The All South East Asian Full Contact Fights from the late 50's, 60's and 70's.

[sanjuro_ronin]

It was the bolding that really threw me so...


You're = YOU ARE

Your = yours as in "that is yours" or "is that your foot in your mouth?" or "Is that your set of gkk shoes?"

Yore = The timeline some kungfu people think on.

Yor = The hunter from the future a b rated film.

thank you
that is all.

You use of GKK has been noted.

[David Jamieson]

You use of GKK has been noted.

Good thing too because these shoes are brand new!

[taai gihk yahn]

r "Is that your set of gkk shoes?"

ROFLMAO!




that is, it's GKK, NOT gkk

[Liokault]

Dan Docherty talks about the South east Asian thing a bit here:

http://www.taichichuan.co.uk/informa...gladiator.html

Going back to training methods, how did you manage to adapt Tai Chi for competition fighting and how did the training you used for competition fighting differ from ordinary Tai Chi training?


The contests which I took part in were fought on raised platforms, with no ropes. Full contact was allowed to any part of the body except the groin. Throwing, punching, kicking, knee, elbow and head butting techniques were all perfectly legal. Each fight was scheduled for 3 two minute rounds with one minute between each round. The object was to either stop your opponent or outpoint him. In this type of contest you cannot afford to just wait for your opponent to attack as time is strictly limited. Furthermore, when we fought in the South East Asian Martial Arts Contests representing Hong Kong you must consider that our opponents were highly trained champions representing their own countries and their own individual styles. Fitness and power therefore are vital in this type of competition. Also to become champion you must expect to fight a number of times within a few days.


In both the 1976 and the 1980 South East Asian Martial Arts contests I and one fellow student were the only Tai Chi fighters, not just in the Hong Kong team, but in the whole competition. In our training we used the type of gloves and rules that corresponded with those of the contest and only practised techniques, including throws, that were practical with those gloves on. When sparring one would adopt the methods of other styles such as White Crane, Thai Boxing, Choi Li Fat etc., while the other would counter. We also did a lot of Tai Chi stamina and internal strength training. Between times we'd do the hand form to balance the training and help massage our aching limbs. I also used to practise pushing hands and this came in useful when throwing an opponent from the platform.


How useful did you find the four years' Karate training you'd done?


It wasn't that helpful. The first time I did full contact sparring - with a much smaller senior student, I got whacked in the face so hard that my nose was pouring with blood. My automatic reaction was to turn round to Cheng Tin-hung expecting him to stop the fight and warn my opponent. Instead I got hit again.


What differences did you find between the 1976 and the 1980 South East Asian Martial Arts Championships?


In 1976 I was very raw, with only one year of Tai Chi behind me and so my defence in particular was not that well developed. That was also a particularly vicious competition because the gloves we used were like driving gloves with the fingertips cut off. In my first fight against a hard stylist from Malaysia I got two black eyes a bleeding nose, puffed lips and heavy bruising from the left hip down to the foot from Thai Boxing kicks. My left foot was so bad I couldn't get a shoe on and I had to have a tetanus shot followed by herbal mudpacks to reduce the swelling. I won the fight by the way! Four days later I stopped my next opponent as well, but lost on points the day after in the final of the Heavyweight division, to Lohandran of Malaysia and Chi Ke Chuan. He was fully fit as he'd only had to fight one contest lasting one round before the final. I felt really frustrated because I was sure I could have taken him if I'd been uninjured.


The next South East Asian Martial Arts Championships was held In Malaysia in 1980. This time we used Thai Boxing gloves. In fact the Malaysians had been training with Thai Boxers and they had a top Thai Boxing coach as one of the corner men for their fighters. This time there was a Superheavyweight Open Weight category for those over 220lbs. I weighed around 190lbs., but, against my teacher's advice, I opted to step up two weight categories to fight in this division as I figured there would be more 'face' to gain and in any case I'd be faster than my opponents. In my first the fight against Roy Pink of England and Five Ancestors, who weighed over 300lbs., I knocked him out in the first round. Then I was in the final against my old friend, Mr. Lohandran. I beat him on points in front of his home crowd in Kuala Lumpur. The only other Hong Kong boy to emerge as a champion was my fellow student, Tong Chi-kin who won the Middleweight title. After all that, I decided not to fight in competition again.


