors to turn the cameras off because it wasn’t going to be pretty. I don't know what happened but he is still alive. Before Wing Chun he studied some Karate and some Aikido. After Wing Chun he studied some more Karate, some Gracie jujitsu and no NinJitsu.

Three others that I know were in the police. One was an undercover policeman investigating the drug gangs however his stories of six different incidents happened while he was still a regular police officer. His Wing Chun was from the Wang Kiu lineage. He said he just used what he learned from Wing Chun. However fighting mentality does make a difference and that may have come from other things because before Wing Chun he also studied boxing, army combat. police tactics and Judo.

A second police officer was a rookie officer who was sent up North as part of the Canadian RCMP. He said they threw him into about a half a dozen fights and told him to break up the fights. He told me that he was never so scared in his life but he came out without a scratch. I asked him what it was about the Wing Chun system that helped and he said it was the centerline concept that saved him. He was studying the Wang Kiu lineage Wing Chun. Before that he was never any kind of fighter and was never in any fights.

The student of the correctional officer and the correctional officer himself both worked as bouncers for a couple of years and in that job had many occasions to use their stuff. Then the English police officer said he used his skills quite a bit in England against local street thugs. I don't know how often that was but he said his skills never failed him. This was in the Leung Sheung Kenneth Chung lineage.

I think the mental aspects of fighting brain were probably key factors and after that the Wing Chun ideas made their fighting instincts more efficient. The training that all these people did was the regular kind of Wing Chun training that people these days consider as useless: e.g. forms, lots of chi sau and a bit of light sparring, some conditioning and pounding on some bags and the dummy. The rest was lots of fighting.

The Asian enforcer knew the first form inside out he said Jiu Wan had a book a foot thick that talked about the Siu Lim Tao to the smallest level of detail. Don't know if that was true or not but that's what he said. So he knew that, a few movements of the dummy, some stepping and kicking from the Chum Kiu form and chi sau. He was very very soft and hit like a truck. One of his students told me that and also a good Hung style fighter told me the same thing. I only met him once but didn’t see him do anything. But I was impressed with his student. After he arrived in Canada he eventually gave up doing Wing Chun. He said in Hong Kong it was necessary for his survival on the street but in Canada there was no use for it. I would say this person was the best of the works.

The RCMP guy only learned the Siu Lim Tao form and did some class drills and some basic chi sao. He never did any kind of sparring.

The general model for most of these people seems to have been:

1. Learn some forms
2. Learn some chi sau
3. Go out and fight

Ray

[tbone]

No you didnt learn that..you heard it and took it as the truth without any first hand experience

They use WC for stand up and clinch and BJJ/Catch for ground...I know this from first hand experience of training with them

Thanks Nick. I was being sarcastic BTW.

[Vajramusti]

For me absolutely. Its a superb single style programming of reflexive action and possibilities. Others may have other opinions- they are entitled to them... dont care to argue net forum style. Opinions may vary with the kind of wing chun people do and have learned.

[Edmund]

More involved with fights using Wing Chun for a living but? I used to as a doorman (retired), I have a student who is a prison officer, one a detention officer and another who is a care worker with autistic adults that occasionally get quite violent, no titles, trophies or PROOF just part of their daily work.

Exactly. I think you've made an important distinction.
"Involved with fights" like bouncers, cops, bodyguards and asian gangsters aren't quite at the same level of athleticism as a pro-fighter.

[anerlich]

Everyone's first hand experience should just be ignored.

Thousands of years of martial combat end up meaningless because the UFC came out on TV 13 years ago.

I agree with your broad thrust here, but since some of us are nitpicking about science:

Wing Chun isn't thousands of years old. A few hundred, more like it.

First hand and anecdotal evidence are not scientific proof. And many TCMA anecdotes are the subject of monstrous exaggeration, along the lines of Bruce Lee supposedly ripping a challenger's heart out of his chest and showing it to him before the challenger died.

