In a Chinese New Year special, DynastyClothingStore.com dives into the seldom-spoken topic of Chinese fighters in MMA. Brace yourselves… this is the longest blog entry we’ve ever done. It is not for the casual reader. If you call yourself an MMA fan though, we know you’ve been dying to ask these questions. We’ve got the answers, and the videos.
But if you’re too lazy, scroll down all the way to the bottom for the “Too Long, Didn’t Read” version, where we sum up this near 7,000 word article in one short paragraph.
Being the birthplace of Asian martial arts (as the Chinese phrase goes: “all martial arts come from Shaolin” – albeit with influences from India), China (a.k.a. The Middle Kingdom) possesses over five thousand years of history, and is the central origin of all Asian people and culture that can be traced back to the ancient times. While they won’t openly admit it, neighbouring nations such as Japan, Korea, and all of South East Asia owe their historical and cultural roots to China, in one way or another.
Why is it then, in a society of more than 2 billion ethnic Chinese people scattered across the globe combined, we have not had any successful Chinese fighters (so far)? Why is it that Japan, a tiny island comprised of only about 125 million people, has produced some of the sport’s most legendary MMA fighters, and Korea is taking the lead in pushing the next wave of successful Asian fighters, while China (and its neighbouring Chinese populations in and of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau) is still the odd country out of the party? Why have Chinese fighters failed to find success at prize fighting and what is it that makes Chinese people “different” than other Asian fighters?
We’re going to look at the legitimate factors that have contributed to the slow acceptance of MMA in Chinese society, as well as dissecting the potential bullshit “reasons not to train MMA” agenda that Chinese martial arts masters preach. We’re about to see how much of it is with good reason, and how much of it is just Chinese people making up excuses and not being good at fighting MMA.
Factor #1:
Historical & Political Situation Stopped Growth & Development of Martial Arts in modern China
What Happened in China:
Without opening a gigantic textbook on the history of modern China, we’ll be as brief as we can. Right after the communist party (Mainland China) drove out the nationalists (Taiwanese) in 1949 to Taiwan after World War II, they banned the right to train martial arts in China for fear of people overthrowing the government, and burned down the Shaolin temples.
What?
That’s right. Martial arts, having originated in China, were banned from being practiced for the next thirty (30) years (until 1989 when the government decided to rebuild the Shaolin temple and “lift the ban on martial arts”) in the mainland.
What Happened Around The World:
Exact facts and dates aside, we know that this is the same era and time when the Japanese embraced western catch wrestling / professional wrestling in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, and added it to their existing Judo and Japanese Jiu Jitsu. Karate flourished and offshoot hard styles emerged such as Kyokushin Karate, challenging western kickboxing styles. Soon, kickboxing and grappling were combined as “Shooto”, derived from “shoot fighting” as pro wrestlers called it (a more realistic version of pro wrestling techniques), and we all knew that turned into MMA in Japan.
Koreans have adapted Taekwondo mainly from Karate during their time from being occupied by the Japanese, as well as Judo, and have become very strong in these martial arts during this time as well. Interestingly, the founder of Kyokushin Karate, Mas Oyama, was ethnic Korean (a.k.a. Choi Young-Eui / Choi Baedal), who went around all of Japan beating every Karate master there was to form what he called “The Ultimate Truth” (Kyokushin), the first and foremost style of full contact karate.
Mitsuyo Maeda of course brought Judo newaza (ground fighting) to Gastao Gracie, Carlos Gracie, and Helio Gracie in 1914, and the Gracies and other Brazilian families have been developing their Brazilian Jiu Jitsu undisturbed for the better part of a century.
Somewhere in Russia, two dudes (Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oshchepkov) who trained Judo in Japan came back home and combined it with wrestling to make Sambo, a hybrid martial art and combat sport defined by its intention to be “a merger of the most effective techniques of other martial arts”, and someone named Fedor Emelianenko was born.
Struggle For Stability & Modernity:
Having been ripped apart, raped, and pillaged by foreign powers during WW1 and WW2 (pretty much every nation you could think of who wanted a piece of China, including but not limited to: Japan, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, United Kingdom, United States, France, Russia, the Dutch, Portugal, etc.), losing Hong Kong to the British, Macau to the Portuguese, and a good chunk of Chinese leaving for Taiwan (Formosa), the Chinese people as a whole were a social and economical mess.
Under the great leadership of the communist party (note: sarcasm), China underwent horrible famines and failed their attempts at modernization without commercialism / capitalism, and basically shut themselves out of any cultural trade or development for half a century. Japan on the other hand was embracing change, western technology and teachings, rebuilding after the war, and enjoyed massive growth and development. Chinese people during this time were struggling to pick themselves back up, and simply were not training any martial arts or developing their game because they weren’t allowed, or even socially or economically stable to do so.
Turning Martial Arts Into A Performance Art:
Kung Fu practitioners during this time (1949 and onwards) could only mildly train forms to hide their techniques, similar to how Brazilians trained Capoeira as a dance to hide their deadly attacks during times of slavery. This was largely compressed together as “Wushu”, an umbrella term / sport combining all Chinese martial arts techniques. Wushu then went on to become more of a performance art / sport, emphasizing forms and athleticism as a showcase of Chinese martial arts rather than competitive sport fighting.
The Need For a Real Combat Sport:
Somewhere along the way in the 1970’s, some guy in the Chinese military decided to call bullshit on all this fancy stuff, and combined traditional kung fu fighting styles (Chinese martial arts were categorized into four families: Ti (To Kick), Da (To Hit), Shuai (To Wrestle), Na (To Grapple or Submit), basically Chinese “mixed martial arts”) to form a hybrid Chinese art known as Sanshou (Sanda), which means “free fighting”. It was a Chinese style of kickboxing combined with wrestling take downs and Judo throws. It’s distinction that made it “Chinese” was it’s leg catching techniques. A Sanshou fighter has great awareness of kicks and can catch any incoming kick and trip / take down / dump their opponent. It is now largely known to the world today through UFC fighter Cung Le who uses this Sanshou style as his main style of attack.
The “Westernized” Colonies:
Hong Kong (The Pearl of the Orient) and Macau (The Las Vegas of Asia) flourished under British and Portuguese rule, respectively. Many Kung Fu masters including Ip Man (Bruce Lee’s teacher) had fled to the shores of Hong Kong to escape the war and Japanese occupation. Yet they were only just cities, not large enough to influence new Chinese martial arts styles to emerge (there is of course Bruce Lee, more on him in a bit) but did refine their existing styles of Wing Chun and Hung Gar through many infamous “rooftop challenge matches” between Kung Fu masters. We don’t know what was going on with Taiwan at this time. Having been under Japanese occupation, one would think they’ve done something with their martial arts in a free market economy, but sadly all they’ve managed to do was produce the William Hung of MMA, Andy Wang.
One Anomaly:
There is, of course, the man the myth the legend Bruce Lee. He was the first to get a taste of America, said “fuck this shit” and started doing his thing at this time period. Traveling to the States because of his street fighting behaviour and getting into trouble with the local Triads and police in Hong Kong, he was planting the seeds to his philosophy that “there is no best style”, and propagating the first psychological motions of mixed martial arts fighting.
But by the time he returned to Hong Kong, became an overnight superstar and subsequent death, Chinese society had already lagged behind about 20-30 years in their development of modern martial arts. While Bruce Lee’s teachings should have caught on with the Chinese people, it somehow didn’t… at least, not in the fashion that we as MMA fans would have hoped for. Tradition still held on tight to many of our martial arts disciplines, and no one came close to pushing the boundaries as much as Bruce Lee did ever since.
Factor #2:
Traditional Martial Arts Thinking, Romanticism, & Believing Into Our Own Bullshit
You see, Chinese people were (and still are) too attached to traditional thinking and culture, especially when it came to traditional Chinese Kung Fu (more on the cultural and economics aspects later). Bruce Lee himself was attacked by Chinese Kung Fu masters in the States for teaching westerners his Kung Fu / Wing Chun (which ironically, sparked Bruce to abandon Kung Fu and start cross training in Fencing, Boxing, and Judo). This example alone, demonstrates the stubborn mentality the Chinese people had at the time, unlike the Japanese and other western fighters, who were traveling the world and cross training in different styles to become better martial artists.
However, it is fair to note that after the Chinese suffered at the hands of foreign oppression for the better part of a century, this “not sharing with foreigners” mentality is understandably deserved. Since Chinese Kung Fu masters hung onto their beloved Chinese techniques and traditional thinking, a number of negative consequences happened as a result.
1. Kung Fu Was A Secret… That Nobody Knew
Chinese Kung Fu was too secretly guarded and rarely taught or passed down to anyone, especially not to foreigners. This led to many old masters with esoteric styles not having many students, and the failure of passing on techniques means the death of their style and knowledge, eliminating any hopes of growth and development. There used to be hundreds of styles of Kung Fu ranging from all four categories of styles as mentioned before (directly influencing the likes of Karate, Jiu Jitsu, Judo, and now Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), but now only a select number remain known and practiced. The notable ones that remain today are Wushu, Wing Chun, Choy Li Fut, Tai Chi, Hung Gar, Ba Gua Quan, Xing Yi, various internal styles, and to a much lesser extent, Shuai Jiao (traditional Chinese wrestling, similar to Mongolian wrestling / Judo), and of course Shaolin Kung Fu (a plethora of animal styles such as Crane Fist [Karate], Praying Mantis and more).
Great demonstration… now can you do that in a live fight?
2. Self Defense, Not A Sport
Because Chinese martial arts systems are mainly based on self defense and contains no sport fighting elements (as opposed to Karate, Taekwondo, and Judo that have adopted sport / point fighting elements), you are never really able to use it or practice it in a live combat environment, contributing to the lack of development, modernization, and refinement of their style of Kung Fu, causing students and masters to continue to (falsely) believe that their style works (even when others have already evolved beyond most of their styles through decades of trial and error, sparring, and refinement).
Lightning fast… but can it do damage?
Out of all the Chinese martial arts, Wing Chun has been the only prominent art that has held its own in practicality and effectiveness against other styles throughout the years. Of course, we know the MMA gloves destroy any hope of any Chinese fighter using Wing Chun as a style, although UFC commentator Joe Rogan has commented that he would like to see a fighter use Wing Chun’s chain punches from the mount.
Why yes, it can! A real Wing Chun practitioner destroys a Kyokushin Karate guy… but they end up fighting on the ground anyway.
3. False Romanticism
Because Chinese martial arts were losing popularity (due to reason #1), took too long to learn and were too difficult to implement because of the lack of any live sporting element (reason #2), Chinese Kung Fu was regulated to being only a traditional martial art that believed in it’s own bullshit, even when it started to get picked apart by other styles in fight competitions.
Kyokushin Karate vs. “Drunken Boxing”. Please, stop embarrassing yourselves.
Chinese Kung Fu and martial arts myth and lore were so vast and rich, that many people (all across the globe) loved Kung Fu / Wuxia films, and still do. You can just ask hip-hop super group the Wu-Tang Clan. Front man RZA, engineered the group’s sound and persona off of classic Shaw Brothers Kung Fu films that he saw as a kid in the States. RZA now trains under former Shaolin Monk Shifu Shi Yan Ming, who opened up the USA Shaolin Temple in New York.
Bruce Lee, back in the day, was already implementing the earliest of MMA techniques in his movies… and nobody noticed it because they were always in love with Bruce’s “Kung Fu”.
International superstars who followed the footsteps of Bruce Lee such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen, enjoyed many years of success as martial arts film action stars. Yet ultimately, they are just film actors. While Jackie Chan was schooled in the Beijing Opera martial arts, his moves are a combination of real Chinese Kung Fu, theatrical stunt work, and clever choreography.
Jet Li was a 5-time national Wushu champion and has legit martial arts skills spanning many different Chinese styles such as Shaolin Kung Fu, Long Fist, Taichi Quan, and others. But he was no prize fighter.
Donnie Yen, perhaps the most “modern” out of all his peers, has many years of legit Chinese martial arts training and cross training in newer styles such as Taekwondo and Boxing, but even he never stepped foot in a ring.
Chinese people seemed to have become attached to their idols and heroes in the entertainment world and embraced this type of romanticism of their martial arts, and forgot that the world outside Chinese martial arts was changing rapidly and leaving them behind.
4. Disbelief, Denial and Excuses
As far as we know, when the foreign fighters challenged real life folk hero Huo Yuan Jia in 1910 (played by Jet Li in “Fearless”), he smoked them all by historical accounts.
But… that was when nobody knew MMA.
When Chinese fighters started losing these sport competitions and challenge matches decades later (aside from Sanshou fights which Chinese fighters still rule with an iron fist over even Muay Thai fighters), because of their stubbornness to embrace change and growth, they started living in denial, and made up excuses for their failures. They shunned the training of other martial arts (mainly the grappling / ground game), called them “gay” or “nonsense”, and claimed Boxing and Muay Thai used “gloves” that took away the strengths and usefulness of Chinese Kung Fu.
Japanese “Kiai Master” scam artist gets his ass kicked by an MMA fighter.
American version. The Human Stun Gun gets debunked by MMA.
Trolling or not trolling, still funny, and still sad.
5. The Martial Arts “Avoiding Conflict” Paradox
Martial arts, when written in Chinese, “Wushu”, can literally be separated and interpreted as “the art of avoiding conflict”. Jet Li talked about this in his most important film “Fearless” a.k.a. “Huo Yuan Jia”.
Now we could all just go home at this point, because Jet Li is absolutely right about averting conflict, and even he himself admitted in a behind the scenes interview in “Cradle 2 The Grave” that he was no UFC fighter. But what about some of the other stuff these Chinese masters are saying? They say “MMA is trash”, the grappling is “gay”, are for thugs, goons, and gangsters who just want to fight, and isn’t a martial art. They claim that people who do MMA aren’t martial artists and don’t understand what is respect, honour, etc.
Let’s put our conspiracy hats on for a moment.
These masters could very well be using these claims to make excuses for the fact that they weren’t cross training or were too afraid to adapt themselves, fearing they’d fail to do so (trying to save “face” and reputation as a Kung Fu school). One of the most common “reasons” Chinese martial arts practitioners come up with to defend their style is that Chinese martial arts and people don’t train Kung Fu to fight others. They say they train it for health, for self defense, and to kill when attacked, not to bully others and compete in a sport that’s only a “game”.
Ip Chun explains Martial Arts is for self defense, health, and not for fighting.
There is of course truth to this statement… that is until I saw this:
Oh dear god. I trained my entire life in Chinese Kung Fu only to fight like this?
Self defense is great. Training for the health benefits are great. Having to never use your martial arts because you’ve reached martial arts mastery in the mind and body is also great. That is what martial arts is about. We understand that and we don’t have a problem with that at all.
But here lies the paradox:
If I train in something that I’m not allowed to use, or will never get to use, is there even a point?
Now what if I get provoked and had to use it in a fight? Sure, I could beat up some other Karate or Taekwondo guys with my Wing Chun Kung Fu… but what about MMA?
Wing Chun vs Boxing… someone gets knocked the fuck out.
…ends with a snap.
If what these masters are saying is true; I cannot train MMA and still be a noble martial artist who avoids conflict!?
That sounds like classic, grade A, Chinese KONY 2012 kool-aid bullshit to me.
…and I still haven’t watched this video, LOL!
Martial arts is about the practitioner, and what he/she does with it, not the martial arts style itself. Just because MMA attracts the douchebag crowd to learn it and fight others… does not mean douchebags weren’t training Chinese Kung Fu decades ago for the same intentions, when it too, was the “cool” thing to do on the block.
This is touching. Ip Chun really is a bad ass martial arts master. He even talks about the evolution of his style of Wing Chun to become a more complete martial art. I have no doubt about this man’s knowledge and have all the respect in the world for him. But let’s be honest with ourselves. This is a movie. You can see the stunt double acting as Ip Chun when it’s not a close up shot. Any Wing Chun fighter who tries to only use Wing Chun would get crushed in MMA.
To be fair, we aren’t bashing Chinese martial arts. We aren’t even bashing traditional martial arts. They are the father of all Asian martial arts and should be respected. If you learn something useful, are able to defend yourself, and aren’t looking to fight or compete, then all the power to you.
Kung Fu, especially Wing Chun, is pretty awesome when done right. MMA is just a sport with rules anyway, not allowing eye gouging and groin strikes, right?
But that’s not what this is about.
We know traditional martial arts are powerful, and we understand MMA is just a sport with rules.
Hell, just look at Lyoto Machida who successfully used Karate in MMA, which was thought to not work before he became a champion. Anthony Pettis, Benson Henderson, and Anderson Silva are all Taekwondo black belts, all successful in MMA.
What we’re trying to find out is why Chinese people have sucked at MMA, and failed to adapt their techniques for MMA (Sanshou being the only exception). It has come to our attention that their stubbornness to adapt has been one of the key contributing factors to the lack of success of Chinese fighters.
Bryan To, a Hong Kong kickboxing champion, makes his MMA debut. For the love of Buddha, please learn the ground game first before you step into an MMA fight, you’re embarrassing yourself and your entire country.
Okay, so martial arts were banned in China for three decades and their country was in turmoil for basically a whole century. Yet you’re not fully convinced. Neither are we. If Chinese fighters are so successful in the Sanshou arena, they should have the same drive to learn the ground game and kick ass in MMA, right?
Well it turns out it isn’t as simple as that. Let’s dive deeper into Chinese society and psychology and see what pushes these Chinese youth away from pursuing combat sports in the first place…
Factor #3:
Traditional Chinese Culture, Society, and Teachings Kill The Pursuit of Sports & Fighting
As if the aforementioned five reasons of Chinese martial arts culture weren’t enough to slow, if not stop, Chinese youth from cross training and becoming great fighters, there’s a whole boatload of cultural factors as well. Where do we even start? Let’s categorize it like this: Money, Sports, Family, Society, and Psychology.
6. Chinese Culture Is All About Money
You should be well aware of this stereotype by now. The overprotective, strict, control freak Asian parents. The “Tiger Mom”s. The smart Asian kid who gets perfect grades. “Too Asian”, too many Asians taking over universities all across north America. The yellow peril who came to America to steal all our jobs.
When they say “Asian”, what they really mean is “Chinese”. This is not a jab at Koreans or Japanese. All Asian parents are equally strict, but there are slight differences. As far as I know, Chinese culture is the only one that literally revolves around money. Who else gives out lucky red pocket (lai see / hong bao) money every Chinese New Years? There’s Christmas and the exchange of gifts… but that’s not the same thing as giving away straight cash… and what makes money again?
Sure as hell not fighting.
