Lavell “Shaolin” Marshall: A Jack of all Grappling Trades and a Master in One, Throwing Backs to the Mat
Marshall is a Shuai Chiao Black Belt and a multiple-time national Shuai Jiao champion on team USA, who competes regularly in Shuai Jiao internationally. He is also a state Judo Champion and has competed in Jiu-Jitsu as well. In particular, he is the star of a viral video that has made the rounds around the internet several times, where Lavell displays his grappling prowess involving a spazzy white belt. Marshall has even begun venturing into other grappling art competitions too and is finding success there in Mongolian Bökh, Kazakh Kures, Belt Wrestling, and Russian Sambo.
Lavell, who also holds a Judo Brown Belt, Taekwondo Black Belt, and Jiu-Jitsu blue belt, is a student from the famous Shuai Chiao fighting lineage of Chang Tung Sheng, Master David Lin and his teacher, Sifu Omar Harvin. Marshall, who has also appeared in Netflix’s second season of Luke Cage, is currently studying under Vladislav Koulikov — a world-renowned sambist and grappling ace in his own right — in Sambo and Sambo Fusion (a mix of Sambo, Judo, Wrestling, and BJJ).
As far as the grappling world goes, the four kings are Jiu-Jitsu, Wrestling, Judo, and Sambo, and when it comes to the purely throwing arts, Judo is deity. Kung Fu may be viewed to most modern martial arts as very low on the totem pole of fighting systems, but it’s even worse when it comes to grappling, making what Marshall does that much more exciting.
He is not just an outlier in the grappling disciplines of the West. He is also the only one using a Chinese system at a high level in multiple grappling disciplines, and winning on what is traditionally an area of fighting that Kung Fu is considered one of the worst in.
Kung Fu is known as a striking art and made mainstream by Bruce Lee and again, Chinese cinema. Films of all nature in the action genre focus on the striking nature of Kung Fu. Whether it’s Drunken Boxing, Crane Style, 5 Animals, or Wing Chun, generally speaking, Kung Fu is thought of as a martial arts with zero grappling based principles or history.
Because there’s no wrestling in Kung Fu, right? Judo was the first real throwing art, right?
Wrong.
Ancient Chinese Secret: China’s Oldest Combat Based System
Shuai Jiao or Shuai Chiao, often incorrectly referred to as “Chinese Judo” and sometimes known as Chinese Wrestling, dates back over 4,000 years ago as an ancient system of military close combat or Kung Fu, in which it was referred to then as jǐao dǐ (角抵) or jiao li (角力) and translated as “horn butting”, before reaching its modern term of Shuai Jiao.
During different periods of time and Dynasties, this art was extremely popular and was not only an art of the military, but entertainment as well. It was then in the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912) that it was the art of the Shan Pu Ying, The Battalion of Excellency in Catching, who were the bodyguards to the Emperor and when it truly flourished with Chinese, Manchuria Buku and Bökh really beginning to mesh.
At one point, even women participated in entertainment based wrestling events, in the same garb as the men, shirtless with undergarments similar to Sumo. Lavell explained in more detail, this Chinese and Japanese wrestling connection, as well as other influences to Asia abroad.
“Sumo has its origins in Shuai Jiao. During the Tang Dynasty when it was called Xiang Pu, it went over to Japan and was taught to a few people. Down the line with modifications, it became Sumo. Many people will dispute this, but one thing we can’t dispute is that Japan was heavily influenced by China, and so was Sumo.
“As for Bökh, there are two main styles, Inner Mongolian and Mongolian. Inner Mongolian has developed along Shuai Jiao, so aside from uniform, it has much of the same techniques, just with a different emphasis. Mongolian Bökh also has close relations because of the Mongols taking over China and encouraging people to wrestle. Much of what is seen today is thousands of years of crossover between the two.”
Since Shuai Jiao is almost completely unknown in the West, there has been confusion that this 4,000 plus-year-old art actually borrowed techniques from more modern throwing systems, rather than the other way around.
