Sick and tired of people putting down kung fu....

[bushido_man96]

That is hard to say. Lack of performance in a UFC is not necessarily a standard to judge by. However, I don't see why a stylist with a Kung Fu base couldn't succeed in an MMA format. If you want to fight professionally, then you would have to train professionally. Cung Le, a Chinese stylist, has had some success in some lower levels of MMA competition. However, the training goals of Le's style is different than that of other Chinese styles. I do think there could be a happy medium reached there, though.

[Martial_Artist]

Well, like it was said earlier, it all depends on your goal. If you want to compete in UFC there will have to be an adjustment to training methods.

What I agreed with most was the concept of having to apply things under pressure.

And I believe most of the discussion had turned to applying CMA in a MMA ring environment. If that is the case then CMA will have to adjust training for the ring, again, if that is the goal.

Otherwise, you don't have to worry about it. Which I think someone else had stated.

MA is not a popularity contest. It's a what works contest- if your goal is fighting ability.

If your MA hasn't had any good public exposure that is not an immediate disqualifier to its validity. It makes it that much harder to judge, but its not automatically deemed ineffective.

Training for a ring environment for competition is different than training for a fight environment. But, as was pointed out before, fighting of any kind is good for training experience.

It is quite different to practice a punch against a willing opponent and then try to hit someone who is trying to hit you back.

Now, I'm saying you have to be a competing MMA to be any good. Quite different. I don't really care much for competition of that sort - belts and championships, etc.

I definitely believe full-contact UFC style training is needed. Where else can you test the effectiveness except in a fight?

But again, the OP was about CMA bad rep.

If I was a practitioner of CMA I really wouldn't care what other people thought and wouldn't whine about it either.

You can argue two methods of fighting all day with words and not reach an agreement. The only real way is fight, but then that doesn't really prove anything more than maybe you had a good fighter vs a bad fighter and who was representing the style. And again you have really good fighters out there who will never fight in the MMA public arena and never be known to the world. That certainly doesn't make them any less of the great fighter.

The UFC, and similars, are great for entertainment and a fair demonstration of how somethings work and others dont. But, I don't believe it the end all of any discussion for martial arts. And I certainly don't believe the greatest fighters in the world are found in its ranks. There are some excellent athletes no doubt.

To the OP if you want CMA to be more popular then you will have to do something to shape public opinion and right now that's the MMA arena.

BUt, really, why should you care? If you are confident you can fight, then does it matter that your system is not represented in the ring? Or that other people bad-mouth your system?

Great wisdom there is in: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

A lot people have forgotten that and let the words of others carry them away.

MA.

[NightOwl]

You get what you train for. If you have to rely on martial arts to survive and train for that (krav maga), then you will be able to better apply your art in a real life situation. If you want to compete in the UFC, then you need to train like a pro athlete. If you want to train for show (forms), then you will be good at forms. Just don't then pretend that you will be good at fighting if you've never really trained for it. CMAs have overall become show arts- pretty to look at but not trained for fighting. You could do this for any art (what if mauy tai had a form and all you did was train in that?), and likewise most arts you could apply in combat IF you train for it. But as i've said before- most people want the confidence that they are fighters without wanting to actually test that, and as such CMAs are a place that often offers that feeling of being a fighter without fighting. Now again, if you are open about that (WUSHU, some schools of Capoeria) I have no issue whatsoever. Its when a performance art is sold as a way to make you a better fighter that I have a problem. I do hope that Sanshou folks will get more into MMA soon, and that most applied training will start coming back into CMAs

[RealWingChunKuen]

Perhaps the biggest problem that exists in Chinese Martial Arts training is that the training is mostly ignorant of other martial arts.

The biggest problem in the Chinese Martial Arts is the many incompetent Mc Sifus - some of whom may even have marketed a great name for themselves - that have not mastered nor even achieved a basic understanding of the systems they are supposed to be masters at. That is the main problem, in my opinion, with CMAs today.

.....Put them against a boxer/karateka/kickboxer who moves, hits and takes hits differently and things begin to become unstuck.