Ask any Asian. Which subject / occupation did their parents want them to study, and who are they now? They are probably involved in one of the following fields:
1. Doctor / Dentist / Health / Medicine
2. Scientist / Engineer
3. Law
4. Business / Entrepreneur / Real Estate / Finance / Accounting
5. IT / Computers
If you tried to study anything else… you were a loser. Abandoned. Kicked out. Neglected, unloved child. Disowned. Or maybe you were semi-supported, but were still forced to go to university, even though that you knew you would benefit much more from a hands-on college program. Many Asian kids are forced to study what their parents told them to study, but end up doing what they want to do anyways, often (again) a few years behind their peers who started before them. If you failed at it, you’d be constantly teased by your parents, comparing you to other Chinese parents and how successful “their” kids were.
This is a very Chinese problem that is unique to Chinese people and culture. Choosing to become a fighter? Damn near unfathomable.
Slightly Off-Topic: Similarly in Japanese culture, if you did something shameful or brought shame to the family, you would never be forgiven. This is why there is such a high suicide rate in Japan because they have trouble dealing with forgiveness and redemption. Takanori Gomi himself was disowned by his father when he told him he wanted to pursue fighting. His last name Gomi means “trash”, and wasn’t even his real last name.
7. Sports Were Never A Priority
Sports and athletics? Now that’s completely out of the question. Asians don’t support their kids in athletic programs. With the exception of the Chinese government hand picking babies to train for gold medals in the Olympics, they just don’t have competent sports programs. Developing children to fight MMA? They don’t give a shit about that. Parents make their kids take piano and violin lessons.
In contrast, American schools and colleges have all the amateur wrestling programs in place. American families encourage their kids to wrestle in elementary school, high school, and college, and to take part in extra curricular activities all the time, producing many more high level athletes and mixed martial arts fighters (wrestling is arguably the most important base martial art to have for MMA as more than half of UFC’s champions all know and use wrestling).
8. Family Values
Chinese people are taught to work together and value your family. You listen to your family. You don’t go out and reach out to achieve your own destiny. You usually took up the family business or listened to your parents by working an occupation of their choice, not yours.
Whereas white folks kick their kids out after high school and force them to move out and create their own lives, Chinese families all live together, sometimes packed with up to three generations’ (grandfather / grandmother, father / mother, sons / daughters) worth of family members under one roof.
Chinese kids are taught to be filial. If you cared about your family and listened to them, you sure as hell wouldn’t defy them to become a mixed martial arts fighter.
9. Asian Society Doesn’t Understand Fighting, Thinks It’s Only For Gangsters and Thugs
Traditional Asian / Chinese thinking praises martial arts and Kung Fu… but competing in a combat sport like kickboxing or Muay Thai?
No way.
In Chinese society, they think that only thugs and Triad gangsters train and fight kickboxing. Fighting is seen as something “ugly”, or something only kids who are failures / dropped out of school / gangsters would do. “Good kids” practice Wing Chun… or Tai Chi. Or play the piano and violin…
Chinese parents are too protective of their kids to allow them to ever compete professionally, and in the rare occasions that they do let them, more often than not they’re westernized, don’t support their kid’s decision, or under the government’s pressure to send them off to an Olympic training facility for the rest of that poor kid’s life.
Most recently this type of thinking has started to change, due to… you guessed it, Chinese people making movies about kickboxing! Now parents are more understanding of combat sports and how they build friendships and skills. But we still have a long way to go.
10. History Proves Chinese Used Their Brains To Fight, Not Their Fists
The Chinese invented at least 7 revolutionary things including paper, printing, gun powder / bombs, early irrigation techniques, compass, the repeating crossbow (the sub machine gun of their times), the “rocket launcher” that launched a salvo of arrows (the wasp as they call it), amongst many other amazing things too long to list here.
The Chinese were the first to really sail the seas with gigantic fleets, reaching Africa and North America sooner than Christopher Columbus ever did, but instead of committing mass genocide against the native Indians and forcing unwilling populations to conform to their religion, they instead returned to China (because China had everything anyways) after trading with foreigners peacefully.
Chinese people used their brains. They were not barbarians, but were strategists. I’m sure you have heard of The Art of War by Sun Tzu by now. That’s just one example, albeit the most famous one, in western society. Chinese people’s way of fighting was to win without fighting. Thus, in a pure one on one contest, they were rarely tested.
11. Warrior’s Mentality
The Chinese didn’t really have a warrior class because they didn’t really need one. Greeks had their “philosophers and boy lovers”, but also the Spartans as warriors. The Japanese, similar to the British, had to create their army and infuse them with the warrior’s mentality because they both came from a tiny island with nothing on it. The Japanese had to unite the samurai class with their modern army, and the English had to form the United Kingdom. They both needed to conquer other lands for resources to expand or else they would perish. Having a fiery need for conquest will produce great armies with an indomitable fighting spirit.
If you want to learn all about this period of Chinese history, watch Jet Li in the Once Upon A Time in China films. He plays real life folk hero Wong Fei Hung and fights the foreign powers who are invading China and tearing his country apart. Jet Li is loved by the Chinese people for a reason, folks.
Chinese people didn’t have this mentality to go to war and take over other people’s lands because they never needed it. China had all the massive land and resources you could ever want, and that’s why the rest of the world came to China in the 18th and 19th centuries to trade with, and subsequently invade China. Back then, it wasn’t the Americans screaming at foreign immigrants to get out of their land, it was the Chinese screaming at invading foreigners to get out of China!
In addition to that, the Chinese were too busy fighting amongst each other (for thousands of years). China is a huge place, with over 50 ethnic Chinese groups wandering around the Middle Kingdom. Chinese had the Han and Manchurians as the brains, who ruled for centuries long, but the closest thing to a warrior class related to the Chinese region were the Mongolians. Shaolin Monks and the Jin Yi Wei (Brocade Guard, the Ming Dynasty Emperor’s personal elite assassination squad) don’t really count, as the Shaolin Monks are well, monks, and the Jin Yi Wei were a small covert group that carried out their missions in secret.
Mongolians were the strongest fighters and conquerors in the Middle Kingdom and took over most of the known world at one point, using their superior archery (the sniper rifle of their time), horseback riding and fighting skills, their Mongolian wrestling, and their strength from eating horse meat, sheep meat, and nomadic culture. It is no surprise then, that the only Chinese fighter who has made it into the UFC at this time, is none other than an ethnic Mongolian, Tiequan Zhang (who happens to be a national Mongolian wrestling champion… surprise surprise).
Factor #4:
Physical Limitations, Rules of the Sport, Jet Lag, and Weight Cutting
Chinese people have been held back by history, loved their Kung Fu too much, won’t admit they needed a grappling / ground game and are too stubborn to learn it, and Chinese society, parents, and family don’t care and aren’t supportive of them choosing the path to be a professional athlete. Those are a lot of negative elements going on already, but in case you still weren’t convinced, here are the final set of reasons.
12. Physical Limitations
Most southern and Han Chinese are at a physical disadvantage. This is just fact, they aren’t a huge people. Most weigh around the 100lb. to 150lb. range, being 5’3 to 5’8 in height on average, with average genes and athleticism. Northern Chinese fare better, are more muscular and taller, and have better physical attributes. But relatively speaking, they are also poorer, and probably don’t even know what MMA is yet. The Mongolians to the far north actually have the highest chances of doing well in MMA, as they grow up in a warrior culture that forces them to wrestle and farm everyday since they were boys (we will target this topic more in-depth in a future article), making them strong, durable, and grappling-centric from the very start.
The Japanese are around the same size as the Chinese, but Koreans are significantly larger and stronger because of their Mongolian roots and their protein heavy diet. The Japanese eat a lot of raw fish, and a balanced amount of carbs and proteins. The Koreans are protein and vegetable heavy, eating more like Europeans. Now what do the Chinese eat? Pretty much nothing but useless carbs. Rice, buns, bread, noodles, mixed with greasy meats and veggies, and a lot of oily appetizers and snacks. They are neither protein heavy or vegetable heavy, and this makes them not very physically gifted.
That is also why, if you make a general comparison, Asians that grow up overseas in western countries, are reasonably taller and larger than their brethren back home. They eat what western people eat, and that is a lot more protein, calcium, and vitamins. They also are less cramped, live in sparser populated areas, in a larger room or house, and have physical space to grow. This may sound silly to some, but to give you an example; Hong Kong, a city that resembles a tiny dot on the world map, is inhabited by 8 million people. I don’t think there’s even 8 million people in some much larger towns, counties, or even provinces in other countries.
Wow, you’re really cute. But that won’t hurt a fly.
13. Rules of the Sport
It took us this far… and if you’re still reading this, you would probably know this one already. It’s a topic that’s been done to death, but the UFC, and the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts pretty much favours wrestlers. Let’s take a more in-depth look at the unified MMA rules and for argument’s sake, list every factor that may make strikers / Asian martial arts styles less effective in MMA:
– Athletic commissions and referees score and favour takedowns much more heavily than strikes or submissions. A wrestler can take someone down, hold them there, not inflict any damage and still stall out a “win”, because it is scored as “dominant”. By this logic, a BJJ practitioner should get points for regaining guard, advancing positions, and submission attempts, even if they don’t damage the opponent or finish the fight. By this logic then, Kung Fu guys should get points for how many times they choose NOT to poke someone’s eyes out from top or bottom guard, or hit them in the throat, thereby brutally killing a man. Of course we know this is not the case and we’re being a little silly, but it makes you think just “why?” takedowns / stalling without damage are scored?
– During the takedown, you’re not allowed to kick or knee the opponent if they are already touching the ground with more than two of their limbs. What? Isn’t this martial arts fighting? That’s pretty bogus. Instead of Wing Chun front kicking the guy in the face for crawling towards you ala douchebag Jon Jones style, you’re forced to “wrestle” with your opponent and develop takedown defense, instead of upkicking them in the face from open guard or elbowing the back of their skull during their shot. Furthermore, if you’re in the clinch and wish to knee the guy in the face, if he drops one of his hands to the ground, you’re not allowed to knee him in the head, only the body.
– Almost all MMA fights nowadays take place in a cage. A cage helps wrestlers push an opponent into the wall and grab their legs out from under them. You’re not allowed to hit the back of the head, which means again, when you’re being pinned against the cage, you can’t smash their head / neck in.
– You can’t punish a failed takedown when you sprawl because you cannot drop knees to the head.
– Elbows are allowed on the ground, and theoretically a wrestler has more chances to be on top of his opponent which means he can really utilize these elbow strikes, but on the other hand the fighter on the bottom is not “allowed” to upkick the opponent’s face when they are down… and just which technique is more dangerous? The elbows coming down with the added force of gravity that can cut open a man’s face, of course.
Back in PRIDE, a Japanese run organization, things were very different. Referees scored submissions and ground fighting more than takedowns that led to nothing, spelling the doom for most wrestlers with a lay and pray strategy (yellow cards were also issued for lay and prayers and inaction). You could also drop knees on a downed opponent or soccer kick them, meaning you would get punished for a failed takedown. Fights took place in a ring, where the ropes negated wrestlers pressuring an opponent against them, but had four corners that allowed strikers to back their opponent up to eat punches and kicks all night.
The sport has changed now, and if you wanted to make it to the big stage, you needed to learn how to fight inside a cage and know how to wrestle (to some degree). This doesn’t help with Chinese fighters who have the most difficulty adapting to grappling out of all other Asians.
14. Jet Lag
In interviews conducted with former PRIDE fighters and MMA veterans, with proof from scientific articles, it is a widely accepted conclusion that when you fly west (therefore heading East to places in East Asia), there is little to no jet lag, whereas when you fly east (heading back to the Western hemisphere), huge jet lag occurs. It is a bit of a scientific phenomenon, something I will not attempt to go into detail here. More often than not Asian fighters have to fly 12-14 hours to come fight in the United States, and one can see how this can greatly hamper their performance.
15. Weight Cutting
For one reason or another, Asians don’t cut weight. We’re not sure if it’s because they don’t know how to do it, or if they’re too “macho” and believe that you should fight at your “walking around” weight. In any case, the reality is that professional fighting has now become about your skill level and how much weight you can cut as well. You might’ve been able to get away with it 10 years ago, but now you have monsters that make 155lbs. and weigh 200lbs. on fight night. Just ask Caol Uno when he got clobbered by Gleison Tibau.
Conclusion: The Future of Chinese MMA?
As far as we know, there are a few MMA gyms popping up in major cities in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan now. In terms of the talent they have produced so far, all of them have pretty much failed, except maybe China Top Team. In Hong Kong, the MMA debut of 3 stand-up based fighters all ended in losses. They continued to lose and subsequently were released from Legend Fighting Championships. As for China Top Team (situated in Beijing), many of the members are Sanshou practitioners transitioning to MMA and have been in the fight game for a while; many of them being too old already to make much of an impact in the UFC.
The lone, shining star in Chinese MMA however is none other than BJJ purple belt, and ADCC qualifier Ji Xian “The Executioner”. He is currently 10-2 in MMA, and a number of his wins are submissions in the first round. Outside of Ji Xian however, the playing field is pretty sparse and it’s anybody’s guess as to who may or may not be legit.
We need more of this.
The easy way to put it, is to wait 5-10 years for the Chinese to produce some legitimate MMA talent. The harder, more realistic question is this: If you are Chinese and you are reading this, are you part of the statistic that is too afraid, too lazy, or too unmotivated to train MMA? Or are you man enough to step up to the challenge? Better late than never, my brethren!
Too Long, Didn’t Read: Chinese people need to break away from their beloved tradition that has prevented them from fully embracing MMA. They must open their minds, adapt foreign training methods into their curriculum and train in modern martial arts (wrestling, grappling) in order to succeed in MMA. Then, finally, they may begin to use what is unique to Chinese Kung Fu, and adapt them to MMA to truly create a modern Chinese style suitable for MMA (such as Sanda / Sanshou, Shuai Jiao [Chinese Wrestling]) that will grant them a unique competitive edge.
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Dynasty MMA 
good stuff
Sorry Mongolian “martial art” did not come from China. It developed on its own in Mongolia. Unlike Chinese martial arts it was designed for the battlefield. Mongolians in total are about 10 million in Mongolia, China, Russia and the Kalmyk Republic and yet they win all the fights. The Chinese are 1.2 billion and win none. Also, the top Sumo wrestlers in Japan are Mongolians. When fighting hand to hand, the Mongolian wrestler always beats the other martial arts. There are now some Mongolians competing in mixed martial arts and they are amazing. Forget the Chinese and keep their arts in the movies.
Harry MacNicholas, mongolian martial art is earlier generation kungfu that chinese used to train during nomadic era. Mongolian were once chinese of old fallen empire and also those who were forced to take the long walk after being expelled out of 1 of the dynasty country. Fyi, i trained hunter clan fist originated from northern chinese that went its own path when china was once split to northern and southern china. What formed china today are lands seized by manchurians qing empire. That was how the west started labelling us as chinese where they themselves would call themselves han people, qing manchu people, etc. You want to be exact, the vietnamese, koreans, taiwanese, japanese were all once chinese. We got different labels because of political divide and empires., understand?
Chinese kungfu being called useless today because the commies law banned the actual kungfu fighting syllabus and the instructors latter got greedy that they wanted fast money dumping more syllabus such as strength training, acrobatic and now they are planning to remove sanshou to cover their shame of hiring imported muay thai and mma fighters to represent their centres.
I am the last few remaining ace kungfu fighters left. Now that they dumped sanshou events, it’ll be harder for me to reintroduce the original kungfu to all kungfu groups worldwide. 1 more year i ‘ll be over age limit to fight. Sanshou is not kungfu.
Is it difficult to decide where to start responding to this poor excuse of an explanation as to why Chinese fighters do not fight in MMA. There is so much crap here it is like walking into a room where 500 cats have been living unable to get out for a month. Where do you start cleaning up? Here are a few things first off. Did you know how many Karate masters and Tae Kwon Do masters went to the Shaolin Temple to challenge the monks there after it reopened in 1989 and went home beat up badly? Dozens. Secondly, the Communist party has done a great job re organizing and building up China, it has the strongest economy in Asia by miles and has the most intimidating armed forces as well. Lets see Japan try to invade China today! Thirdly, Shi Yan Ming hits a crash dummy with the same force as a car going 40 MPH. The FBI wanted him to list his fists as deadly weapons when he defected here in 1992. Fourth, how does a MMA fighter fight someone who can jump over their head from a standing position and kick them in the back of the head like Wudang Master Chen Shixing? Maybe Chinese fighters just dont see the point in fighting in an exploitative American fight show like UFC and MMA and risk getting hurt? After all why fight if you don’t have to (Taoism)? Self defense is another matter. Lastly, did you know that most ancient fights between warriors in China lasted less than 30 seconds and included deadly weapons mostly swords?
You’re basically saying the same garbage I’ve pointed out that all Kung Fu masters say. Hey we can kill! We won’t fight! Too dangerous! Pshh. GTFO. You missed the point of the entire article then.
Nice article with lots of thought put in it, and I did read the entire thing.
However, you sort of defeat your own point in this article.
Any martial artist obviously should learn multiple styles of fighting to be as versatile as possible. But why should MMA (UFC or what have you) be set as the verifiable metric for the development of a fighting style? Just because you acknowledged that Kung Fu people see it as a sport, doesn’t mean that isn’t true.
Why would adapting kung fu for the octagon be the logical evolution? Think on a larger scale.
Where i live we have two word for martial arts which mainly seperates the kung-fu from mma. One harshly translates to english as: “duel art” the other translates as “fighting sport”. The words are talking. Wushu is more like an art form. Sanda is for fights. What is so hard to accept in this? U just say they dont see the point to fight but they still do kung-fu. And thats totally ok! U just dont say i do “this style” for fight. You can just say i do this for health and thats all. Dont be butthurt. Also we talk about present not past. And the present fighters are not using swords so your example is fairly bad. Because if u watch present time with real life example it would be like two guns pointed at each other and not two swords. But yeah would be less than 30 seconds too. That one is correct.
The black and white video of the two older gentleman fighting in ring in Hong Kong doesn’t give the Chinese any justice. That isn’t how they competitively fight. And the master kungfu fighters eventually fight on the ground. A lot of the matches are not televised. And you get penalized for straying away from your style. Any ways, the article is fairly accurate on other stuff. You forgot to add that China finally won 2 Gold for Judo in the Rio Olympics. They have the talent but MMA won’t catch on until the Chinese people think it’s prestigious or makes money. MMA and ground fighting are like wrestling and is frowned on by traditional martial artists.