Why would a well-educated man like yourself take part in this kind of bloodbath?


I felt that the only way to test the system and to have credibility as a practitioner of the system was to fight the best people from other styles in full contact competition. Apart from that my teacher asked me to fight . . . and I do come from Glasgow.

There is a film of Dan knocking Roy Pink out, I think you can but it from Neil Rosak of Renessance Tai Chi....its only about 20 seconds of grainy footage.

[KC Elbows]

I know, but that is only ONE drill of many. plus the core of Taiji is the forms, not somethign typical of grappling systems where the core is, well, grappling.

The core of any system is the moves that make it up, it's fighting methodology.

Now, for many, the core of their training methodology is in forms. However, this does not mean that using the forms that way actually equates to expressing the fighting methodology of the system better, it doesn't. The moves require the context of another person, so individual practice alone cannot do it.

I know I'm not saying anything you don't know, merely pointing out that those who make the form the sole center of their training methodology do not necessarily express a system's fighting methodology as reliably as those who make the actual moves, which cannot be actual without an additional practitioner, usable, imo.

Those who seem best able to use taiji use a good amount of throws, but Chinese styles are not big on specialization(reducing jujitsu to judo, et al), so it would be a bit of an aberration for taiji to be specifically a throwing style, not to mention a number of the forms clearly are not solely a throwing catalog. It also seems like a large number of those who train taiji more realistically might make little of the distinction between striking and throwing, and there are fairly obvious strikes in a lot of taiji forms.

Let's say you made a functional style that largely encapsulated all the strikes of boxing and half the throws of judo. That style's form would entirely seem to be a throwing set, having "only a handful" of strikes and many many throws. If one guy practiced only that form, while someone else practiced only in using it's components with a partner, the second guy would more than likely end up being the truer expression of the style, not the first, and the expression might not mean more throws would occur than strikes, in fact, it might be just the opposite, but the throwing and striking would be a fair representation of the methodology that went into the selection of techniques.

Whether taiji is a throwing style and whether a lot of people practice it as one are not necessarily the same question. But, it is rather unlikely, given the culture it came from, that is solely a throwing style.

[SaekSan]

Don't know if this is of any interest, but here's some photos of the SEA tournaments along with other Kuoshu related pics:

http://www.zykfa.org/gallery/taiganau

[banditshaw]

Cool pics. Thanks for sharing those.

[Eric Olson]

I want to interview sifu Tat Wong maybe get some article on these fights?

That would be hella sick.

Hey Miluo, how's school going?

[Eric Olson]

Here's the "secret" of internal...shhhh....don't tell anyone.

-Linear movement=stiff movement=inefficient movement
-Round movement=relaxed movement=efficient movement

Thus,

-Whoever is the roundest is the most efficient in their movement
-Internal=very round in all planes of motion, hence very efficient

Rinse, lather, repeat....

[Eric Olson]

Oops almost forgot...

-Internal training starts with the principles of long, soft and round....as you become more advanced it is still long soft and round but its less obvious to the untrained eye.

-But you have to go through the first part of the training or you will end up stiff...no cialis required.

EO

[banditshaw]

Found this footage from the 80's on youtube. Anyone knowing who the one guy is?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6aUqvqIDB8

[cerebus]

I've been wondering about that as well. I recognize some of the people in it actually. Near the end, there's the guy who quits and walks back to his corner, well the cornerman with the mustache who seems to be shooing him back into the ring with a towel is Master Giuseppe Bon of Vicenza Italy and behind him, the Korean in the tank top is Master Shin Dae Woung, the head coach of the Italian team. This was from the 1986 World Kuoshu tournament in Taiwan.

But there are also scenes interspersed from some bare-knuckle tournament as well. Not sure what tournament that was.

[kfman5F]

http://crane.50megs.com/index6d.htm