Mixed Martial Arts - The Unstoppable Historical Force

[Ultimatewingchun]

I think pure wing chun, just like any pure Chinese art, is a marketing myth created in the last century when actual hand to hand combat became less of a priority and preserving the art became paramount.

If you look at the history of any art when it was actually being used changes were always made to the art, the pole was added to wing chun, choy lee fut was created by blending several arts together, as was mantis. Lions roar etc.

Back when the arts had to work the practitioners and masters were very practical, they kept what worked and adapted as necessary to survive.

So to answer your question those that care about making their arts work in the 21st century will adapt and change and add what is needed just as their ancestors did (and just as you yourself have done, as Alan Orr’s people have) and those that are more interested in the art for arts sake will continue on the purified path, so not much will change there.

But what will change I feel and where the real revolution will be is with those coming into the martial arts to learn how to defend themselves. I Feel they will not blindly go to any old school and train the way their sifu says they should in the hope that one day they will be able to defend themselves like the masters of the past, but will critically evaluate what they see and compare it to street fights and yes to what they see in the UFC and then act accordingly.

I feel the consumer now is more switched on to what works and what to look out for, I know when I started martial arts about 20 years ago we had nothing to compare our instructors to and blindly took on faith their claims that fights do not go to the ground, that takedowns are easy to stop, that all the different moves in the forms can be used effectively and its your fault for not working them hard enough if you can’t pull them off etc.

Basically we had to take there word when they said what they did would help us defend ourselves, but this is not the case anymore and I feel this is the real historical change that we will see.

***SUCH a good post, Frost, I decided to steal some of it for my signature!

[goju]

of course there is no pure art as every style is a combination of this or that but i do not believe wc or any style needs to adapt to todays fighting arena by adding different stuff too it

as bruce lee noted man has allways had two arms and two legs there are no new ways of fighting

all that needs to be done is one has to train diligently and realisitically in his martial art and you will be able to apply wether it is in self defense on the street or a competiton

[Frost]

of course there is no pure art as every style is a combination of this or that but i do not believe wc or any style needs to adapt to todays fighting arena by adding different stuff too it

as bruce lee noted man has allways had two arms and two legs there are no new ways of fighting

all that needs to be done is one has to train diligently and realisitically in his martial art and you will be able to apply wether it is in self defense on the street or a competiton

Whilst we all have 2 legs and two arms how we use them is heavily dependent on cultural bias and the times we live in.

Chinese culture (indeed most eastern cultures) has a reverence towards their ancestors; this combined with the great investment made in the concept of face meant that many beliefs about unarmed and armed combat were never questioned.

This didn’t matter so much when the arts were used in combat, the bad ones would disappear but as unarmed combat became less and less important I feel this unquestioning faith in your ancestors and unwillingness to challenge your teachers because of fear of loss of face meant many things went unquestioned and thus hand to hand fighting did not evolve like it might have.

If you couple this with the lack of a central language in china and the high amount of illiterate teachers now do we know what is being taught today is anything like what was taught 100 or 200 years ago?

You also have to consider that times have changed, people no longer carry swords or spears, and they do not fight on horse back or wear armour, so a lot of traditional techniques are redundant.

Then consider that a lot of the short hand systems (which specialise in bridging) rely on the opponent actually giving you something to bridge off of, which modern western fighter do not do, they do not seek forearm contact or leave the arm out for your opponent to bridge of so do you still need to train this aspect of the art?

The issue of face and lack of proper protection equipment also meant that instead of full power shots to the head people trained a lot more with body shots this effected how the arts evolved as well, people in sparring started to carry there arms lower to protect there body, but once gloves came into play and full contact sparring was reintroduced we all saw how impractical a low guard actually is)

Cultural distain for rolling around on the ground also meant that ground fighting was largely absent from all these arts.

The impact of culture on fighting is not just an eastern phenomenon, in the west people saw kicking in a fight as a disgraceful thing (unless you are French) so people did not develop kicks or kicking defence.