China finally won 2 Gold for Judo in the Rio Olympics
Don’t you mean 2 bronze? Cheng Xunzhao and Yu Song booth won bronze.
Really well-written. I agree with everything except the bit about Chinese diet.
“Rice, buns, bread, noodles, mixed with greasy meats and veggies, and a lot of oily appetizers and snacks. They are neither protein heavy or vegetable heavy, and this makes them not very physically gifted.”
You just described the crap you can get at any typical Chinese restaurant in the United States, one that caters to mostly non-Chinese people. Why on earth do you think that’s what actual Chinese people in China eat?
Cantonese cuisine / dim sum basically has a lot of grease and fats. Shanghainese cuisine isn’t much better, favouring pork fat soup meats in their buns and dumplings. Perhaps you could enlighten us what you know of Chinese cuisine in other parts of China?
What about Beijing and Sichuan cuisines?
Tbh it’s a fair point, though often not by choice. The price of meats over there is shockingly high which leads to cheap cuts of meat (or complete replacement) in most normal cooking. This over time has in turn lead to the cuisines/styles of cooking adapting to the economic climate and replacing most high quality proteins with vegetable replacements such as soy products or offcuts. I found this particularly prevalent in universities and canteens when travelling over there. It’ll be a good while after the diet changes before the natural fighters start appearing.
I enjoyed the article and I agree with most points. The food factor is an interesting angle but I don’t think it is valid only because every culture has their bad food, the American has the worst diet of all if you ask me. Unhealthy diet isn’t the reason why the Chinese haven’t developed MMA. But good article, and thanks for looking more deeply into the issue. It is a question many of my friends have raised and I never had a good answer for them.
I’ve lived in China for 4 years and I am afraid to say that the statement about their diet is 100% accurate for the 2 provinces (Fujian and Yunnan) that I have lived in it. Meat rich dishes like Sweet and Sour Chicken / Pork were invited in Hong Kong and Beijing, specifically to cater to British Sailors who were unhappy with the low amounts of meat they were given.
I have just opened up a BJJ School in a small town called Dali in Yunnan province and several one of the younger fighters in town begged me to make them MMA fighters – many others claimed they already knew ground fighting – which was atrocious!
I absolutely love your blog and find nearly all of your post’s to be what precisely I’m looking for. Does one offer guest writers to write content to suit your needs? I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on most of the subjects you write in relation to here. Again, awesome site!
I couldn’t resist commenting. Well written!
Reblogged this on thomasernste and commented:
A fascinating walk through the history of martial arts and what it means today
Great article. Interesting part about physical attributes. I have noticed that southern chinese who grew up in the west are significantly taller than those in China. I have found though, that Northern Chinese are generally even taller and stronger than Koreans. But as you said, they’re too poor and probably don’t even know what mma is at the moment, but I think that will change very quickly.
Apart from Ji Xian, I think Guan Wang and Tuerxun Jumabieke are big prospects too. Both are undefeated and apparently the UFC are eyeing Tuerxun very closely.
Thanks for reading. I think in about 5 years time, with Asian MMA promotions such as Legend FC, One FC, and RUFF making in roads to an untapped market such as China and acting as feeder organizations, we will begin to see a lot more prospects.
Ficticious writing combined with factual aspects . The way to promote MMA propaganda . Real combat is on the field , the YouTube references is of mc dojo Chinese kung fu fighters getting defeated. I have personally witnesed real deadly fights and it doesn’t matter how well you train or what you train in . If you don’t fight as if your going to die , then you will lose , 7 out of 10 times
Fictitious? Perhaps you could shed some light on what is false about this article? We would like to hear your expert analysis. Also, what you just said is also an obvious foregone conclusion. Of course you’re not going to win if you don’t fight seriously. But then you’re implying that these Kung fu guys all don’t take their fights seriously then? Seriously? It’s because they’re not great at MMA, yet.
Also, your Kung Fu won’t help you in a “fight to the death” where the other guy can strike better, wrestle you down to the ground, pound you out, or rip off all your limbs with submissions. You can try to kick him in the groin and poke him in the eyes, but so can he, AND he knows everything that you don’t. Train MMA, my friend.
No you can’t say mma fighters strike better. Punches and kicks are too basic and similar across martial arts for anyone to say that. It all boils down to the individual. You don’t have to actually kill to practice deadly techniques. As for wrestling, ground game, submissions etc those are already present in various kung fu styles…there is an unfair assumption that kung fu has none of these or doesn’t focus on these elements. As for groin kicks and eye pokes…yes anybody can do it but the kung fu guy will do it better since he practices it and he does it in the right stance. In a real fight to the death…..the moves you can get away with in mma are no longer applicable….if the guy is try to kick your nuts all the time…all that experience from mma is minimized. SO the kung fu guy is actually in his comfort zone. Another two points I would like to make…mma is probably something you don’t want to learn for self-defense if you are frail or old…also it is probably not very good for your joints in the long run.
Some of what you say has already been addressed. Yes we know Chinese Kung Fu has all those elements. What I would like to see is a guy using these techniques in modern MMA, to show the world Chinese style specific techniques applicable for MMA. Certain Kung Fu styles are better for self defense than MMA because it is more direct, but more often than not that is only useful against someone who *doesn’t know anything*. Once they know something, the Kung Fu gets neutralized. Again all talked about in the article. Yes of course it all depends on the individual but don’t act as if historically there has been a successful Kung Fu fighter because outside of Cung Le there hasn’t been one. They’ve all just been actors. Again, talked about already. Lastly, if all a Kung Fu guy trains is groin strikes, that’s pitiful because once that doesn’t work for him. ie. against someone whose actually an experienced striker, he’s screwed because he doesn’t know anything else.
Very interesting and great read. Even though I’m not into MMA (clicked on this from a friend’s fb who is), a lot of points especially about the cultural aspect can be used to raise our Chinese kids to be happier and more well rounded people.
The first half of this article is very interesting. You have some good points, the restriction of martial arts under the communist government of course led to a lack of development and encouraged an overly romantic notion of a golden era in Chinese martial arts. This really stunted the growth of Chinese martial arts and killed innovation and massively affects it today.
The second half of the article is reliant on simplifications and generalisations that haven’t been well researched at all. The idea that the Chinese as a culture isn’t interested in competitive sport is simply false. If you go back to the the republic era of China, after the fall of the Ching dynasty, before the second world war, Chinese martial arts clubs were very quick to take up Western ideas and adapted in numerous ways to make their arts more effective. Look up the Guoshu institure and the Jing Wu Athletic association, these were extremely popular and successful. They were also behind full contact fighting with minimal rule restrictions, sometimes resulting in death. If they were to have continued, they could easily have had a massive influence on MMA.
The idea that Chinese people are less inclined to rough ungentlemanly sports is also missing context. Those ethnic Chinese that you meet in America are typically aspiring to a better life. This is more likely through study and work than fighting. This is similar to middle class immigrant communities the world over and is not exclusive to Chinese.
Martial arts are hugely popular in China, in a way it is difficult to imagine. With time and investment it will take off big time!
Nice article, well thought through, good to think about.
One more thing to think about, is that many of the martial arts from China such as Chen style tai chi were developed by farmers prone to attack by bandits and militia. They were much more focussed on staying alive in a battlefield situation. These kind of ideas are really not translatable to MMA. Unless, you were to have 3 vs 3 or 5 v 5 fights. That would be massively interesting!! and I would love to see it… I’m a massive fan of ground grappling, but in that situation it really wouldn’t be a good idea… Wouldn’t happen though.
Of course we know that Kung fu styles came from the poor or weak trying to protect themselves, came from self defense tactics, etc. But they haven’t evolved to adapt to other fighting styles and this is where it becomes weak. Something like Sanda is great, but there must be more of this. There must be someone in china who trains in traditional backgrounds but smart enough to adapt the style to MMA. A brand new style we haven’t even seen yet. That’s what I want to see.
Thanks for your points. I would love to have you write a follow up to this article and I shall share it on this blog and the MMA community with full credit to you, if you wish to do so, since you may have more insight than I.
However one thing you overlooked, what about the rich and wealthy immigrant Chinese? They don’t have to study or work necessarily yet you don’t find them doing the “poor man’s” thing of training hardcore Kung fu or MMA. I still believe a large part of it is Chinese people’s disinterest in MMA and actual combat sports.
Thank you very much. Unfortunately, I don’t have so much time right now to write a full article. However, I will consider doing so over the summer as I’ll have more time to clarify some thoughts and look through some sources.
In regards to the question about wealthy immigrant Chinese, as a generalisation, wealthy immigrant communities in any country have an interest in maintaining their wealth. The primary way this is likely to happen is to continue to follow the business and education line, rather than getting involved in trying to reach the top in the sporting world. This again is true of any immigrant community and is not unique to Chinese in the USA.
With the history of martial arts in China, it would be really nice to see some more direct influence in MMA. In terms of new techniques, changes in style are more likely to come from within the current MMA community around the world rather than from outside it. Purely because MMA is a game, and those within the game are so good at it, it would be very difficult to add to it from the outside. That said, Chinese martial arts have been around for a long time. In terms of fighting mentality, principle, connection, alignment, balance and these type of qualities, Chinese martial arts have much to offer MMA fighters. In terms of specific technique, MMA is too far ahead now. Chinese fighters would have to learn the MMA game, make it their own and adapt it from there. It is however, far too easy for western MMA fans to write off traditional Chinese arts. For the patient student, there is still a treasure trove of knowledge, wisdom and fighting strategy to be found.
Peace
Western people have no vested interest in helping asian neighbours flourish, after they have copied or stolen skills in various areas of knowledge, maybe with dirt cheap price, they use it against Asians. You watch world championships of fighting, they use their stronger bodies to beat down the Asians. They don’t care about who taught who or where things came from. They act like bullies and have no interests to be real friends with us, and enjoy seeing the downfall of asian neighbors. When Asians move overseas, the western people only wants to milk Asians for money. They don’t really thank you for teaching them whatever arts etc, they play the game I win you loose
“Use their stronger bodies”… Lol China has won plenty of gold medals at the Olympics with superior athletes. It’s only if China wants to focus on fighting or combat sports, not that we are incapable.
USA complains China for being guilty for this or that, such as not respecting intellectual property. However, the truth is the Western world also dont respect intellectual property but nobody is talking about it because the media is corrupt or there are confidential clause in contracts. When I worked in Telec0m N5w Zea1and, new unqualified Caucasian coworker comes in and without provoking anything, took credit of the programming work I did, and kept on manufacturing many records to defame me, intercepted my communication to outside company, while I treated her as coworker by embracing her employment, support her promotion, taught her valuable skills, give way, not fight, let her make more money than me, etc. This way of peaceful Chinese thinking does not work. They just humuliate and crush you without caring about the consequences for your life. The management release propaganda, claiming the place being a great place to work, when most people was leaving because of over pressure and damaging mental health. I scored A+ grade at university and worked my butt off manufacturing billions of dollars for them, and was forced to be terminated while they promoted others, just repeating the same fate like cheap Chinese labourers building infrastructure for foreign land then dumped leaving the glamourous and riches to the white society. This lesson I learnt that you dont have to be so serious about making others successful if they treat you like shit. Why you care about manufacturing millions of dollars so the CEO can have the huge pay cheque, when he doesnt even return your email? It is just a political issue. I suspect shaolin, or other martial arts teacher, went overseas to try forming relations, making a living, and betrayed China by training foreigners in exchange for having a position in the Western world. The Western guys learnt the art, and combined several other training skills, made some improvements, applied on their larger physical bodies, created MMA to try to prove a point of being strongest. Watch world championships of Kyokushin Karate. The foreigners learnt the Japanese art, and turn around beating the shorter Japanese black belt guy up with fierce kicks and strikes. A large portion of white or black people just made up their mind not to be friend with Asian people. All your attempts to build relationship will be in vain, and you only have limited amount of money to buy their attention. When they go for the olympic gold, theres no giving way to let someone else win. Watch Van damme or other fight movies, the Asian fighter is always the bad guy end up being killed or loosing. Successful soccer player like David Beckham being placed at celebrity positioning. The Asian girls as a result are drawn to having sex and getting married with white guys, leave the Asian peers behind, this affecting the social structure and the destiny of the Asian race in procreation. You Asian people dare to go live overseas? You will be criticised for not assimilating and speaking English and suppressed. When foreigners goto China or Hongkong what happens? Local people dont have the guts to make them assimilate or talk our language. So what has Hongkong become? A mixed up place where cluttered people are strangers to each other with no united relationship. I feel pity for the local policemen because when bad things happen, it increase the amount of difficulty to figure out whats happening, creating a security threat. Do the taller bigger foreigners give way or act gentle in getting along with locals? No, they bully their way through and are rude to locals. In the Chinese hosted Wu lin feng or other fighting games, there is still a degree of sanity, politeness and good sportsmanship, both fighters walk out alive and apparently both are given trophy for participation which looks like a sport. In the Western MMA, the glory goes to the stronger ruthless fighter and the loser gets severe damage and forgotten/ignored. There is no sign of friendship or sportsmanship. It is just not in the heads or blood of those people. Now I look at that Tai Shan Dong 7″ Chinese boxer winning by using his height/size advantage, I fear that he attracts jealousy, someone would use underhanded methods to defeat or even kill him instead of playing fair. Dont trust the foreign police or legal system. There will be no just outcome while Blacks are getting killed by white policeman on many cases. I dont know if the audience crowd has been scanned checked by security, look at what terrorists successfully did. I wonder if someone some day would shoot this guy with a gun and claim being an incident that cannot be investigated, repeating the same fate of the Bruce Lee family.
might want to revise your opinion about the diet.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/use-your-noodle-the-real-chinese-diet-is-so-healthy-it-could-solve-the-wests-obesity-crisis-873651.html
also note the last point about the health benefits of qigong type exercise…
Simple reason. Chinese are paper tigers….if you watch any chinese fighting video the other guy always stop for the chinese masters to show off….real life people don’t stop, same with UFC they don’t stop and let you show off bullshit animal techniques…they beat the shit out of you chinese, that’s why you chinese are scare to death and make lame excuses for the sick men of asia.
True, but I can beat the shit out of you 😉
Great article! Well-written and very informative. I think all the factors are right on the money, especially the Chinese cultural emphasis on money, family and societal attitudes towards combat sports and the historical turmoil that China endured these past two centuries. The point about overseas Chinese being bigger than mainland Chinese is true. I am 6’0″ and am taller than the majority of Chinese students and co-workers at the university I work at. Hopefully with the passage of time, we’ll see more Chinese fighters in the UFC! I want to see more Sanshou based fighters try their hand at MMA and take on the Muay Thai/Boxing based fighters. Cung Le was great, but he’s a little old and past his prime now. That Ji Xian kid looks interesting…
The article raises some interesting points and things to think about however it is pretty obvious not a lot of this is information has not been researched or deeply enough.
A lot of your claims seem to be your own speculation drawn from what you do know so while there is some truth, there are quite a number of things that are completely false even if it seems to make sense (to those who don’t know any better). For example, one of your more obvious false claims is that you need “have physical space to grow” and while it makes sense, it just isn’t true unless you actually lived in a box. While I am not saying you have to get a phd, try not to make assumptions such as “Chinese people didn’t have this mentality to go to war and take over other people’s lands because they never needed it.” because I’m pretty sure the size of China has varied in history.
Though I like the amount of effort you put into this and I can see your passion for martial arts, you are actually doing a disservice to those who don’t know any better and take everything you say at face value. Please don’t take this as me being condescending to you as it is not my intent. Hopefully this doesn’t discourage you from writing more articles, just try to google a couple of things even if you think it makes sense. I look forward to reading more of your stuff in the future. 🙂
Thanks for reading. Just 2 quick thoughts on what you said:
– A good number of people (1/4) in Hong Kong live in compressed cages or government housing complexes no larger than a few hundred square feet. A whole family sleeping on one bed in some cases. That’s millions and millions of people. Only a few percentage of the rich live in places considered more western living standards.
– China has always fought within itself encompassing many dynasties and also against mongol, manchurian, khitan invasions. Our sole foreign affairs explorer in Zheng He settled in parts of North America and Africa but never committed mass genocide like Colombus and returned to China after peaceful trade. China already had everything we needed. It’s within our culture to be benevolent (Confucianism). If you deny that, then you don’t know much about Chinese culture.
Again, an area of a few hundred square feet is not enough to keep people short. I doubt if a person living in a closet would even be affected by the cramped space. Whereas factors such as nutrition (which you accurately pointed out) and genetics are the real influences.
I agree that China has never genocide (at least one that I am aware of). Sorry if I misunderstand your point. But my problem is I think you are saying that our culture (yep I’m Chinese too) promotes benevolence (due to Confucianism) which is the reason that MMA has not flourished in China. Well, that could be a reason if was before the CCP but during Mao’s reign, he abolished these ideas (leading to the greed as well as atheism nowadays in China) so I don’t think you can really say this is a valid factor in modern China. In your article, you have also stated that the Koreans are producing waves of skilled fighters but Confucianism has been embraced there moreso than in China (at least in the present time). So your argument that it is the Confucianism (or a part of it) is a reason doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me.
“If you deny that, then you don’t know much about Chinese culture.” While I disagree with this remark, I’m not going to go any further into that as our ideas are probably too different.
A question that did pop into my mind as I was typing this response is what are you referring to by “MMA”? Do you mean the actual term “mixed martial arts” where one uses two different martial arts or what is being marketed as a pseudo-style which is a mixture of muay thai and BJJ?
If you do mean the former one, then there is a lot more I feel is inaccurate about the article.
If you would like to continue this discussion could you give me your email as I would rather not keep trying to find my posts on this website.
Wow. One of the most racist articles I’ve read in a while. Not even going to make this long since you probably won’t care for anything a traditional martial artist would say if you’ve got a bias against it.
Racist? But I’m Chinese.
But you clearly live in America, and you couldn’t beat the shit out of any one keep dreaming you half assed Ameriphile.
Ok sure lol
great read. The part about family pressure sounds an awful like indian culture. Same story with the poorer but taller and stronger northeners( but at least in SFl Brat Kandare won a belt whom is the sterotypically weaker south indian)
Id like to see this “data” on how shanshou trumps Muay Thai. SInce to me Thai boxing looks more brutal, though I admit sanda throws are hella cool.
Anthony Pettis, Benson Henderson, and Anderson Silva dont even use any taekwondoe moves what so ever like GSP never uses karate except for the spinnin back kick.
What do you think of the Turkic people indiginous to Xinjiang province in the north aka the ethnic hui or uyghers?