Matt Gelfand, an international and national Shuai Jiao champion, elaborates by stating:
“Shuai Jiao can be considered the father of Chinese martial arts and also the father of most Asian wrestling or grappling arts. It’s a wrestling based art with combat and close quarter applications. However, unlike most Kung Fu styles, the focus is on throwing and takedowns as opposed to striking.”
A Phoenix in the Ashes: Reclaiming the Middle Kingdom’s Martial Glory and Where it’s Future Lies
If Kung Fu is going to have a future, then it must look to its past. An ability to excel in combat sport and to adapt to a sports-based setting, regardless of tradition or practices linked to “self-defense” is the only way to rise from it’s defeated state. The biggest hurdle Kung Fu is currently facing in the modern martial arts landscape, and more precisely in the West, is simple: results. And the only one holding it back from those results, is itself.
“Many teachers would say it’s because their techniques are “lethal”... but, realistically, most just haven’t made the jump to sport training,” Gelfand states. “Arts like Western and Thai Boxing have been tried and tested in the ring for a long time, as they make it a point to simplify concepts to fit [a sport setting]. Kung Fu styles like Praying Mantis, Wing Chun and Dragon Style involve catching and breaking limbs, which can’t really apply to sport. Most techniques, when broken down to sport concepts, look almost exactly like western boxing. If you look up Sanda or Sanshou (Chinese Kickboxing) you’ll get a glimpse of how that translates.”
Between YouTube, World Star, mixed martial arts, the internet and media overall, for a martial art to be deemed valid, you need tangible outcomes which are commonly found in some form of combat sport. This isn’t said as a negative either.
Fighting arts of all kind must be shown as capable in combat. It’s in their very design. The reason people don’t question the effectiveness of Jiu-Jitsu, Judo or Muay Thai is that not only can they take what they practice and instantly apply it in some form of sparring or sporting event, they can watch it in action from others in a competition.
The martial arts are a physical embodiment of the scientific method. It’s why they have been ever evolving throughout human history, building the validity and practicality of any given technique through constant testing. The only difference in this method is, if the thesis is proved wrong, the results generally have repercussions, and in the most serious cases, could even result in permanent injury or death.
Meaning, for theories of technique to be scientifically tested over and over again, they must be done where the researchers of this subjects, martial artists, are able to experiment safely and continuously in their study. This leaves sport training as the only way we can continue to evolve the martial arts.
A very easy case to study for this idea is the very rapid evolution of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
One can debate the difference of “sport” versus “real” Jiu-Jitsu, however, there is no denying the Jiu-Jitsu of today is more advanced in its “vocabulary” than it was 10 years ago, let alone 50. And while within the Jiu-Jitsu community there is debate versus how the sport or game aspect of Jiu-Jitsu may have deviated from its original self-defense roots, that is a path most, if not all, combat sports take. They are forged in combat and spawn offsprings meant to foster competition that can be tested over and over again without participants facing the same consequences as war.
The debate of sport and self-defense will continue in Jiu-Jitsu regardless. Nonetheless, there are ways of testing modern Jiu-Jitsu’s competency through MMA and high-level players like Demian Maia, Ryan Hall, Gunnar Nelson, Shinya Aoki or “Jacare” Souza, to name a few, have shown Jiu-Jitsu does just fine in combat or self-defense.
Daniele Bolelli, a professor at California State University and Santa Monica College, host of the History on Fire podcast and author of On the Warrior’s Path, states:
“Historical circumstances have made Chinese martial arts considerably less effective than others at present. It’s not so much that the techniques employed in these arts are bad — in many cases they are quite sound — but the training methods and teaching methodologies are antiquated. The same thing would have happened to Japanese martial arts had it not been for people like Kano Jigoro, and their efforts to modernize the practice of martial arts. Out of all Chinese styles, Shuai Jiao is one of those that offer the most promise in terms of being adaptable to MMA.”