So although we all have 2 arms and 2 legs, how we developed using them largely depends on our culture and the times we lived in.

If people no longer attack the way they did when your art was developed, if they use different strategies and weapons how will it be able to help you defend yourself?

[goju]

thats the point the asian martial arts that werent effective are forgotten and the ones we have today are around because they worked.

as far as your comment about not changing well there are countless examples of them doing just that. take hsingyi for example a few masters made alterations to it to make it moreeffective in their eyes

actually if the asians were so stuck in their ways they wouldnt have mixed styles to begin with as it would have been disrespectful to their ancestors

yes and people no longer carried swords or spears or armor however the majority of fighting in ancient asia was not done on the battle field but out in the public on the streets

as far as bridging goes as long as you strike there is a oppurtunity to bridge to think asian martial artists fought leaving their arms dangling out there while they punched is redicuous

actually there used to be alot of karate schools that went full out when it came to sparring (including the head) it was extermely dangerous but as realistic as you get

as far as your reasoning for keeping the hands low again i disagree

it is better to parry or outright evade an attack than expect to be able to withstand it by keeping your hands high after all your hands are small and a powerful puncher can go right through a persons high guard

and for it being unwise to keep your hands lower well lyoto machida and bas rutten both had exceptionally low guards and it didnt hurt them

[bennyvt]

mastering jujitsu by rickson gracie. It said that jujitsu was getting smashed by kano's judo guys. One school chose to lay on the ground as the kano had taught only the throws. So the judo guys couldn't throw them and got beat. Them kano put the ground stuff back in. The main guy moved to brazil where he worked in bars betting people they could beat him. He meet helio's dad and taught him and i think his brother? But he taught both for about six months before he had to note away again. Now i read this from his book and was surprised as well. They then practiced for years to develop it. This is obviously not word for word but i an not just starting ****. I for one have been akpn doing shootfighting and train with bjj guys so in not saying that its **** i was making a historical point on the fact that mma is mixing styles not a style thats uses all ranges when fighting.

[Frost]

“thats the point the asian martial arts that werent effective are forgotten and the ones we have today are around because they worked. ”

No the ones that are around today may be effective, or may be not since no one has written records of what styles looked like a few hundred years ago and since they was a general lack of proper testing in the last century we don’t know if what is taught now looks like how the arts looked when they were originally used and taught

“as far as your comment about not changing well there are countless examples of them doing just that. take hsingyi for example a few masters made alterations to it to make it moreeffective in their eyes ”

Yes there are countless examples of the arts changing when they were actually being used in combat, then it didn’t matter, but in the last hundred years or so how much as wung chun changed, hung gar, lau gar etc,

“actually if the asians were so stuck in their ways they wouldnt have mixed styles to begin with as it would have been disrespectful to their ancestors ”

They mixed out of necessity, what I am saying is once this stopped then the particular issues of face and reverence to ancestry made change all the more harder

“yes and people no longer carried swords or spears or armor however the majority of fighting in ancient asia was not done on the battle field but out in the public on the streets ”

Reallly… umm…ok…. So the Chinese did not fight on the battle field that much… or the Japanese….ok…..And all the fights they had were one on one and empty handed.

Face facts times have changed, what is culturally and legally acceptable in combat has changed and your art needs to address this

“as far as bridging goes as long as you strike there is a oppurtunity to bridge to think asian martial artists fought leaving their arms dangling out there while they punched is redicuous ”

please show me where and how you can bridge against a boxer in the way that traditional southern arts seek and use the bridge, southern arts developed bridging highly because they were fighting other systems that emphasised bridging, when an art came along that said to hell with this we wont offer a bridge it did pretty well for itself (lions roar was its name I believe daivid ross can correxct me if I am wrong)) and that’s where we are now, the vast majority of people in the west don’t seek the bridge and if bridging range happens they move into clinch, so you should be learning clinch defence not bridging, ie evolve