They are of central asian origin like the mongols, I think they could do well as well.
Pettis, Henderson, and Silva all use Taekwondo kicks. Pettis especially, all of his flashy kicks are TKD based. Anderson throws the back kick TKD style. Henderson isn’t a great TKD striker but still uses the kicks. GSP has attributed his double leg takedown to his Kyokushin karate base which taught him how to move in and out quickly resulting in a quick shoot. China just needs to take MMA more seriously as a national pursuit, then great athletes will follow. It’s not like they can’t produce Olympic gold medalists.
Dan Kai Wai or By Why…whatever the hell your name is….you are a sterotyping racist fool!! If you had sterotypyes or made as many dumb genraliztons with other races as you did here in your article….you would have been burned down and been labeled Racist. Also get your facts straight you ignorant bufoon….Tae Kwon Do didn’t not originate from Japan during their occupation of Korea! Tae Kwon Do dates back over 1200yrs! It’s amazing , how much of a rambling fool yout are. I have one suggestion you moron, before you start acting like you know what your talking about…..try some research and get off your “lazy” butt and get the facts straight.
Actually if you want to be really specific Taekwondo came from Chinese Shaolin Kung Fu, because all East Asian martial arts can be traced back to Shaolin.
They are a Turkish people not related to the Mongolians. They were pushed out of what is today Mongolia by Mongolians who came in from Siberia. Not only are male Mongolians great wrestlers, MMA fighters and top Sumo wrestlers but so are the women. One of the top Women’s wrestlers in the world is a 19 year old woman from Mongolia. Forget the Chinese and concentrate on the best.
You make some very good points, but you also make some really broad generalizations (which is why it can sound a bit racist). Also…if you can read Chinese…you’d know that 武術 does not mean to avoid fighting…it literally translates to martial arts. You’re mistaking 武, which means martial/military, for 無.
The biggest problems with this post are the cultural arguments. If China didn’t have a competitive sports culture they would suck at the Olympics, and you wouldn’t have examples like Yao Ming, Liu Xiang, Li Na, Jeremy Lin, or the Chinese gymnastics team, amongst many many other examples. The entire thing about Chinese people fighting with brain and not brawn is patently false, not just on Chinese combat history, but non Chinese combat history. There are some very prominent manuals on tactics from Western Europe, yet we don’t assert that Western Europe emphasizes brawn and not brain. The combat histories of every culture has ample emphasis on both the physical and mental aspects of fighting. Chinese culture also doesn’t look down on fighting any more than any other cultures do. It’s typical for upper income families to dissuade against physical combat to resolve differences, but it’s a very common norm that exists in the lower class of every culture. My parents grew up being taught that the only way to deal with a bully was to stand up with yourself. If that meant fighting, all the better. My dad grew up in a village where fighting was a common sport.
I’m sure you didn’t intend to reinforce any stereotypes, but you should probably avoid drawing any inferences from a narrow anecdotal experience of upper middle income Chinese Diaspora life, and test your assertions with research before making them conclusions.
One more thing. China has had A LOT of wars throughout its history. When China wasn’t waging war with itself to decide the death and birth of empires, it was constantly either fending off nomadic tribes from the North or else using military power to subdue and control vassal states around its borders. Why do you think those military manuals were even written?
China has fought a lot within itself, but never strived to take over other lands. I often wonder was it because we already had too much war to deal with, and couldn’t find time to conquer others? Or did we just suck? Or were we just too nice?
There is literally no difference between competing factions in China fighting to consolidate control and unify the empire and Japan’s feudal lords fighting for control to consolidate and unify the empire.
I think there is a bit of difference. Great Britain and Japan were great at conquering other lands and installing puppet governments and propaganda, same with the Spanish with their spread of their religious propaganda and subsequent acts of genocide. I’m sure there’s cultural differences that allowed them to achieve such feats, as Zheng He had peaceful trade with the overseas people and returned to China.
Like we touched on in the article, aside from producing Olympic champions, China doesn’t care to produce fighters or fighters for MMA. Until they decide to care, nothing will change. Also Jeremy Lin is Taiwanese.
Not to repeat what you said, but if you think in general that the rich do not have to fight and the poor do and is not exclusive to Chinese people (which I agree with), then explain why Americans / western folks do not shy away from fighting and sports as Americans have high school and college wrestling programs and the English / Irish love to box? It is naive to say to yourself oh my Asian parents would totally support me in sports and fighting… when you and I both know that has very little place in Chinese culture and is very much looked down upon more than any other culture. All Chinese people want is martial arts, but not fighting. They would disown their kids for pursuing fighting, and has happened before on the news.
I got this knowledge from the film Huo Yuan Jia aka Fearless by Jet Li which Michelle Yeo talked about the word. If it is in fact wrong then you may blame them for adding that part into the uncut version of the film. And no, I am not confusing the two words because they are quite different from each other.
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What a Retard. MMA is shit dude for the real world. IS only good for fair 1 vs 1 competitions or you can even take more people if they have zero fighting abilities. But in the Real World.. Any UFC MMA champion will be destroyed in seconds in a street fight as soon there are no rules and everything is valid. MMA fighting in the ground is USELESS , if you have to fight 2 or more Kung Fu fighters . All that you need to disable someone is a really good kick in the face to an MMA fighters and game over. On top that Martial Artist focus too a lot in using weapons. Lets take your kickboxing heroes vs martial artist using knives and swords? In short your an IDIOT.
MMA is only about Sport . And those UFC champions that you talk., without martials arts will be no one. You just can’t say “train MMA” and nothing else. The problem is not Kung FU or martial arts.. But that 1)MMA arenas are confined to small place ,when freedom of movement is restricted you can be easily moved to the ground. 2)The Rules.. many martial arts depends HIGHLY on control your opponent doing things Not legal under MMA rules. AIkido for example is not allowed in MMA for being too destructive.you cant use this or this or that.. in other words UFC rules benefit MMA fighting ,more than martial arts who fight without rules. What will your MMA heroes do against Guns or knives?.. if they have no real martial arts training with weapons? MMA training is only for competitive combat sports dude..like boxing .Get over it. for fair fights, For the real world when it comes to save your life ,you need to train in real Martial Arts and not limit to just one. This is the reason No single Armed forces in the world train their soldiers in MMA.. but instead on martial Arts. NAvy seals gets owned in UFC by simple MMA fighters.. but in the real world they will kill you,with a simple knife or a gun. Good luck in any of your uploaded videos ,to win a fight ,fighting in the ground if someone pulls a hiden knife or if his friend is kicking you in the face.
Your article had a good start with history ,but was ruined later by your preconceived ideas
against Kung Fu or martial arts in general.
Here look.. an MMA hero being destroyed by a Kung Fu fighter.
Even a really Good Boxer ,can beat the hell of any Good MMA fighter if the boxer is more smart ,and understand what his opponent can do. After all dude.. 1 solid Punch is ALL you need to end a fight.
Former boxing champion Ricardo Mayorga defeating an MMA fighter..
See? anyone can do that.. pull a single video and generalize and say “this is the way it is.”
if you want to win..”learn MMA” bla bla bla.. Morale of the story is. training MMA does not make you a better fighter.Using your brains does. Martial arts like Kung Fu and combat techniques like boxing are just Tools.. Anderson Silva who many calls him the best world MMA fighter latest fight..was against a champion boxer and even though the boxer lost ,Silva was put in serious trouble many times ,and was seriously wounded..
Hey friend, I think you missed the entire point of the article… maybe you should read it again. I’m not arguing that everyone needs to train MMA in order to know how to fight… I’m saying this is what Chinese people are doing wrong if they think only training Kung Fu is enough, and the reasons that lead to why we don’t see many Chinese fighters. Read it again please. Also, if you want to talk about street fighting, you should read this: https://dynastyclothingstore.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/how-to-dans-no-bs-guide-on-fighting-multiple-attackers-with-videos/
And if you want to talk about the “rules” of the sport, there was an entire area dedicated to that… which shows you didn’t really even read my entire article. I also talk about why this has nothing to do with which martial art is more effective (and traditional martial arts, because they are actually very effective when used correctly), which shows again you didn’t read my article and missed the whole point.
Next time, instead of name calling, read the whole thing first and keep an open mind. That’s the problem with Chinese people, they can’t keep an open mind to new ideas. I myself as an overseas Chinese, can see this problem from both sides of the coin.
hi vann, dont waste your time to this bullshit stupid with his useless mma hahaha, mma is nothing, no more than rubbish
i already proved you your wrong. My uploaded Kung Fu videos only purpose was to do EXACTLY what you just did.. pick videos and proof a point. And proved you that MMA is shit in real world. What else you want?
When i say Traditional martial arts ,i mean Martial Arts with Solid background in any type of combat.. Not just sports combat arts..like MMA ,that lacks of solid background for any kind of situation on real world fight. Gave you already 2 examples. Aikido and Krav Maga… but since you wants to continue being a retard.. Go and learn Sports MMA ,”to improve your fighting skills”. done with you.. im sorry for wasting my time with retards.. LOL
BTW.. are you going to allow people in this blog to see how TWO MMA UFC heroes were crushed in Brazil in a street fight by regular guys? LOL
http://www.mmamania.com/2013/7/8/4504610/video-ufc-bellator-veteran-maiquel-falcao-knocked-out-by-2×4-in-wild
Stop misleading people with your MMA sponsoring propaganda. thanks Bye!
You saved me from having to respond. I agree with your reply. MMA has a swollen head and, like this poster, is arrogant. Those guys fall hard. It seems that some think aggression is what makes them a man. This is why he follows a non-Chinese mindset. I remember taking MMA to broaden myself and the teacher, during the firs hour, disappeared into bathroom only to come back to teach with cocaine powder on his nose. No ethics, lots of mouth and cannot fight in real time situations. Mind is more powerful. The article started with anger and just kept on with this anger. Wushu > MMA. A blog won’t change that.
There are plenty of respectful and smart martial artists that also do BJJ and MMA. Your logic is highly flawed. See Georges St. Pierre, Lyoto Machida, etc. all come from a traditional martial arts background.
oh btw.. this is old news ,that obviously you don’t know ,but Anderson Silva.. The best MMA UFC fighter for many experts.That is UFC greatest MMA hero disagree with you.. Of Aikido “not working.” ..
here Anderson Silva an MMA hero , being trained by an AIkido Master, Steven Seagal
defense techniques. 🙂
As always your again wrong.
You’re kidding me right? Steven Seagal is a joke. He was beside Anderson and Lyoto for publicity purposes because he’s a “movie star”. You’re really dumb to not know this. lol.
Actually many aikido teachers recognize him as good as his reputation
Nice article. I like you man. I like your open mindedness to Martial arts. And I love MMA too.
And yes I have read your whole article too. 😉
This is Ranjit Mishra from Delhi, India.
I have been training in Kung Fu for 5 years. And not any traditional Kung Fu style. I have very few knowledge of Kung Fu. I know some of my Kung Fu techniques and then Sanda and then Muay Thai for 2 years. Iam teaching Kung Fu, actually my Kung Fu style which is a mixture of Kung Fu + Sanda + Muay Thai, so that i can perfect my skills. From the past few months, I have been continously trying to evolve my Kung Fu technique against MMA techniques. And i have been successfull in eveloving some good techniques except Groin and eye pokes which everyone keeps saying.
However i really want to learn Ground fighting techniques so that i can develop more counters
againt MMA (on streets). And also in sports too.
Right now i have started learning Kalaripayattu from a very good master. And he knows wrestling (Kushti) too. So I will get the knowledege of ground fighting from their. However iam very much interested in knowing Marma Kala (Dim Mak in Kung Fu). i think this is the most superior form of knowledge one can ever get. But sadly it will take another 8 to 10 years of practice. 😦
MMA vs Kung Fu:
MMA is really a very good self defense art. I think one of the best. However it lacks something.
For kids, Kung Fu is the best art to choose. Because it will give them more flexibility, strength (may be), Longevity, meditation knowledge and the most important it will make them a Good Human being which I think a western culture cannot provide.
So I think if ground fighting is added to todays prevailing Kung Fu style, then it is perfect for everyone. Except that forms practice (I hate it).
Good article and you touched briefly on the communist repression of kungfu plus the inherent wrestling bias in the UFC. The Main issue with Kungfu is that when the Communist took over they banned Kungfu and started killing off the masters. The remaining ones fled to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and other places enriching their martial arts. 95% percent of the kungfu you see is so watered down that it doesn’t even compare to how it originally was. MMA people think that they invented all these moves and styles but most of them came from Kungfu. They used to train in their own striking style plus chi-na (breaks and locks where judo and akido got them from) plus Chinese Wrestling (which is where judo came from) so they originally had ALL of that but only in the 1900’s starting getting away from it and when it was banned people just started doing wushu which looked pretty and took most of the martial out of the art. These fraud wushu “masters” then started training people and since they didn’t fight anybody and were Chinese, people believed their lies. So of course this bootleg watered down version of Kungfu is getting it’s ass kicked because it’s not the real thing. In my opinion Kungfu doesn’t need to evolve it needs to go back to it’s roots. For the people who say it doesn’t work then Judo/Jujitsu, Akido and Karate wouldn’t work either because they are all descended from Kungfu.
Here is some info so people can learn some knowledge:
The original Chinese Martial Arts, a combat wrestling system called Jiao Li (Strength and Endurance Skills), was systematised during the Zhou Dynasty (1122-256 BC). This military combat wrestling system, the first combination of fighting techniques historically employed by the Imperial Army, consisted of throws, hand and foot strikes, seizing joints, attacking vital parts and breaking joints in context of throwing. All of these elements of fighting skills were practised in training during the winter months and used in hundreds of battles in ancient China. It is the root and the foundation of Chinese martial arts.
MMA is street fight,but with limited space.Chinesse don’t learn martial arts to fight,as you know,they learn to improve their strenght and health.I’m sorry,but if Bruce Lee was living,he would kick all your mma fighters,and send them back from where they came.Before you talk about shaolin,go watch yourself,go in China and see their strenght,and talk after.You just need to understand that the chinesse style is the best style,for health,self-defense and fight.
Bruce Lee is the father of MMA. We should follow his example and train in all styles of martial arts not just Chinese Kung Fu.
their shooting an ultimate fighter in china right now with cung le as an advisor
It’s being aired, they shot it already. We are watching it online 😉
If MMA is an Olympic Sport like Taekwondo and Judo where gold medals and national pride at stake, I believe China fighters can be world beaters! The Chinese government will probably send their army into MMA training with scientific methods, and out of millions of trainees , don’t you think they will outnumber other countries? Asian society is group mentality unlike individual mentality of western culture.
Great blog you have there with nice write ups. To add up more info, China Commies didn’t really lift the ban on Kungfu completely. They do not encourage and indirectly forbid Kungfu practitioners from learning how to fight in Kungfu. Only small numbers get to train Kungfu for fighting and actually know how to fight in authentic Kungfu. In which I am 1 of the remnants, got it from 1 master who came here for better prospect.
As for Wushu, the Chinese turned to Sanshou for fighting and numbers of them adopted MMA when they find Sanshou losing to Muay Thai. Please note the Japanese and Koreans who embraced MMA today didn’t get to win big in UFC after all. They are still somewhat inferior to Caucasian in terms of brute strength. Chinese who embraced MMA will only fare around the level of Japanese/Korean counterpart.
I’ll be fighting in the local MMA audition using authentic Kungfu, probably the first as there is none ever show up so far. Ignore those amateurs inexperienced who never fought the basic free sparring who lost in MMA competition. They don’t even aim where they hit which shows they don’t have actual fighting experience. Also, they don’t know how to counter grappling, another inexperience there. I’ll make the first Kungfu vs MMA fight this coming March if everything goes as planned. I’ve fought local MMA fighters before and I have my counter grappling which makes “Baby Monkey” no longer works. I don’t know Monkey Fist much but I’ll add in some of their moves to show they are in fact effective.
Great brother we would love to see your videos please share with us!
Sure, I’ll have the video uploaded after the fight. Kungfu supporters will help spread/circulate the video around when it’s on YouTube. I’m waiting for them to announce the exact audition date by this month as what the organizers told me.
http://malaysianinvasion.com/
Ok bro. Add us / follow us on Facebook and message us, would love to get to know you better and become friends!
Hey brother, I wanted to make some comments and also to address some of the stupid/pacifist “martial artists” who do not understand martial arts, neither traditional nor MMA nor any other..
I have a background in traditional, old-school TKD (black belt), trained ITF (North Korean style) and contact-style as well as okinawan karate, some wing chun, a year in Muay Thai (still training Muay Thai), some boxing, and Kyokushin Karate as my new main style (trained in it for about a year).
I am mainly a striker, so I can’t really get into details about grappling or groundgame because those are essentially non-existent for me, and I plan on starting to learn those starting this year/month.
In regards to all the traditional martial artists stuck in one style.
You traditional martial artists who do not understand Jeet Kun Do or development of your own personal style to fit your own UNIQUE body and fighting abilities, are complete fucking idiots.
First of all, if you believe you can truly learn to fight without actually fighting, you are a complete fucking idiot.
You cannot learn self defense or fighting without actually fighting in free-style full-contact, no-protective gear type fights.
Even that is still simulation and has its flaws. But it is better to fight and spar
FULL CONTACT, BARE KNUCKLE, NO PROTECTIVE GEAR, NO CUP, NO MOUTHGUARD,
than to not spar or fight at all. Of course for safety, mouthguard and cup are probably good to have, but the rest should be discarded and you should ONLY be wearing your clothing, cup, and mouthguard and NOTHING ELSE.
Of course no protective gear and bare knuckle is dangerous if you punch the head for both your knuckles and the person’s face. This is why Kyokushin does not allow punching to the head, which is why Kyokushin is weak in that area and must be learned alongside Boxing or Muay Thai.
Having been in a few street fights, including against KuKluxKlan skinhead types where I my life was actually at risk (and I ended up running away after messing up one guy’s knee, as is the smart thing to do), I can say that most “traditional” martial arts aka bullshido arts like no-sparring wing chun or protective-gear TKD like WTF-Olympic TKD style are bullshit.
They will make you fit and teach you some basics of fighting, but real fighting is a lot messier and not based on points.
This is why I like Kyokushin-kai karate. It is you win either by KO, TKO, or decision. No such thing as points, and even a decision win is unsatisfying.
Kyokushin itself is a combination of Okinawan karate, Muay Thai, Tae Kwon Do, some boxing, and Shotokan Karate (as well as some circular styles of karate descended from Chiense martial arts).
Choi Bae Dul aka Mas Oyama created the style after traveling around and learning many different styles and creating his own personal style.