Not if he has been learning Wing Chun the way it was meant to be learnt, thus giving him the ability to use the WC principles to adapt to whatever opponent he is faced with. That is what WC (as well as many other kung fu styles) is all about.

I don't think it is fair to suggest that Wing Chun, or any kung fu style for that matter, was created to fight only with the exponents of that same style.

[RealWingChunKuen]

Pretty much all WC s supposed to come from Yip Man right? Then why are there so many divisions in the art since all those who passed it on learned the exact same curriculum from the same guy? The answer is that that techniques are just part of the experience- how they are trained can change things dramatically.

My school of Wing Chun has nothing to do with the Yip Man lineage, even though it is still Wing Chun. It is a Mainland Chinese lineage of WC which seems, so far as I can tell from my own research, to have many techniques that do no exist in the Yip Man style.

The reason why many Wing Chun schools are on each other's throats is the fact that there is a lot of money at play. Because of our friend Bruce Lee's connection with this style, as limited as it was, the Wing Chun name carries a lot of weight and money making potential.

[BMW]

This a very long thread - to long for me to read through.

I haven't read most and I haven't even read all of nine_weapons posts in this thread, but I did like some some things he stated in one or two posts.

To be honest, I don't think all fighting styles are equal. I think some are pound for pound more "equal" than others.

If one ever reads some of Clausewitz views, a military philosopher of war that has greatly shaped the "Western way of War," then it probably would not come as any surprise if I suggested warfare in it most primitive and early state can be construed as two persons engaged in hand to hand combat (or what we might call a street fight).

Personally, I have no inclination or desire to stand in the open and shoot at my enemy while my enemy fires back at me as was common in U.S. Civil War battles. The game of combat has evolved.

Has it evolved at the individual primitive level? Well... let me just say I have zero use for mimicking animal stances - or esoteric stuff like in Japanese ninjitsu where supposedly holding your right hand over your heart will calm your heart while some one punches at you.

People today do not scare so easy by tales of Zeus, goblins, or people contorting themselves in various animal stances.

What's effective? If it keeps you alive in a small prison cell against an excessively violent, muscular, member of the Aryan Brotherhood, or preserves your doom from being split open by 3 welterweights in a Chicago ally then it works, whatever it is.

That might be a Chinese martial art? But whatever it is I doubt it's going to be to esoteric.

[NightOwl]

To throw something in, Cung Le who has an undefeated MMA record of 5-0 is a sanda stylist who did well at the recent Strikeforce event (http://sports.ign.com/articles/837/837048p1.html). It seems like he might go toe to toe with frank shamrock in the future.

[bushido_man96]

To throw something in, Cung Le who has an undefeated MMA record of 5-0 is a sanda stylist who did well at the recent Strikeforce event (http://sports.ign.com/articles/837/837048p1.html). It seems like he might go toe to toe with frank shamrock in the future.

Now I think that would be one heck of a fight to watch. Let's hope this happens. It would be a huge fight for Le.

[Johnlogic121]

This thread started with the post remark, "Sick and tired of people putting down Kung Fu." Commenting on that remark briefly, as I can say is that of all the schools I have trained in, the Kung Fu studio was probably the second worst. It was definately interesting as an art, but some of our sifu's practices encouraged heavy contact in hitting, and I was disocuraged by this and other things as well. I have an interest in Kung Fu fighting to this day, but my exposure to it so far has been a dissappointment. My karate training was not only safer but more suited towards practical self-defense work. This is only my experience, so it may not apply to everyone, but based on what I have found I would stick with karate for training and visit Kung Fu demonstrations for the enjoyment of those Chinese arts. I might take up a Kung Fu art again someday if I could find an interesting and capable instructor, but at the moment, my own training is tied up with my own style of Montgomery Style Karate and the work I do for the Bujinkan Ninjutsu organization.

[bushido_man96]

You say that the contact at the Kung Fu studio was too hard? Was it a full contact, no pads setup, or just hard sparring? What was it like?