“actually there used to be alot of karate schools that went full out when it came to sparring (including the head) it was extermely dangerous but as realistic as you get

as far as your reasoning for keeping the hands low again i disagree

it is better to parry or outright evade an attack than expect to be able to withstand it by keeping your hands high after all your hands are small and a powerful puncher can go right through a persons high guard

and for it being unwise to keep your hands lower well lyoto machida and bas rutten both had exceptionally low guards and it didnt hurt them “

you can’t really believe this… surely not…. Look at the first full contact karate matches in the 60’s and 70’s for examples of how bad it is to leave your hands down low when fighting full contact (the boxers cleaned up in those events that whys karate students in the west started studying boxing and started to keep their hands up!)

It might not have hurt bas or lyoto, but it hurt countless other fighters that did keep their hands down, all the guys that fight in K1 from what ever back ground keep their hands up.. and all you ever hear in MMA and boxing fights is the corner souting keep your hands up to their fighters…. I wonder why…….

[Iron_Eagle_76]

it is better to parry or outright evade an attack than expect to be able to withstand it by keeping your hands high after all your hands are small and a powerful puncher can go right through a persons high guard

Wow..........I can not begin to understand the level of ignorance this statement contains. Goju, for someone who claims to have worldly knowledge, this is perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever saw you post, and that is saying something. I guess keeping your hands low and blocking strikes with your face is a more effective game plan

[sanjuro_ronin]

mastering jujitsu by rickson gracie. It said that jujitsu was getting smashed by kano's judo guys. One school chose to lay on the ground as the kano had taught only the throws. So the judo guys couldn't throw them and got beat. Them kano put the ground stuff back in. The main guy moved to brazil where he worked in bars betting people they could beat him. He meet helio's dad and taught him and i think his brother? But he taught both for about six months before he had to note away again. Now i read this from his book and was surprised as well. They then practiced for years to develop it. This is obviously not word for word but i an not just starting ****. I for one have been akpn doing shootfighting and train with bjj guys so in not saying that its **** i was making a historical point on the fact that mma is mixing styles not a style thats uses all ranges when fighting.

Mastering Jujitsu was written by Renzo, not Rickson, Rickson never wrote any book that I know of.
That story was about the matches between Kodokan judo and Fusen ryu Judo and is a very overly simplified version of what happened.
The Gracie learned "old school" Judo from Mitsyo Maeda, possible one of the best fighters of his generation.
Maeda was one of the pioneers of MMA, he combined Judo (pre-WW2 Judo) with anything that worked.

[Frost]

Wow..........I can not begin to understand the level of ignorance this statement contains. Goju, for someone who claims to have worldly knowledge, this is perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever saw you post, and that is saying something. I guess keeping your hands low and blocking strikes with your face is a more effective game plan

LMAO you are not the first person to write this... and most certainly not the first to think it

[sanjuro_ronin]

[Vajramusti]

A key board and an internet connection and one is an expert on many styles and the weather and is a historian as well!

joy chaudhuri

[Frost]

Oh look all i need is a key board and an internet connection and look I can make cryptic remarks about "real wing chun" and about "real lineage" and about "real masters not fighting on cameras" etc for years without actually saying anything of note or contributing anything at all!

[sanjuro_ronin]

When we make a discussion personal it means that our argument can't stand alone on its merits.
Lets keep it on topic boys.

[Frost]

but he started it!!

[goju]

Wow..........I can not begin to understand the level of ignorance this statement contains. Goju, for someone who claims to have worldly knowledge, this is perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever saw you post, and that is saying something. I guess keeping your hands low and blocking strikes with your face is a more effective game plan

since when did i claim to have worldly knowledge a high guard isnt going to protect you alot of the time for example look at the clay guida diego sanchez fight clay kept and extremely high guard and diegos punches went right through them

but of course that proves nothing as does the fact both fighters i mentioned above keep their hands low and were not known for being ko'd


you old guys are hilarious you act like you lose your masculinity if some one younger than you is correct