You seem to not realize that Chinese martial arts was mangled by the communists.
While the communist message of brothers should not kill other brothers, Chinese should not kill other Chinese is true, getting rid of all martial arts DOES NOT HELP CHINESE PEOPLE IN THE LONG RUN.
Turning it into performance farce like Wushu is also BULLSHIT.
The words WU3 SHU4 武術 / 武术 DO NOT even mean that dancing BULLSHIT
Chinese martial arts in the past, especially LEI TAI fighting was KILL OR BE KILLED.
THAT WAS/IS REAL CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS.
San4 Shou3 or San4 Da3
散打
That is MUCH closer to REAL CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS.
Also, no weight training or strength conditioning in much of the watered-down “traditional Chinese martial arts”
All of you CHinese who think you know Chinese martial arts are stupid. Shaolin monks have ALWAYS done weight training or training resistance by pulling or pushing against Oxen. All Chinese used to use 20 to 45 lb weapons or pole-staffs, like Guan Yu, for total body training as well as pushing rocks, chopping down trees, lifting heavy logs, etc.
In the past, ALL WARRIORS did WEIGHT TRAINING.
Especially TRUE with HUNG GAR.
Or the way TRUE TRADITIONAL MUAY THAI FIGHTERS TRAIN by KICKING BANANA TREES AND HARDENING SHINS.
Soft style is a styles take a VERY LONG TIME TO MASTER and is not even always useful, which is why styles like tai4 ji2 quan2 are not usefel, ESPECIALLY in today’s style.
You are better off learning hard styles and combining it with linear and circular styles/motions.
most circular styles/sub-styles also help you effectively be a “soft-style” practitioner in their ability to teach you methods of deflection, attack, and dodging/movement that do not harm you, but allows you do to more damage to your opponent.
Sabaki method of Kyokushin karate is developed from this.
Northern styles like Chang Quan in the past at the very least had full contact type sparring, but all of these traditions have been lost and forgotten because of communism and other bullslhit western influences as well as Manchurian barbarians (I am part Manchurian callingmyself barbarian lol), oppressing Han Chinese and destroying lots of martial arts.
Do you not remember such as during the Han Dynasty and especially the 三国时代, when REAL military arts were required or in the past like during parts of the Ming or late Song Dynasty. It was and has ALWAYS been KILL OR BE KILLED to fight for the 国.
The reality of martial arts is kill or be killed, not Buddhist pacifism philosophy that in actuality gets you nowhere.
Kill or be Killed.
Remember that.
You kill to protect your love ones.
Just as in “Rurouni Kenshin”: “In reality, Kenjutsu is the art of killing. That is the reality. The cold-hard reality. However, I like Ms. Kaoru’s way of putting it: learning to fight to protect your loved ones.”
But the reality remains the same. You have to do unpleasant things sometimes to protect your loved ones.
Not all situations you can talk people out of. You should always seek to de-escalate or seek a peaceful solution.
However, if we are talking about barbaric/racist white people and western imperialists or American Imperialists who want your resources and will rape your women, and THEY DID MASS RAPE EAST ASIAN WOMEN (like in Japan and Okinawa right after WWII, China during the Opium wars, Korea, and Vietnam), then you cannot reason with them.
You must fight them till death.
Same with the Nanjing Massacre by the crazy Japanese-western imperialists who were going by Prussian/German/Western Imperialist culture and thought-process. However, remember that many Japanese opposed that imperialism and it was only AFTER westernization and Meiji-Revolution/Rebellion that Japan became such an imperialist/genocidal country.
Sorry, I feel the need to explain this because I am part Japanese and there is so much misinformation and portraying all Japanese as the absolute devil when much of the massacre/tragedy/dishonor at Nanjing were because of the imperialist bastards who took over after the Meiji Revolution and were INFLUENCED GREATLY BY AMERICAN GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS AND BRITISH AND PRUSSIAN IMPERIALIST DOCTRINES AND THOUGHT PROCESS- BASICALLY THEY COPIED WHITE PEOPLE AND HAD PEOPLE LEARN FROM WHTIES/AMERICANS/EUROPEANS.
Before WWII and before Meiji REvolution, Japan was very peaceful and often sent scholars to learn from China. They only invaded China and the rest of East Asia a grand total of TWO TIMES before the Meiji Revolution in very limited warfare.
Even remember that during the 三国era and 秦始皇 era of China was when most of modern day Japanese migrated from China to Japan.
These western imperialist whites see ALL OF US, we East Asians as subhumans and deserving of death.
You cannot reason with people like that nor will any Buddhist or Zen philosophy work.
Especially those MMA thugs and barbarians. You kill them. That is the only language they understand. Death by brutal beating.
You do not show respect to adversaries who do not deserve respect, such as all of these MMA thugs and pieces of shit (except respectable people like Lyoto Machida or GSP)
For China to be strong again, Chinese must stand up and REGAIN the old Han PRIDE and beat the SHIT out of white arrogant pieces of shit who spit on Chinese and all East Asians, especially their MMA culture. which is just more manifestation of western imperialist arrogance.
漢朝萬歲！！
漢民萬歲！！
The reason Chinese ended up being invaded by so many countries was because of the amount of retarded pacifism and complacency, though first of all whites and western europeans used very underhanded tactics such as Opium.
Chinese and East Asians must look to great warriors and warlords of the past like Zhang Fei, Guan Yu, Liu Bei, Lu Bu, Zhao Zi Long, Ma Chao, Yue Fei, You Xia, or Japanese warriors like Miyamoto Musashi, Sasaki Kojiro as INSPIRATION.
Not some pacifist “martial artists” from the late 1800s who failed to stop western imperialism and the British and were living under Man Zu/Manchu rule.
——————-
As for western “superiority”
You know that the west/whites/western imperialist barbarians have had 200-500 years of better nutrition, right?
They committed genocide on the Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, New Zealanders, enslaved blacks, divided up the MIddle East and Africa and later on East Asia.
They did all this and stole all those resources and got so much real-estate, especially in the USA.
Had so many more resources, so that is why their kids were able to eat better for generations, leading to greater height.
WHites, before stealing all that land and resources and foods were no stronger or taller than any other race out there.
It is because of western imperialism and the centuries of better nutrition that give them this advantage.
But even this is destructive in the long-run, as there are limited resources on Earth and the west/whites overconsume and overuse. They wage wars, especially in the Middle East at present to acquire MORE resources because of their greed and racism.. They plan to target China once again in the coming decades.
Their belief is always “bigger is better”.
But the truth is that smaller always overcomes large. This is also the philosophy and truth of Kyokushin Karate.
Bigger people and westerners who only know how to use brute force, are that way because they are animals. All of the MMA and other fighting are also in the context only of their rules, which favor wrestling and grappling and ground-fighting, most of which is useless in real-fighting, especially if there are no rules concerng things such as breaking knees or attacking the joints, which a smaller person could easily do against a bigger person, and especailly so if the smaller person is strong for his size.
You are probably not aware as well of the amount of steroid use and precise-scientific/steroid training methods western/American/white fighters go through alongside the centuries of better diet and nutrition due to their theft of resources from the rest of the world.
Notice that African Americans are also significantly larger and put on more muscle than the majority of Africans from AFrica.
Even Asian Americans (who lift weights and eat a more western diet) and Koreans vs. Asians/the rest of Asia.
But in the long run, all of this overconsumption is destructive to the planet.
————–
My overall point is to say that a lot of this is rooted in western imperialist history and the unfair advantage the west has due to the underhanded tactics they used in the past and present and their hoarding of resources.
And also that this is all self-destructive stuff.
However, Chinese and other “traditional” martial arts must regain their old roots of fighting and training for REAL fighting as in simulating real fighting as much as possible through full contact no protective gear knockdown style sparring and fighting. Simply by changing and applying your techniques in those conditions makes a huge difference.
There are many Chinese martial arts with a wealth of knowledge and striking/grappling curriculums that are extremely useful, and especially the underrated palm-strike techniques (also used in Kyokushin and some Okinawan karate schools).
As for the size and diet problem.
Americans and the west will eventually self-destruct or the rest of the world will say enough is fucking enough. Their greed knows no bounds and they have been stealing resources from the rest of the world for centuries now. And resources are limited.
They may believe bigger is better or Bigger/Faster/Stronger, however, in real-battle, especially battles with arrows or bullets, the bigger and more lumbering you are, the greater your chances of dying, fast, and brutally.
This explains how corrupt and disgusting most Americans/westerners are and how hypocritical and how much they cheat, especially with steroids.
You can bet your ass all of the fighters you see in American MMA/UFC are roiding and cheating in many ways.
And many of them try to make the case that steroids are “not” cheating.
http://kojutsukan.blogspot.com/2011/01/shorter-people-have-certain-advantages.html
“Shorter People Have Certain Advantages In Fighting And Warfare.
Although brute strength can be a valuable asset in hand-to-hand combat, many highly effective warriors have been small, such as the Gurkhas of Nepal who have been noted as being the fiercest and most effective warriors in recent times. The Japanese have also demonstrated great warrior skills as have the Viet Cong of Vietnam. Many native American tribes of relatively short men were noted for their fighting skills, such as the Commanches, Apaches, and Navajo (Samaras, 1994). The relatively short Gordon highlanders of Scotland were also exceptional warriors (Allinson, 1981). The Greeks and Romans were relatively short but very effective warriors. Audie Murphy, who was shorter and lighter (165cm and 50kg) than the average US soldier, was the most decorated war hero in WWII.
Being small may be an advantage in field combat based on statistician Frances Galton who calculated that a tall that a 33% higher risk of being killed in combat compared to a shorter one. Sarna et al (1993) also reported that basketball players in the Finnish military had the highest combat death rate during WWII. In contrast, the shorter athletes had the lowest combat mortality.(54)”
This is to give a boost to the esteem of my fellow “short” or “manlet” brothers.
http://www.wphna.org/htdocs/2011_mar_wn3_comm_small.htm
Well said brother. Please add us on Facebook we would love to discuss more with you.
Someone tell me why all the MMA fighters from China are Mongolians? Why are the top Sumo wrestlers in Japan Mongolians? Why are some of the top international MMA fighters Mongolian wrestlers? Kung Fu is for show. Mongolian wrestling was developed on the battlefield. No Kung Fu masters has ever beaten a Mongolian wrestler.
The Mongolians aren’t Chinese. One of the brilliant things the Chinese did, was similiar to what the Turks did – use the Chinese umbrella to say that other ethnic groups are a
“type of Chinese” in order to justify occupying the land. Other than that, a well written article. Especially like the fact that you said “when people say Asian, they mean Chinese”. I’ve said that so many times to people when they group everyone together (I am a Torontonian). Secondly – I am assuming you are of Chinese decent – I like the fact that you confront the stereotype of the culture revolving around money. Usually people when discussing their respective cultures are not truthful about perceived negative aspects. Especially “asians” who care about the face concept. Props for that. 8)
“all martial arts come from Shaolin”
I’m sure it has already been mentioned, but this is total garbage to begin with. Even all Chinese martial arts don’t come from Shaolin.
All the East Asian marital arts that you know and train now, can be traced back to Shaolin. Obviously there are other styles like Mongolian and Chinese wrestling, but that’s besides the point.
Hi I enjoyed your article and think you are right about Chinese deficiency in fighting. I feel conflicted because although I enjoy watching fights and would love to see more high quality Chinese fighter I also think the rise of MMA as sport reflects a decaying culture – similar to the gladiator games of ancient Rome. While Rome was falling apart the gladiator games provided distraction through the entertainment of brutality, but when Christianity came as a new unifying influence, the gladiator games were called off. I wonder, in the modern west, with the weakening of Christainty as a cultural influence, it has turned to brutality again as a distraction to it’s social/economic/political problems – hence the rise of MMA. Now, to be good at competetive MMA you must live and breathe brutality – but do we want that if it reflects a decaying culture? And I think, with all of it’s problems, what China wants to be is a substantial, long – sustaining culture different from the west. Did China ever have a glorious fighting spectacle comparable to the gladiator games?
You’d be better off just focusing on the substantive portions of your argument, rather than the cultural or historical parts out of your depth. For example all martial arts don’t originate from Shaolin. Every culture on earth from the Iranians to the Russians to the Greeks had indigenous unarmed combat forms as a necessarily complement to weapons. Certainly the war-obsessed Japanese did. Martial arts isn’t the recurve bow LMFAO it’s not a single transmittable technology but a classification of the war arts that every culture had out of necessity.
Karate has roots in Chinese arts transmitted through the Ryukyu masters but jujutsu is based on unharmed battlefield techniques of Japan’s medieval period. It has nothing to do with China, and neither does MMA. And the basis of Shaolin as well as the fact that it was practiced in monasteries is likely an Indian imprint, where Northern Indian/Persian arts were transmitted to China as Buddhism overtook native Chinese religions. If you’re going to do a Dave Chapelle Racial Draft, then be honest and say the Indians “own” martial arts and pay respect to your ancestor the Indian teacher.
This is the thing about Chinese guys, they also have to filter what should be rational arguments through some Chinatown prism. Today scholars know that even China itself was the amalgamation of dozens of distinct cultures through thousands of years bridging Paleolithic thru Bronze Age thru Iron Age. It’s not like civilization sprung from one point even WITHIN China then spread out. It was a process of distinct ethnic, cultural, and technological joining as blobs of populations met, clashed, traded and intermingled. Same thing with the prot-Viets, Japanese, Koreans, Mongols etc. Those population centers that exist today inside and outside China always existed, going back 10,000 years into the Stone Age. The thing was that Chinese civilization, centered in the North China Plain was the most centrally located, and also closest to the influence of civilization from the West (Central Asia) which is why they became the best civilization and the most influential, spreading down into what is today Southern China and Vietnam, and North into Manchuria, Korea, Japan. It’s like hot air rising to mix and warm colder air, not a creation event. Your entire comprehension of Asian history is out of some 1930 KMT primer.
The reason that’s relevant here is because your mangled impression Chinese history also affects your expectations and deconstruction of MMA in relation to China. The typical Chinese idea that the Japanese created MMA and are good at it means China should be good at it, and oh no what’s wrong is stupid. China simply doesn’t have as much penetration of MMA, so they have had less success. All the 19th century crap about food, body types, even temperament is asinine. The Chinese will be good at what they throw money at. No more no less. That’s why the Chinese were able to inflate their medal count in the Summer Olympics, but not the Winter. The government targeted a Summer medal haul first. When China gets around to buying the requisite foreign coaches, paying foreign companies to build the requisite facilities, stealing the right foreign techniques they’ll be good at Winter sports. I really think you’re overthinking this, China will be good at MMA because they will eventually have the most money to throw at it. Also Bruce Lee was 1/4 German.
A lot of what you said about history and origin is true and yes Bruce Lee was mixed. Yes of course whatever the Chinese government throws money at is where we will see success. But to completely say that Chinese culture has zero impact on the development of fighters, let alone MMA fighters, is quite a bold claim and one I’m not entirely convinced of especially since I am Chinese and I understand the cultural and economic expectations of our youth as taught and nurtured by our parents from a first hand perspective.
Learning MMA as career has more disadvantages than other sports;
1. More risk
2. More pain
3. Less reward
4. Less popular
As entertainment… nah, I’d rather see WWE
As sport, there are dozen better options, even badminton is better.
As self defense, its mostly useless in the real situation.
Its good Chinese are smart to avoid this kind of useless stuffs, I feel huge sorry for those guys who are in this field as they sacrifice a lot for nothing.
Gung Fu as martial arts has died a long time ago where the era of swords, weapons and other things were not allowed anymore.
Nowadays Gung Fu has evolved as entertainment in the movie and we should accept this.
Want to see real gung fu works in real action is like want to see real dinosaurs
Bottom line, its true Chinese should be open minded but even if they can see that everything has changed and all of this stuffs about MMA or Gung Fu, I hope they understand too that its wise to leave those things alone and just be spectators unless like someone else said up there…. if MMA is registered in the Olympic
By the way, anyone feels Sasaki Ken is mentally unstable ?.
Because of too many Chinese having mentality like yours, you can see Chinese getting harmed, robbed, raped, slaughtered and bullied in few countries that have Chinese community. Don’t have to look far, even in China alone, the Chinese were slaughtered by minority Uighurs recently.
Chinese adopted “Don’t Care Don’t Want To Know” attitude introduced by Chairman Mao that wanted the people to be weak so that he could stay in power while those hungry for money people will focus on earning cash to survive and pay direct/indirect taxes. That is why you see Chinese often don’t bother to help anyone in trouble. There’s law allowing victim to sue good samaritan in China for money. You help a victim from being stabbed, that victim can sue you and demand huge compensation from you with stupid ridiculous reason.
Kungfu is best martial arts designed by Chinese suited for inferior Chinese physically weaker body compared to other races. Kungfu doesn’t work in self defense if you never trained to fight for real against unarmed/armed assailant & to survive outnumbered fight.
You want to know whether Kungfu works, I’ll let you use stick to fight me, if not enough, you can get your parents siblings to team up with you. I’ll demonstrate how I could seize the stick from you and use it whack you and the rest while kicking and elbowing.
Please do me one more favor, let me carry a gun and some knives hidden under my cloth and lets see your MMA will work or not ?.
Bully ? because can’t do MMA ?
That’s really hilarious, peoples get bullied because they have no money and aren’t successful in this life because spend useless things like MMA.
Live our lives down to earth and we’ll find peace, who dares to bully successful and rich peoples if they don’t look for troubles.
This is not the era where strong warrior who can beat others become successful or popular.
Its very wise for the Chinese they can see the situation.
Some peoples say Chinese are stubborn and inflexible but they are not, they are aware nowadays the most important thing are brain and money so they’ll leave all of these MMA and rude works for those who are too stubborn to care so much about what works in a fight while they focus more on scientist things. which they believe are the things to make them to be true powerful nowadays. They can be satisfied with their lives and jobs while they make the MMA fighters as their entertainment clowns who are deserved to be pitied.
Take the richest UFC Fighter and compare his payment with Jet Li or Jackie Chan.
Even in the heart of MMA Fighters feel they are tired of these nightmare, they want to quit these things quickly and find easier jobs like movie star or WWE Wrestlers. They feel jealous because while they need to pass through this nightmare like idiot WWE Wrestlers and movie stars pass through far easier route and get more money. They realize its not fair so they wish there are movie producers or directors see them then take them so they can get out of this hell.
Now, you ask a lot of guys out there, which one they prefer ?
