Again, lots of people will disagree and perhaps even take offense to this, but wing chun is a very limited fighting style, since it's based on very close quarter striking, and basically nothing about it has anything to do with fighting in the clinch or on the ground.
Notice that I said nothing about it's limitations from longer ranges than very close standup striking range. Something that I've talked about numerous times on this forum.
Because most (if not all) streetfights are going to close the distance from long to short range very quickly. There are basically no Muhammad Ali type streetfights, or kickboxing type streetfights either. That kind of thing is very, very rare in everyday life.
So for close quarter, standup streetfighting, wing chun can be very good. It has it's limitations (ie.- no clinch or ground material)...but for what it is, it can be very good, depending upon the person using it of course.
But in a ring/cage/mma setting...it's limitations become even more apparent. Not just because the fighters in such events have more room to maneuver, and are doing do so on a perfectly smooth and non-hostile surface - but because they are better trained than the typical guy on the street, who quite often charge in swinging wildly or going for some half-a55ed grab or football tackle.
Not that wing chun doesn't have some good moves to put on a more sophisticated striker, but stories of wing chun street success (and I'm not necessarily doubting the stories)...is often based upon facing the typical non-seriously trained streetfight mentality/abilites coming at you.
The enigma is that wing chun PURE AND SIMPLE...has pluses and minuses that are highly misunderstood.
Discuss....