Quote Originally Posted by sanjuro_ronin View Post
Honestly, we have had the "train super hard core to be a real fighter" BS dismissed years ago and sure every so often it rares its uneducated ugly head BUT this is silly.

In the early years of MMA ( when it was vale tudo) there were many hard core bare knuckle fighters that fought and they fought VS guys that trained with protective gear and we all know what happened.

The reality is that why some bare knuckle testing is benefit to a MA, training bare knuckles on a regular basis is not.
What you end up with is too many injuries ( and time off because of it) and people instinctively "holding back".

Lets remember one thing also, there is NO HISTORY in WC ( or any other TCMA) of actually TRAINING full contact FIGHTING with bare knuckles.
If there is any, please show me.
What he said, if you spar without gloves only one of three things happens

1) People stop training at the club because risk isn’t worth reward
2) You cut out headshots because it hurts and is too dangerous, so you end up with unrealistic body shot only training
3) You become gun shy as people hold back as they don’t want to get hit hard in return so you end up with those slap happy sparring clips like jerrys and the vast majority of southern hand clips we see out there with unrealistic techniques and bad body positions

We have all seen over the years clips of 2 and 3 on this forum, we have yet to see a good clip of wing chun bare hand sparring which isn’t unrealistic,

I completed in a traditional chinese bare hand sparring comp back in the early 2000’s the training was all controlled and technique was lovely because no one wanted to get hurt going at it without gloves, come the national comp (which was meant to be controlled contact) all technique went out the window the first time I got smashed in the face with a bare hand punch at full power,
The irony was we were seniors of the main school in the country, we had been entered into the competition because the previous years no gloved sparring had in the words of out master not been technical enough, we were there to show the way,LMAO
What I learned was that sparring without gloves doesn’t prepare you for fighting without gloves, contact sparring prepares you for contact no matter what the context