1. Top world action movie star
2. MMA champion
The answer will be the first, simply because even though the 1st choice doesn’t work in a real fight but it works in the REAL LIFE 😀
It looks like you completely ignored what the article was talking about. Read my previous reply. No one is arguing whether or not anyone wishes to be rich, successful, or a movie star. Hollywood and America produces many movie stars, yet they also produce many sports / athlete champions in MMA as well. China does too, but only in Olympic sports that they care about. When MMA becomes a focus of China’s sports dreams, that will change. Of course you will be living a much easier life as a movie star, how is that even an argument? But that is exactly the problem of stubborn Chinese people (I am Chinese myself). They only focus on wealth, money, status, nothing else. They also refuse to accept that times are changing and Chinese Kung Fu is being left in the past. Chinese people get bullied overseas and on the streets in China because they are taught to not fight back or to be too respectful to others, allowing others / foreigners to beat them down, take their women, and make fun of Chinese / Asians, especially expats in China. Because just like how you think, they only care about “being smart and ignore the problems and get money”, yet they live unbalanced lives. They lack confidence in other areas such as in social situations or standing up for themselves. This is the same mentality that makes them weak in combat sports and MMA because they lack aggression / assertiveness. It is a very Chinese-centric problem, or like a Chinese saying goes: “a frog in the well”. Be more well-rounded, like Bruce Lee said. Live a balanced life. That includes the 2 billion Chinese around the globe, who need to understand that not every single Chinese needs to be a doctor, lawyer, or accountant in order to find happiness and success in life.
You need sword, machete, they are more effective than lousy knives that you requested. I am ok with that and the rule is, there is none. I managed to grab your machete/sword, I’m allowed to use it on any of you. As for guns, how many could afford guns in the first place? In my country, you’ll need to be rich enough to possess legal pistol, revolver, shotgun or single action rifle. Illegally guns, you’ll need to smuggle in from Thailand in which, if you are caught for illegal gun possession, you’ll get death sentence.
Come on, why so blardy afraid if Kungfu is that useless to you? It’s just 1 of me and the several of you + your family members? Are you saying that I am so deadly with Kungfu that I have ability to snatch all the weapons from you and use it against you?
Over here, Chinese gang leaders no longer hire Chinese gangmembers because they are too wimp and lousy. They hire other races to do the job for them because they are fiercer, brutal and more daring yet they can really beat people up. Chinese without Kungfu is the weakest race here.
Chinese having mentality like mine? You mean loving their Chinese people and standing up and fighting for them and talking about our problems out in the open like mature adults should? I am not communist, I do not need to hide in fear of speaking about our problems as Chinese people. A few of our problems as Chinese people is that we are too stubborn to allow ourselves or our children to pursue something other than being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. There are 2 billion of us, truly ONE of us can choose to do something different like combat sports? We are not here to debate about whether Kung Fu works or not. In many self defense situations Kung Fu when done correctly, just like any martial art, can be useful. But you cannot be so ignorant and say “MMA is not useful for self defense”. That’s just pure ignorance. I won’t argue about it, but after you train just a little bit of Muay Thai or BJJ, you will understand what I am talking about. Knife and gun fighting is a totally different topic altogether. That’s army combat training. But China’s army trains sanshou, not wushu or tai chi for their army fighting. Why is that? Because sanshou is a hybrid, more complete form of martial art, similar to MMA, that works in REAL LIFE.
Yes, MMA is a poor man’s sport in comparison to other professional sports and professions. But doesn’t that mean you totally ignored what my article was about? Don’t you think it is strange that a tiny country like Japan with 125 million people has produced many MMA legends, whereas 2 billion Chinese scattered across the globe struggle to produce even 1 mid-card MMA fighter? Does it mean Chinese people suck at fighting? No. It’s because Chinese people (like yourself) only enjoy money… nothing else. I find it unsettling that 2 billion of us are out there… many working in textile factories or in electronics factories making iPhones for Apple… yet not 1 out of 2 billion of us is willing to stand up and fight? I am talking about just 1 brother… I am not asking “every Chinese to start doing MMA” because MMA is not for everyone.
Hi dynastyclothingstore.com,
Over here, MMA is richman’s martial arts, being the most expensive that even beat Gym fees. Kungfu is poorman’s sports. TKD, Karate is normal middle income sports. That ” I_Love_jin_Yong_Novel”, he’s just an ignorant, probably too lazy to train yet he is probably some “Don’t Care Don’t Want To Know” mentality group. He saw someone getting rob, he’ll either just stand there and watch or flee if things get dangerous.
1 more week to my fight audition where I’ll make the first authentic Kungfu vs MMA fight video where the Kungfu is working one, not some amateurs that don’t even know how to aim and shoot accurately, got into panic/nervous, etc. Also, to prove those ignorant like Jin Yong Novel wrong, I’m adding weight to fight in heavier Welterweight category to demonstrate how to counter much bigger stronger opponent in grappling and cage fight.
Hi Dynasty.
I’ve been to the audition. They made me starved >7 hours skipping lunch yet wanted me to wrestle before going to fight. I was totally exhausted and could not perform any of my usual moves. Just get in there and wasted the 2 minutes without effort to fight back. Feel free to criticize and help inform the rest.
Check the vids and must read the description on what happen. Now you know my name.
http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=paIIs6MDAqM
Unlike MMA fighters who trained for strength and used to starving, I have to eat a lot before I fight as it drains more energy to perform those high end moves especially counter grappling. I do know grappling but if I were to grapple with fellow Asians, fine. If I were to grapple bigger and stronger Chinese, it is less effective while against much stronger Non-Chinese, it will never worked. Some of the fight here involving Asian vs Caucasian where both at similar MMA grappling skills showed that Asians are inferior in strength while the Caucasians could easily dominate.
My next plan is to join local Kungfu center that is willing to restore Kungfu fighting where I will share them the skills and get them to fighting, adopt MMA gloves and participate in fight matches against MMA fighters. I’ll try to make it to local Sanshou competition this year end where there are MMA fighters there too. I’ll show how real Kungfu works especially counter grappling without starving. Hopefully by next year, I can bring more kungfu fighters to join the audition with me. Next time, I’ll eat a lot before I go with 2 barrels of water instead.
Hi Dynasty, the comment below was replied to I_Love_jin_Yong_Novel , there was no reply button to his newer comment so it appeared below your comment.
“You need sword, machete, they are more effective than lousy knives that you requested. I am ok with that and the rule is, there is none. I managed to grab your machete/sword, I’m allowed to use it on any of you. As for guns, how many could afford guns in the first place? In my country, you’ll need to be rich enough to possess legal pistol, revolver, shotgun or single action rifle. Illegally guns, you’ll need to smuggle in from Thailand in which, if you are caught for illegal gun possession, you’ll get death sentence.
Come on, why so blardy afraid if Kungfu is that useless to you? It’s just 1 of me and the several of you + your family members? Are you saying that I am so deadly with Kungfu that I have ability to snatch all the weapons from you and use it against you?
Over here, Chinese gang leaders no longer hire Chinese gangmembers because they are too wimp and lousy. They hire other races to do the job for them because they are fiercer, brutal and more daring yet they can really beat people up. Chinese without Kungfu is the weakest race here.”
Good research. There is a bit more to it (then even that). Also its not just leg catches in sanda that make it so unique, doing the take downs while you are being punched as well is a huggggge thing too, in conclusion keeping a core belief of defence but in a more realistic situation. Also they use some techniques in the grappling aspect that are great that I haven’t found in many other styles. In my opinion Sanda is helping us understand what got lost in the translation of tradition, restriction, and loss of knowledge that has occurred threw its rocky history. In current times actually my shaolin shifu praises the practice of other martial arts and even encourage and recognizes its very highly!
In conclusion, too much diversity in reasons to give a clear answer. Not only for the past but the future as well
Hey i just read this article of yours. and i must say most of your points are legit. and you have made really good points here. i never knew there were no warrior class in china.
i myself would love to see the chinese people get macho and manly and fight in some 5-10 years later myself.
and you sir are a true chinese, i’ll keep on supporting the chinese people even though i am not one.
and you here have made some real good reasons because there are a lot of mongolians out there who are belittling the chinese martial arts. thanks to you i have now found a good reason and points to tell those guys. i myself hope that one day i would try fighting somewhere representing chinese martial arts. i hope i will.
i’m also a karate fighter.
oh btw if you guys must know. the shaolin monk who some posted is making a lot of progress in his kickboxing career. hope to see some more fighters like him 🙂
peace!
oh also. you guys should check out sifu al haroun hisham who represents chinese martial arts in mma. i mean if you guys want to…..
Jin Tang; a girl, might be China’s most experienced MMA fighter.
The Shaolin Warrior Monks are to be trained to enter the UFC… here’s a trailer for the new reality series http://youtu.be/jp-CEITLnLI
Interesting trailer, it has potential. But the actual MMA portions of the trailer look amateurish. You need real Chinese Sanda counter wrestling and grappling to deal with MMA. With that said I am still intrigued.
A champion Sanda fighter who you see in the trailer executing a spinning kick, who is a Shaolin Monk is also involved…
Thanks for the link. I am glad those China Kungfu practitioners begin to wake up and get back to fighting using Kungfu instead of Sanshou. At the same time, I’ll attempt to restore Kungfu fighting syllabus in as many remaining Kungfu/Wushu centers here that haven’t gone bankrupt.
Great article, sums up everything “wrong” with Chinese society today (in the Martial Arts sense). I can now only dream of seeing a Chinese MMA athlete rep for all the Asians in the UFC, it will definitely happen one day… but for now, at least we can look towards the Koreans as they have some great fighters (Tae Hyun Bang from KTT with his recent knock out in the UFC 174 Prelims, that was an awesome fight).
You are correct in saying that southern Chinese tend to be smaller. However I don’t think that limits us Chinese as fighters as we can still compete at lighter weight classes and have potential to do well in them.
Also your article exposed me to your awesome clothing line, where can I grab one of those HK dynasty hoodies? Are they all sold out?
Keep in touch my friend.
From,
A Chinese with a Warrior’s Mentality.
Thanks for your nice reply. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, etc to keep in touch with our releases. More hoodies will come in the winter season. Cheers!
Chinese trains MMA forever will never achieve anything against Caucasian in UFC. Only thing they could rely on is the actual Kungfu and to do that, they’ll have to restore the Kungfu fighting syllabus that trains them how to take on much stronger opponents especially real strong wrestlers.
I WAS ALL GUNG HO ABOUT THIS ARTICLE UNTIL I READ THE PART ABOUT MY “AVERAGE GENES AND ATHLETICISM” PLEASE TELL ME HOW YOUR GENES ARE “ABOVE AVERAGE ” TO MY SAD LITTLE HONG KONG GENES YOU RACISTS BASTARD EAT A DICK . GOOD GOD YOU MUST BE A FUCKING IDIOT. GENETICS DOESNT WORK LIKE THAT. ME AND YOU ARE 99.9% SIMILAR GENETICALLY. IT’S A SCIENTIFIC FACT .SO PLEASE TELL ME HOW MY GENES ARE “AVERAGE” AND YOURS “ABOVE AVERAGE” WHAT THE FUCK DOES SIZE HAVE TO DO WITH IT ANYWAY ? YOU’RE PUT IN YOUR WEIGHT CLASS IN MMA . EAT A MILLION DICKS AND DIE IN A CAR ACCIDENT. “AVERAGE ATHLETICISM ” I GUESS SINCE THE COMMIES KIDNAP BABIES AT BIRTH THEIR ATHLETICISM AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS CAN JUST BE THROWN OUT THE WINDOW RIGHT ? I MEAN SHIT THEY MUST HAVE SUPER SOLDIER SERUMED EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF THESE OLYMPIC MEDAL WINNERS. ONCE AGAIN EAT A DICK AND REALIZE HOW RACISTS YOUR SHIT IS AND HAVE THE BALLS AND COMMON DECENCY TO EDIT IT . BET YOU WONT CAUSE RELATIVELY SPEAKING YOU’RE TOO NAIVE TO REALIZE IT.
I AGREE WITH YOU ON EVERYTHING ELSE THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION KILLED GUNG FU MOST OF MY COUNTRYMEN WILL ARGUE THE SHAOLIN OF TODAY IS A FARCE CREATED BY THE COMMIES AND HAS NO LINEAGE WHAT SO EVER TO THE ORIGINAL
I believe UFC fighter Dong Hyun Kim commented that Asian fighters typically produce less testosterone. I have not seen any scientific fact proving this, but I do know that physically just by nutrition or by using your eyes, the average western kid at age 18 is more physically developed than the average Asian kid at age 18. I know when I was 18 I wasn’t near my physical athletic prime (physically developed or completed puberty), but now that I’m nearing my later 20’s I feel I’ve finally grown into my body and can pack on size and muscle. I’m a Chinese guy by the way.
I’ve fought Caucasian at the local MMA fight audition. Fact is, Caucasian is physically stronger and tougher where it takes twice the strength to counter his grappling. Also as seen in several fights involving Asian vs Caucasian in the ring on that 2 days, the Asians mostly lost when comes to wrestling. Want to fight someone much stronger will have to use counter grappling with some acrobat moves. This is where Asians excel on flexibility and agility.
You are right..about one thing – Systems of old lost… some simply into exile for fear of what actually happened. I love reading “trained in MMA” – Funny stuff. MMA is a concept much like JKD. Its a mix – funny, it was all born out of pride.
UFC began as an infomercial Gracie BJJ – The original concept began with the age old question – what would happen if Japanese Karteka were to Face a Chinese Boxer… well…we never really knew. The UFC hand picked horrible representation from multiple systems. The best fighters in the world did not participate – sadley the best fighters in the world do not exist any more. Ask yourself this… where would we be today if a stand up fighter would have won those pioneering events? I will tell you.. the same place.
Pride has determined this. You see when BJJ wins… that Mantis fighter learns how to grapple to be competitive. Soon we are plagued with the hybrid systems we have today. The exact reason systems went into exile… to protect our bloodlines. Our heritage… because we no longer care if Tiger Claw beats Judo.
It is said martial arts have evolved… silly people. Humans have evolved… our bodies have evolved. How egotistical we are to think that something new has never been done before. You have a new arm bar? nope..been done. You have a new choke counter…nope… already thought of.
Here is the deal in closing.. we fight for different reasons. In 1911 we fought for food. In 1899 (the Boxer Rebels) we fought oppression of forced commerace and religion. That is hunger. When a Chinese Boxer takes on all comers…it is to keep a school open…to feed his family.
So I can assure you that a Silva would shit his pants looking across a ring at Attila the Hun.. Or Two Dragons Wei why? Because they did not care about a contract…
So Chinese MMA – You just have not had someone hungry enough. However I will tell you this. I do not need a ring… or TV.. to prove a point. I will meet with anyone… respectfully in private… to match my skill against theirs. No need for the world to know the out come.. just him and me… that is all I need. That is because I am hungry.
I will proudly represent Chinese Boxing – I have 200 years of tradition running through my veins. I am 22nd Generation Chen 🙂 Not trained at your neigborhood kwoon – I have evolved just fine.
So with that remember… you only see what we allow you to see… and we smile knowing you think what you do see is all there is. We build empires on the shoulders of tradition. Dana White builds TV contracts on what we allow.
This is how it is –
Michael
The Rogue Boxer
Good points there. Problem with Kungfu nowadays is that they removed fighting syllabus completely and adopted simplified Sanshou instead. Most Kungfu now Wushu practitioners don’t even know how to apply the moves embedded in pattern nowadays.
I’m looking forward to restore Kungfu fighting syllabus in as many Wushu/Kungfu centers my country and get them back to the old days again. Scrap stupid sanshou technique and rules and revive the original lei tai fighting regulation. No eye gouge, hit neck or groin as we don’t want any casualties. The fight is just as realistic as real street fight.
Congratulations to an indepth Article, which I would like to add my opinions.
Compared to Caucasians, Chinese fighters have a lower stamina, weaker body and lighter body weight, which affects how many kicks and punches they can take, and how strong they can punch. with grappling in MMA, these are extremely serious disadvantages.
Most Wushu styles are not just punches kicks to head / body, but practitioners are trained to move quickly, camouflaged moves, and focus attack to weak spots in the body. A lot of the attacks are directed at the more sensitive parts of the body, besides the groin, and eyes, you see a lot of focused punches at acupressure points, joint snaps, throat attacks designed to end the fight as quickly as possible, many of these cant be done with gloves and not legal for competitions.
I’m not saying which is better, as every style has its strengths and weaknesses, and every fighter has his strengths and weaknesses, so it comes down to how competent the fighter is. the best fighter is always the experienced, smartest, strongest and trains the hardest.
Parents of mainland Chinese people, may not be able to afford MA training for their children, those that can afford it, will prefer to spend those funds on other more educating activities, plus 99% are overprotective of their children and would not want their children hurt in fights.
Hong Kong parents have the financial capability of paying for MA training, but they also do not want their children hurt, and want something more traditional and disciplined for fear of them joining the triads. Thus most will take up Karate, TKD or some form of Wushu .
More and more people are taking up Muah Thai in H.K, but these are people already into the workforce, and with the rat race in H.K, these are only for releasing stress and exercises,
Wushu as many says is for health, the styles and movements can be used and practiced until 100+ years old, the Kata’s are there to ensure the body and joints are stretched to keep the Chi clear for a healthy body
MMA, Muah Thai and Kickboxing are more damaging sports to the body and joints, once past the golden years, it becomes unhealthy to continue practicing, as an earlier person noted. (Some forms of Wushu, also damages the body.)
Wushu and many martial arts also has weapons which trains people to use whatever they can grab onto during a street fight, this is one benefit of martial arts vs MMS.. and those that start to mention Guns is when the topic gets out of hand..
Last thing I want to add, Many people, including chinese really don’t want to sustain injuries in professional sports that will make their later lives painful.. such as arthritis.
Your article has been very interesting. thank you.
The stuff about “Chinese culture” is just a load of stereotypes and stupidity. If the Chinese didn’t care about sports, they wouldn’t come home with so many Olympic medals every year.
If anything it seems like they tend to excel at finesse sports, which is reminiscent of many styles of martial arts in China. Culturally, martial arts are an art form with defense applications. Notice the order: art form, then defence applications. Because of this, as the author pointed out, they often focus on speed (I’ll address the not doing damage part). Because the defence part is secondary, they emphasize defensive solutions such as throat strikes and eye gouges, which utilize, in the author’s words, the lightning speed of Chinese styles. There need not be lots of force behind a strike to the throat – speed is preferable.