One of the problems of applying "science" to fighting is that it is probabilistic, not deterministic. Technique and training can move the odds in your favour, but it all still remains a gamble. Victory is never guaranteed, and that is why fights are best avoided.

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

While sportfighting is not a perfect laboratory for comparison of the effectiveness of styles, it IS closely observed by many, many people, and thus (more) difficult to "spin", and about as close as you can get - legally - to real hand to hand combat.

The "not real because there are rules" argument doesn't fly. If there REALLY were no rules, all my fights are going to be victory by shotgun blast while my opponent is getting out of his car. Why *****foot around with this "honourable" sh*t?

[Nick Forrer]

Thanks Nick. I was being sarcastic BTW.

sorry didnt catch that over the net...

[mattb]

Just a note. For anyone not participating in the match, there is a bathroom down the hall, second door on the right.

[t_niehoff]

Saying (my) WCK "works" or that I "know" WCK "works" doesn't make it so. Anyone can make such claims. And we see them from every corner of the MA world. But where is the evidence to back up such claims? Without evidence, claims are empty and boil down to "trust me" (faith-based martial art). Lack of good evidence should be tentatively taken as nullifying any claim (until we have good evidence to the contrary, we tentatively conclude bigfoot does not exist).

Some point to anecdotes of WCK "working on the street" or stories of our ancestors past exploits as evidence. The problem with anecdotes is that they are too nebulous to really draw conclusions from. If someone did indeed win a fight (second- or third-hand accounts aren't always accurate), all kinds of factors could have played a role besides their WCK skills. We can't see that fight to make our own conclusions, and so they too boil down to "trust me" (faith-based martial art).

FWIW, some WCK practitioners are beginning to move into the NHB arena and have been successful at the lower to mid-levels of MMA competitions. All of these guys have also cross-trained in ground/grappling systems (BJJ, catch, etc.) and also regularly trained with MMA trainers. So again, without more evidence it is difficult to draw conclusions with regard to how much WCK plays into their accomplishments.

But it does demonstrate that to obtain a significant level of fighting skill demands a person train like a fighter. Forms, drills, chi sao, etc. alone just won't take you there. The evidence of that is overwhelming (even though some continue to hide behind their "faith"). Listening to people -- in WCK or any martial art -- who don't or haven't fought other skilled fighters (and so don't *know* but may have strong, uninformed opinions) about how to develop as a fighter is not a good recipe for success.

Terence

PS - btw, Nick, Steve Morris is a treasure!

[Andrew Williams]

Hi Terence.

In light of your above post, I pose a philosophical and somewhat rhetorical question, why are people so willing to accept stories of WCK being made to work, and the ensuing idolatry of those we suppose have attained skill enough to make it work?

I do believe there are elements, in part or in total, of naivety, ignorance, fear (and in some cases laziness) about those who are willing to let the past deeds and the stories of their heroes do their training and fighting for them.

Andrew

[Nick Forrer]

PS - btw, Nick, Steve Morris is a treasure!

He certainly is....Got a 4hr session with him on sunday and a (GI) comp tomorrow...what a weekend this will be

[Knifefighter]

I guess what some are saying is that the only way to see what's effective is if you watch someone do it in Pride or UFC. That's the only time a technique can really be considered effective.

No... but it's a good laboratory that everyone can observe, rather than relying on the overblown myths that get passed around in MA circles about who did what "back in the day."

[Knifefighter]

On the subject of science, how can any of the MMA fights be considered as reliable evidence? An MMA competition is very different from most street confrontations so how can it be used as an experiment? How can you test a Ford car going from 0-60 then compare it to a BMW? IF you are going to look at fights like that then IMHO it is seriously flawed. The gloves and floor make a huge difference never mind the rules.l

Science is all about doing controlled experiments, colllecting data and using that data to make predictions on future outcomes. MMA comps would be a great laboratory for someone to start with if he really was interested in developing a true scientific fighting system...

One's system can contain all types of theories on angulation, economies of motion, centerline principles, and footwork, but unless one is following the scientific method, his fighting system is far from scientific.