As for the argument of not being able to use it… They can and do, but with the caveat that it is primarily a cultural art and lifestyle. You can find huge competitions where people show forms (like Kata) to show how they have mastered techniques (not combat). It’s best to think of it as something like cultural dances, but with defensive applications. This congrats with fighting styles disguised as dancing. The main point of most Chinese martial arts is cultural, spiritual and about wellness – the self defense is secondary and as someone who’s had to defend himself from gay bashings, throat strikes have saved me more than my karate or kick boxing lessons ever did.
We did mention that China wins Olympic medals – you missed that. Perhaps when China decides to care about combat sports, we will see true Chinese fighters on the scene.
I have trained various internal and external martial arts styles, including some MMA. I found that a lot of internal practitioners were physically weak, self delusional about their fighting skills and would most likely not be able to defend themselves in a real fight. I also found that a lot of the external practitioners (including MMA fanboys), while physically strong, were short on strategy, one dimensional and have an overstated opinion of their own abilities. Also, their training regimes were not sustainable in the long term, lacked balance and were often injury prone. In short, aspiring martial artists, in my humble opinion, should open their minds, train as broadly as possible and make up their own minds as to what might suit them. Bruce Lee would be proud of you.
Thanks for reading and your kind words.
Just because you don’t see a given style in the octagon doesn’t mean that it’s useless.
See the following for an extended explanation.
http://www.wimsblog.com/2010/02/from-the-octagon-to-the-street/
http://www.wimsblog.com/2011/06/scaling-self-defense/
http://dandjurdjevic.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/fight-dynamics-how-civilian-defence-and.html
I’m not sure on what the author bases his assessment that wingchun is the only CMA that has ‘held it’s own’. You don’t see wingchun in the UFC either, because like other CMAs it’s not optimised for ring fighting (as opposed to self-preservation, confined spaces and multiple opponents).
As for the Chinese diet, it may not be as good as many western diets for building muscle but it has its benefits. There’s a reason that Chinese people tend to look healthier than westerners after age 30.
Another commenter pointed out that you can’t pass judgment on the traditional Chinese diet based on its processed-food heavy modern version, much as McDonalds and frozen meals don’t represent traditional western diets.
Finally, this whole post is somewhat dated as MMA is starting to make it big in China.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/sport/24-Dec-2014/chinese-athletes-fighting-for-mma-dream
Note the UFC vice-president quoted in the article praises the striking skills conferred by sanda and other CMAs, he says the Chinese just need to work on wrestling and grappling to be competitive in MMA.
It’s true that CMAs are in a poor state worldwide, so that many criticisms levelled at them (including on this blog) are often valid. But there are guys out there who will prove to you that traditional systems work in ‘real life’.
Just off the top of my head:
http://www.grtc.org/about/smr-bio/
http://www.wimdemeere.com/en/about/
http://shenwu.com/background.htm
The second of those men is a personal trainer and sanshou champion, while the third is a BJJ black belt. All of them are internal practitioners (taiji and xingyi).
As for the Chinese military training sanshou rather than traditional CMAs, that’s no proof of the latter’s ineffectiveness. Military requirements are different from civilian self-defence, which is different again from combat sports like MMA. Gaining proficiency in TCMAs takes a lot more time and close instruction than sanshou, and modern militaries don’t have a lot of time or instructors for unarmed combat (because it’s not a big part of the job).
Judo is a Japanese name because Japanese didn’t want others to know its Chinese Art because Japanese didn’t want to be associated with “weak men of east Asia”. Original art called art of seizing and grasping or devils hand. Therefore traditional Chinese kungfu has lots of ground fighting. During Mao’s revolution kungfu was suppressed and 99 percent of masters were killed off because they seemed like a threat to the revolution .There were many styles of ground fighting and grappling styles. As over 1000 complete styles of gong-fu existed in the past and nowadays far far less. Bruce Lee was not the inventor of MMA.
Your saying that Chinese are shorter because of their diet. Go to any school nowadays in China.
take life style factor in consideration. the average Chinese wakes up at 6 am, goes to school, gets off at 6pm, and studies until 1 am. repeat. Where is the exercises? Barely any. But I spent a few years in Beijing and went to school there. As a foreigner I was surprised because despite the wacko lifestyle, alot of Chinese were very very physically gifted. Their were the fast runners, heavy set weight-lifters, and natural athletes. Just like any country, there are gifted athletes. Race is not a factor and is the old style of thinking which creates barriers. Therefore, when I was in China, I was most always slower and not as strong than those “inferior” Chinese and I had a life that fared much better with much less studying and much more working out in America. As I recall, 1/3rd of the class can run 1 mile in less than 5:20. It was also a competition of who can run and out compete others and I hated it. There was this one kid I wrestled for fun and he was so strong that I literally had my back broken. And he had zero training at all. Remember, I had an athletic background throughout my whole life. I was thinking DAMN, he could be a world champion wrestler if he cared for the sport. And when I asked him why he didn’t do sports he replied something along the lines of “I’m always too tired from studying and so when there is free time I choose to spend it hanging out with friends and playing computer games”.
The reason there aren’t many athletes who choose sports is because they and their parents know that it is not their path to pursue to get far in life. So what if you win 5 gold medals in gymnastics, once your career is over you’d be teaching gymnastics rather than making a million dollars doing finances related work is the Chinese mentality. And no, the government doesn’t go to schools and villages to select those with good genes. I never saw that and .5 percent of the times does it ever happen. You had to go enroll in the sports program which 99 percent of parents won’t enroll their kids because they think it won’t get them anywhere in life or you had to go to the sports program and if they saw you had potential they’d consider you. Screw national pride knowing competition is tough in China because the gene pool for stronger and faster Chinese is SO HUGE!
Mongolians are the strongest because of their diet and because they conquered half of the world? Again, remember there are many factors for this. Chinese were called weak men of East Asia because they were not united AND because they were a starving skinny race. Their are photos you can find to back up this claim. But we don’t call Africans weak men of Southern America because they starve. Nowadays we are much more civilized and learn from this mistake. Are all blacks weak? No! Same as are all Chinese weak? No! Many Chinese feel no need to conquer, they had land, they were civilized. China was a society that praised scholars, healers, and brains over brawn rather than Barbarians. If you had dark skin, you were looked down upon. It meant you worked in the fields and you didn’t have white skin with those who can stay in doors to do office work than back breaking manual labor. The Japanese conquered China which had over a hundred times more people, does that mean that Japanese are physically superior?
I skimmed over 1/10th of this article and already pointed out a few of your stereotypes.
Then again the first Chinese MMA fighter was Mongolian. The Chinese are known to let other races to first represent their country first to therefore not disgrace their people if the person loses. Yang Jianping is arguably better and he is Chinese.
If you actually took time to read it you would see I’ve already talked about what you just typed. Thanks.
Biased bullshit. MMA is no the be all end all of martial arts. Even the most muscly of cage fighters can get stabbed to fuck real quick
in this video is karate vs aikido(kiai master), not mma vs kung fu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhhWcRGRtOI
drunken boxing guy didn’t learned know how to spar, he only learned kung-fu form (form or kata is nothing more then choreography and cardio training) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5loQCc8ALA#t=78
this kung-fu guy never trained any grappling techniques https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABqD8Odaebw#t=48
many videos you posted about kung-fu are nothing but mcdojos, next time you should post some video like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDIb9TWy-78 before you write some shit how kung-fu is bullshit and how people should train mma…
this is how mma works on the street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxFbpa9c8gg
this is how kung-fu works on the street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj6CrC5tpKM
HERE IS THE SECRET: TRAIN SANDA, SHUAI JIAO, QINNA AND YOU WILL GET ULTIMATE KUNG-FU FIGHTING STYLE FOR RING, BETTER THAN MMA (THIS STYLES HAVE EVERYTHING THAT MMA HAVE + MOST MOVES ARE “LEGAL” (“NO EYE POKES…”))
I don’t think you even read the article because I clearly stated people should train Sanda and Shuai Jiao… have a good day sir
Question, are you in China or have any exp in the MMA game here? Because the things you wrote were pretty much ‘generalization’ about the state of MMA from outside of China. You essentially only used ‘big names’ and how they fail to make any headlines on the world stage.
The issue isnt how ‘Chinese fighters will never flourished’ the real issue should be ‘how will MMA be within 5 or 10 years.’ And you have to realize that China does not like anyone outside the main land to dictate Chinese people and rather let China ‘take care of their own.’ What do i mean by this? Well there are small promotions in China and they are churning local fighters with the opportunity to make a living from fighting. Sure it’s not much, but it’s enough to survive .
Also from the gist of what you wrote, it seems that Chinese gov’t wont allow such a ‘barbaric’ sport to thrive. Far from it. The Chinese gov’t could care less about this let alone the fighters will somewhat create a revolution or some shit… The people who runs the events are rich dudes who likes to spend money and who are essentially bank rolling everything (from tv deals to fighter’s purse and ect ect).
While MMA has long ways to make it in China. Yet i ‘agree’ that MMA will not flourished in China. Not for the reasons you wrote (seems to look at it outside the country rather than in), but for other reasons. Ignorance, MMA does not turn a profit, rich people essentially bank rolling fighters/camps, lacking proper nutrition, S&C, having a person to put MMA together for them ect ect. And finally.. China wants things ‘for free.’ Why pay thousands of dollars for tickets when you can watch it on CCTV for nothing? There is no motivation to go out and do your best if the salary is ‘set’ and the same for every fight there after.
Also side note, the ‘Martial Arts Masters’ challenging BJJ or MMA or Boxing fighters does not happen. I have yet to have a ‘master’ come in my gym and challenge me and i been teaching BJJ for 4 years in China. Chinese people are open to learning new things and this will help them grow in external martial arts.
Thanks for your reply. I hope then, we can see more Chinese fighters exported to places like UFC and One FC where there IS an incentive to train and fight at a high level to make more money.
Dynastyclothing, fyi my country and several asian countries sent their mma fighters to compete in annual Las Vegas world MMA competition. Chinese, koreans, japanese, south east asians, most of them can’t even survive 1st round in humiliating defeat. Already told you, if chinese trained mma and wrestled stronger Caucasians, chinese would get KO.
That’s why we invented kungfu counter grappling to defeat stronger opponents. Check my vid on beginning part, you can stilp see some counter grappling before i was starved and exhausted. That local mma organiser would rather let their lousy mma fighter to represent my country rather than letting the best fighters win.
Sounds like you make too many excuses my friend. Make it to the UFC then we will see your true strength!
Dynastyclothing.
What excuses? The chinese mma fighters all lost to Caucasian mma fighters in the annual mma world competition in Las Vegas, USA. MMA is just brawl and wrestling. You wrestle someone twice your strength, he could easily break your grip and then grip you back and toss you down. You can keep telling chinese to ditch kungfu and take mma, only to end up more losing chinese.
I instead encourage chinese to take up kungfu and start experimenting with moves embedded in pattern and restore all syllabus that were removed by earlier generation abiding the commies ban.
I am not against restoring lost techniques, but ultimately MMA is a sport, and we need to find techniques that work within that sort to be effective fighters.
Actually there is kung fu in the ring mainly the kickboxing like style of San-da, which takes an approach similar to what you’ve stated in having ground work, take downs, strikes and kicks. At the end of the day while people bash other styles and forms of martial arts they all derived from the same basic place it just uses small differences in application. With regard to sport the whole point of sparring is not winning or losing but improving oneself win or lose in the ring. It’s not the style but the person in the style that makes the style. Actually several martial artist use Chines kung fu in the ring… here is one but he is very experienced and so will be anyone from shaolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN89wVzj4W8
he has had 23 victories this far not bad for a ring match… besides everyone loses a match or two but its what you take from it and get back up with later… and is it not how you train you fight so train harder, you never know what life will throw at you so be divers …hope this shed some light
While I agree that much of modern Wushu is just for show, I disagree with much of the article. The historical view is very very narrow, martial arts have essentially been forbidden in China since the end of the Ming dynasty. Sorry, but saying that people are smaller because they live in small houses is really, really hilarious! I would edit it, it is kind of embarrassing and undermines other (some good) points.
Youtube is a very poor reference as there is lots of “this martial art is more effective then that” BS going on. Real traditional Kung Fu techniques are very well guarded secrets, there simply are no youtube videos portraying them.
MMA is a sport. You could just as well ask why the Chinese suck at Football. I’m not trying to say MMA isn’t a legitimate way to learn how to fight, it’s just fundamentally different. Traditional Kung Fu just looses most of it’s effective techniques when fighting with any kind of rule set. If you really made such a fight happen, it would be extremely boring to watch as it would probably end with one technique or it’s follow up (I would bet for a kick in the knee).
This is a very well written article. It is very well researched, and I congratulate you for all the truths it brings. It got a lot of the facts correct. This is also a very interesting topic. If Martial Arts originated in China, why wouldn’t China lead the way in the MMA sports? I wanted to join in on this conversation, because this topic interests me, but also I think I have a few different views that might be of interest to this topic
First, my background is that I am an American born Chinese, and I have been doing martial arts for a little over 10 years. Four of those years were in Tae Kwon Do, and rest are in Kung Fu. Second, I am an avid spectator of MMA. I’ve been watching the UFC since UFC 1 when Royce Gracie won it. I’ll admit that I have not trained in MMA, but most of my knowledge is from being a long-time spectator and fan.
So I wanted to address the food topic that was discussed. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions, and half-truths there. The only issue I see with chinese cuisine, whether it is northern, or southern; it doesn’t matter, is that in general, chinese eat a lot of rice and noodles and limited amounts of meat and fat. Their carb to protein ratio is much higher than other cultures. Protein is definitely the way to go if you are training to fight. This is just common sense. Now about the misconceptions about chinese cuisine. First off, american chinese food was invented long ago in america by chinese in areas that had low chinese population. It was a matter of survival, so high fat foods were created due to necessity of increasing sales and keeping their business alive. Traditional chinese cuisine did not sell well in those areas back in the day. Now the dim sum restaurant that was mentioned above. Dim sum is a chinese brunch. Chinese people eat it about as often as Americans eat Ihop, which is roughly once a week; mostly on the weekends. Some dim sum dishes are fried and very fat, but one missed point is that there are a lot of healthy steamed dish choices in dim sum. There’s steamed buns, and steamed noodles in sweet soy sauce, steam rice with black bean spare ribs, or steamed vegetables in oyster sauce. If one wanted to eat healthy at a dim sum restaurant, it can definitely be done with little issue. The purpose of dim sum is variety, and you can find a very low fat meal there no doubt. Next, we are talking about chinese restaurants. So as discussed, there’s the american chinese restaurant, but then there’s also the authentic chinese restaurant. Does anyone in general eat at restaurants everyday? No, we do not. In general, independent of culture, restaurants tend to have more fat and salts in their foods than what we cook at home. A typical and simple chinese dinner at a chinese home would consistent of a steamed fish in soy sauce with ginger and scallion, a steamed pork meat cake with chopped mushrooms, and baby bok chau in soy sauce and garlic. I’m talking about every day foods chinese people eat at home. So that is my comprehensive view on the chinese diet that I felt needed to be said.
continued……
So about chinese and MMA. The mentality of chinese about martial arts is completely different than the western view. I don’t think it is going to change, and if it does it will take a very long time. It’s not about fear of fighting, its really about the difference in culture. The western view is that martial arts is for combat. For chinese, that is but just one aspect of the martial arts. If we go back to the beginning, as this article already talked about, kung fu was invented by an indian monk that came to the Shaolin temple, and he invented it because they needed exercises to counteract the effects of the long time meditation the monks did needed to reach enlightenment. If we go back to the origiinal source, that was the original reason martial arts was invented. Some point later, these exercises became part of a combat system, that also included grappling and joint locks (chin na), etc, as one commenter already pointed out. The combat aspect was created out of necessity for self defense. The monks that practiced these original martial arts did not kill people, and organisms, unless forced, and it was the last resort.
When chinese parents bring their young children to learn kung fu, they are not bringing them to learn to do someone in. Though, if forced to use it self defense, they would promote it, but that isn’t their priority. Their priority is instilling discipline to their kids, philosophy, education, hard work ethic, and enlightenment. For them, kung fu, chinese martial arts, is scholastic. As already discussed in the article, its for the higher class.
Let me just point out one example. A group of Shaolin monks carries 2 wooden buckets on a stick each to get water to their village from the river. They could just as easily roll a large cart on wheels with one monk and one bucket to the river, fill it up with water, roll it back and be done. Yet they do it this way, which is much harder. Why? Its a form of exercise for them. If a western martial artist joined this group, the first questions that come to mind, is how does this benefit me? Does this make my arms stronger, and therefore my punch stronger? Will this make my legs stronger to kick harder? Outiside of this, they would find little value of doing these menial tasks just for the hell of it. The shaolin monk is thinking more along of the lines, i’m doing hard work and each time I do it, I get closer to enlightenment. They know it will make them physically stronger, but the benefit to them is more mental. Combat isn’t on their mind.
So in conclusion, unless the chinese mentality of martial arts is changed, its not going to happen. Combat needs to be move up in priority, but it won’t. Even a martial artist like Bruce Lee, who among chinese sifu’s is very western in philosophy by chinese standards, did not fight in the ring. If he doesn’t, there are very few chinese who will. If is is going to happen, its most likely going to be an american born chinese like bruce lee who is going to do it.
One last thing I wanted to point it that no one mentioned is that doing mma sports can promote some bad habits in regards to self defense. Let me just give one example. There’s a rule in mma, that the back of the neck is off limits. That rule gives false security to the martial artist. I see in many UFC fights that part of the body being exposed to the opponent for long periods of time. It takes but a split second for a good martial artist to hit that vulnerable spot that can break it and cause paralysis and/or death. This is one example I see that isn’t good about mma, but in general, i think its the closest thing you can get to real combat.
The problem with chinese kung fu is that many of the hand strikes are illegal in mma, yet a kung fu practitioner practices them the majority of the time. In mma, very simply, you have the fist, and the grab. In kung fu, we have striking palms, chops, tiger claws, snake hands, preying mantis, and then there’s the lost art of pressure point strikes. All of which can’t be used. It isn’t necessarily the eyes at all (or groin) for the target. You can hit these in the soft areas like the stomach, armpits, and neck. Some kung fu practitioners repetitively stab sand with their fingers like they are daggers to make them hard. Human flesh would be nothing to them. I’m just pointing out things that are rarely talked about. Yes these are very dirty techniques, but these are the majority of techniques in kung fu and should not be underestimated.
Very interesting article, and the comments even better. I couldn’t express my desire to see kung fu techniques adapted to work in the ring better.
I have an observation to make though. One huge difference between Western arts and traditional Chinese kung fu, the latter was designed to be practiced over a long amount of time to create the perfect body and technique before teaching how to apply it in combat.
As u said, when it was banned, traditional arts lost most of the latter half of its “curriculum” which was how to apply the techniques effectively.
In the early part of training it was all about getting the technique perfect, being able to aim pressure points perfectly, balance perfectly etc… For this the student strengthened their body, worked on flexibility, speed, relaxed strength etc…
Eventually they would learn to put their techniques into practice. The simpler the art the more obvious the application of a certain technique is.
Unfortunately we lost this, and I would like to see someone who redeveloped it.
Who learns ba gua, tai chi, wing chun, white crane and shaolin arts and mixes them and makes develops effective techniques in today’s world out of those traditional arts. Because they have a lot of potential.
Wing chun could provide the punching techniques, tai chi balance and body strength, ba gua dodging, white crane kicks and counters precision and speed from praying mantis it would become quite a powerful art. It’s a shame no one has thought of how to apply it.
The Mongolians aren’t Chinese. One of the brilliant things the Chinese did, was similiar to what the Turks did – use the Chinese umbrella to say that other ethnic groups are a
“type of Chinese” in order to justify occupying the land. Other than that, a well written article. Especially like the fact that you said “when people say Asian, they mean Chinese”. I’ve said that so many times to people when they group everyone together (I am a Torontonian). Secondly – I am assuming you are of Chinese decent – I like the fact that you confront the stereotype of the culture revolving around money. Usually people when discussing their respective cultures are not truthful about perceived negative aspects. Especially “asians” who care about the face concept. Props for that. 8)
I just want to say I’ve trained all my life in Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Sunmudo, Kung Fu, kickboxing and other disciplines. Your article is shit. I don’t even know where to begin? every stupid little thing you said actually makes me think you might just be a curious 17 yr old doing a school project …. how many more words do I need to type to get to 7,000. You say Chinese are generally referred to as Asian but not Koreans or Japanese. . What was the point in saying that. And it’s not true. (Sigh)….. Reference to money FYI most don’t celebrate Christmas because the majority are not Christian, education….., food 😂 eating oily foods and carbs?! Don’t Italians eat the same?!?! and Western countries such as America, aren’t they the country that has the highest obesity in the world? So how about this healthy diet you speak of in the western world And wouldn’t Chinese that are living in Western countries still eat Chinese food? They’re not gonna say now that we live in XX let’s not eat the food we eat every day and let’s start a completely different diet…. I’m half Chinese and half European so I know the diet. So many other silly things you say in this but I really don’t have the time. Kung Fu is about discipline. I’m sure no one is worried that they are not embracing MMA… a “sport” that just arrived recently. Which has been glorified and is literally a money making racket! Comparing MMA and Kung Fu is like… why have McDonald’s processed chicken nuggets when you can have chicken fillet tenders. You know what I’m saying?
You make no points either. So what? I’ve trained in everything you’ve trained too. The difference is I also know BJJ and MMA – which means I have an advantage in a real fight. Simple as that. Keep your mind open – like Bruce Lee said. We don’t believe in styles. Only learning everything we can.
If anyone wants to learn real Kung Fu then he should mentally prepared him for long time, because it takes long time long to learn. But if someone wants only for self defense then he can learn it in short time. http://www.shaolins.com/
A couple days after reading this, it occurred to me that, instead of trying to use traditional Chinese martial arts in MMA, practitioners of Chinese styles should instead start competing with HEMA practitioners. That is, Historical European Martial Arts… there’ve been recent attempts to reconstruct lost fighting arts based on old fight manuals, and some of it’s progressing pretty well, to the point that historical swordfighting is now an emergent sport. The rules of HEMA competitions vary, but unlike the UFC rules which so heavily favour grappling, HEMA events give space for skilful strikers to shine, and traditional knowledge is celebrated. What’s more, because HEMA is very young, the disadvantage of China having banned martial arts until 1989 is then neutralised, and Chinese martial artists can compete against people who are themselves trying to recover old techniques, which to be honest sounds a lot easier than having to fight professionals who are doing weight cutting and all such nonsense. What’s more, I’ve talked with HEMA guys about techniques in Chinese martial arts and they’re much more readily able to acknowledge the practicality of those techniques than MMA guys I’ve talked to. Fighting traditional styles against MMA there’s always this feeling of proof/disproof… why not fight traditional against traditional?
The person who wrote this article really knows nothing about chinese traditional martial arts. Or chinese traditional culture. And by the way, real life isn’t a ufc ring…
Yes, the author didn’t get to know actual kungfu but what he said was partially true about Chinese nowadays. Kungfu being degraded to sports Wushu that never trained strength and full-contact fighting using the actual Kungfu anymore. Mostly just there to pose, perform simulated movement without actual lei tai style fight. For some, they had substituted kungfu fighting with sanshou.
The author didn’t try to bash on Kung Fu as a whole. The article was about why there are no professional MMA fighters from China. He only briefly outlined why traditional Kung Fu would be no good on its own in an MMA fight and then focused on why Chinese wouldn’t want to learn ground fighting / MMA.
Its hard to argue what was 100 or 200 years ago but fact is that after 4 years of living, traveling and learning martial arts in China in as many places as possible, the only Kung Fu I have experienced was for pure show with no realistic self-defense aspect to it. Many teachers claim to teach you the self-defense application to the forms they are teaching you once you are ready but the sad truth is that they never learned them in the first place since the show aspect is nowadays the only thing important in the Kung Fu. The only exception to this is Sanda / Sanshou and if you guys think that the UFC isn’t realistic enough to qualify, then surely the even more restricted Sanda can’t find your acceptance either.
So when you guys speak of the REAL Kung Fu that the author knows nothing about, I ask you if you have actually been in China and tried finding it yourselves – because if so please get in touch and I’ll check it out!
Finally, I know that there are many amazing Kung Fu schools in Europe and America. That is because A: Hong Kong was a martial arts capital of China for the last century and citizens of Hong Kong were allowed to leave and establish themselves elsewhere and B: because all the good martial arts teachers from the rest of China that could out, got out. I’ve done some very impressive training with Wing Chung guys in Holland – just never ever in anywhere in China.
Real Kung fu is kung fu from the “grandmasters”. Sadly those types of Kung fu are also not very applicable to real fighting, self defense, maybe. The only legitimately powerful forms of Kung fu that have now evolved into real MMA disciplines are Chinese shuai jiao and Chinese Sanda.
bullshit from the beginning to the end!
That’s not an armbar, it’s a damn crucifix.
Gotcha
MMA is an American born-style. If the Chinese or anyone else doesnt care to practice it, then you’re no one to judge. Since when is MMA the tip of the spear in martial arts? Dont forget it was born recently as cheap entertainment on cable television, and was based on violence to attract the typical redneck/ ghetto audience who bothered to watch. Even I am older in age than your MMA style. I dislike the arrogance that comes along with MMA/ UFC fans and fighters, they need to get over themselves. You always see them with their nose up in the air, wanting to prove to everyone how tough they are and always feeling the need to compare everything to MMA instead of wisely appreciating other forms for what they are. You even went as far as ridiculing their family unit and using silly internet meme to prove your point – character assassination is something that only people of low character use.
I met Chinese fighters in tournaments and they are quiet, decent, hard-working people and quite impressive in their fighting skills. They dont need flashness, music and half-naked women on their shows in order to prove their worth to anyone, and they dont constantly compare themselves to others either.
Please read our most recent entry about martial artists. We are not disagreeing with you. However it pains us to see that Japanese and Koreans can do it – why can’t the Chinese?
This article goes a long way to explaining the observations in this post.
http://www.wimsblog.com/2015/05/the-effectiveness-of-traditional-chinese-martial-arts/
The real question should be, will MMA ever take off in China? You got to realize that MMA outside of North America is a dying sport. In China Sanda, Kickboxing and Muay thai are heating up and in a recent WLF vs WCK tournament that pits Chinese Kickboxers vs some of the top American Muay Thai practiiooners, the Chinese won 9-1. So you are actually posing the question out of sheer ignorance. Some of the very best Sanda fighters you have never even heard of could just about beat anyone in their weight class. The reason is not culture, the reason is exposure, MMA got all the exposure locally and internationally, while China needed to build a domestic brand first and foremost and Sanda never ever got off internationally though it is extremely popular in the middle east, the Wu Lin Feng brand is one which is getting the most exposure internationally lately and quite a few top glory and Muay Thai fighters have been beaten by WLF fighters, they are no slouch, you are just letting ignorance and bias get in your way of real information. Watch the best Sanda fighters in China like Kong Hongxin, Xu Ji Fu, Zhang Kun, these guys possess skills and physical strength that you will not see in any MMA or kickboxing fighters today, the main problem for Chinese martial arts is exposure, they have some of the best fighters from the weigh classes of 60–85kg today, but how do you get their name brands out when writers like you persist on ignorance rather than promoting them, oh wait, promoting Chinese fighters actually runs into a conflict of interest in promoting MMA am I right?
Why would there be a conflict? I’m Chinese. I’d love to see more Chinese fighters in MMA. The problem actually is infrastructure and culture. No one said Chinese fighters aren’t good strikers – but they are pretty bad grapplers and putting them all together in MMA. Their coaches are horrible at MMA knowledge, it’s still 10 years behind at least.
Here in lies the problem, MMA is not picking off anywhere, there are rule set in MMA like no kicking on the ground, no elbowing downwards that make MMA grappling inaunthentic as well, it’s pretty much become pseudo wrestling, and quite honestly if you see top level strikers and clinchers in Muay Thai, and you actually believe that you can wrestle these guys to the ground easily, you are off your knockers, the fact is there isn’t any crossover, MMA strikers are pretty weak, and we saw how Rousey got knocked out because she do not have a striking game, MMA is not the be all end all, and it is dying, which is why Rousey is being milked for all she got, and hyped for all she got, there have no big names to replace them, as MMA is not that enjoying to watch outside of the hype. I can tell you that no Japanese or Koreans currently can match the top Chinese fighters in Sanda or Kickboxing, and Muay Thai world champions have been beaten by top Chinese Sanda fighters and Kickboxers, those Muay Thai Champions like Longsangkam, Saenchai, and Saketdao who had never lost to other foreign fighters had all been KOed or lost to Chinese fighters, so your innitial argument shows your ignorance and stereotypical view of Chinese fight scene, you think it’s bad because of the culture and that it is not recognized enough, well that is true, but the lack of recognition is ignorance, not a reflection of reality.
Well at least it goes to show you watch MMA. Which is a good start. Your point still lacks basis given that the Japanese did very well in MMA and it’s because they’re open minded to grappling arts like catch wrestling and judo and jujitsu, whereas Koreans who are doing very well now are open to boxing, taekwondo, and judo since the colonial days. Why can’t Chinese also learn to wrestle and grapple? It has to do with all the reasons I mentioned above. UFC recognizes this – and they’re cutting their losses and no longer investing into Chinese MMA because they realize most Chinese are quite closed minded – still holding onto old cultural values and not doing what Bruce Lee told them over 30 years ago.
As an asian guy, based on my overseas living experience, it is naive to think you can make friends with western people by helping them, teaching them your knowledge, and/or support them to succeed. You’re disadvantaged in their legal system. You cannot trust people in authority or a judge at the court. They will sabotage your life and do everything to crush your success. They will steal your credit, rob away your money, pay you peanuts and use your contribution against you. They dont truly thank you for partnering with them. They are not your friends no matter how superficially friendly they appear. See how Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee died early, it is all a setup to sabotage to keep them from succeeding. And if you think you can live peacefully and not starting any fights, you get bullied. Life is not fair. They want to eat you alive. The problem is the Western world have no vested interest to help Asian countries. If China is where martial arts got originated from, that is the past, and no respect will be given to them. All skills and knowledge would have been stolen or robbed away and turned back against you. There is no ethics or honestly. The western nations dont want to coexist with Asians. They want you to fail, simple as that. Whether you study there or work there, you get smeared and bad mouthed. They want to rob you of success and milk all the money that you have until you go bankrupt. If you’re in the fitness world, you’re setup so that you dont have rights to be on video or do certain things. They will not let you succeed. Period. The fitness industry in Hong Kong is also plagued with unethical salesmanship, they are not there to make people truely fit and healthy or succeed. They are there to milk large sums of money without liability.
Yup.
As a white guy, I can tell you that it’s the fighting organizations fault for hiring profit driven business men to run them. White people don’t sect themselves off in the same way asians do, no offense. For instance, I would be hard pressed to go to China or Japan and find a family of American white immigrants that started a restaurant based solely on American food. Or entire divisions of city nicknamed “American town”. I think the Asian population in America does pretty well, and isn’t considered a social hindrance to be one. Business is cut throat no matter where you go. Personally, having practiced it, I know that kung fu is a superior art. It is super old, and the most well thought out, not only that, but if you dive deep enough into it, you realize that grappling applications actually came from kung fu. In a street fight killing strikes are faster and more efficient, grappling places you in one place for entirely too long and allows for the possible second opponent to do unspeakable things to you. In the octagon a back mounted rear choke is fine, but on the pavement when that person falls directly backward and you(the one with the choke locked in) smacks the pavement from four feet in the air, coupled with the weight of the person you’re choking; your air is gone, your back is damaged, and you won’t hold on to the choke. Every point and counter point has been mentioned in this blog, kung fu works in real life especially against meat head tap out freaks, it’s just more complicated and takes hard work, as all the best things in life do.
My parents helped me migrated to New Zealand to go for cleaner environment. I found all sorts of obstacles living there as the local Caucasian community abuse their positions to bully you. I was asked all sorts of private personal questions such as the name of my teacher at my school, which other bank do you use etc. Then told me on behalf of the Nati**** Bank they refused to let me deposit money to open a savings account. There was no legitimate reasons and I could walk to another branch of the same bank and get different treatment from staff. I could close my credit card account with money in it and instead of giving me my money the staff wants me to sign papers that result in my money gone to the staff himself. At school the American teacher or local Caucasian teacher would put unbelievable criticisms of me on the private form that gets sent to overseas universities, when you thought you had a good relation with them. They just knife you behind your back in bad faith. At school, while I was sitting in my chair quietly working on math, a Caucasian bully guy would come over and start drawing on my skin with marker pen, or use the board duster to smear my uniform with chalk dust to annoy you. They are not your brothers or friendly people wanting to know you and be friends. If they talk to you, they just want to know if they can take advantage of you financially. Irish people are different – they are well intentioned and mannered. When Americans shop in Vietnam, be it a Caucasian or an Asian American, they play the I win you loose game – bargaining down anything the poor Vietnamese sell to only $1. Chinese products also face the same treatment. If Chinese dont doing sweatshop labouring and selling the products or services at bargain low price, and the overseas merchants cant make extortionist profit, they would not source from China. Foreigners wont care about you Chinese living in bad conditions. It is an I win you loose mentality. In employment, it was difficult to find job when your Caucasian peer would easily get one while I was in New Zea1and. If you found job, your local coworker bullies you and withhold giving credit to you then play politics to drive you out. Americans and Australians come and sell their shit then go home after milking money. You thought after you left the schooling system people will grow up and be more civil? You’re dead wrong. Almost every ordinary living activities could land you into trouble. And you pay the ultimate price with legal fees, counselling fees, medical fees, service fees. And nobody would care about you if you dont have job or money. Chinese are stuck surviving selling food at low prices. Only old gay men wants to have sex with you. Small sized local girls dont want you. They want the tall guys. Smaller stature Chinese guys dont have an easy go in career and dating or fighting. And at the commercial gym like LesMi11s, you are only allowed to be a paying participant at their classes, and if you want to move up to become instructors, you have to keep on paying for the ‘new’ releases of music choregraphy and by contract you will not be able to be featured on video. Only their small ‘elite’ group of people would be able to be stars and train others at that level. However for the Chinese I know of, they didn’t commercialise the martial arts and sell multiple versions of these ‘trainings’ at exorbant level of fees and restrict the stars to be only the Asian people. The transfer of skill was genuine and not bad intentioned however later the skill might be used back against us. If you watch world championships of kyokushin karate on youtube, you see the taller stronger black or Caucasians beating the hell out of the other shorter Japanese black belts with their longer limbs and brute force. Their interest becomes clear – they only want to ensure domination and winning success among themselves. They are not into win win. For me, being at age 42, when I talk to a 27 year old personal trainer guy, he is full of disrespect of the opinion of an elder guy like me, and fullying brainwashed with the corrupt commercialism of fitness training culture. When I told him how HK local trainers cheat their clients such as abandoning the client during the paid training session to do sales for other people, he doesn’t see there’s anything wrong about it, filled with gross disrespect, he argued that the contract didn’t state the trainer has to accompany the client for the full 60 minutes, when the client was billed at HK$700/hour. He said while you might think the money is a lot, it may not be so in the eyes of the trainer or the gym. I told him $700 is about what people can make with a full day’s work. He doesn’t care, has no noble goals to benefit the community in his work. He sympathasies with the personal trainers because they have to run sales quota. I can’t imagine how we have a large supply of strong successful Chinese MMA fighters if the fighters have to indebt themselves huge amounts of money in training falling victim to commercialism.
I mean, I hate to break it to you, what you see as racism, is just the world. Most Americans don’t see things the way you do. I got bullied by black guys in high school, but I don’t think it was a cultural thing, I must have LOOKED like an easy target to them. If you were a big muscular asian guy, that wouldn’t have happened, people prey on weakness more than they do race. America has a giant amount of every culture in it, it’s a little unfair to say that it’s just the caucasians, we are the predominant culture, but we aren’t the only one, not even close. You need to blame others less and take what happened as something to strengthen you, bullying stops being fun to bullies when there are consequences. Take it from me, I fought back every time, they lose interest.
Thanks for your enlightenment, Sam. I admit I’m small in size just like how my ancestors have been, I might only be able to make myself more muscular and fit, and perhaps a bit more money, and having more friends. The height cannot be changed. But I think smaller guys consume less and can be as intelligent as the bigger sized, they may make better astranauts because they save fuel flying to the space which could be our future. I left NZ back to Hong Kong because I didn’t trust THEIR legal system. I was called to serve as jury when a shop was trying to prosecute an apparent Chinese guy shoplifting something that was only $27. The lawyer rejected choosing me to avoid disadvantaging the judgement. When gross privacy violation and defamation happened to me, my peers said if I sue the company it can make me look bad. Chinese was a minority in NZ, so I think we’d be disadvantaged and treated as second class citizens.
How dare those black guys bully you. How did you fight back? I think you can fight back because Caucasians are still in the majority in USA. When I was at that NZ school, I wasn’t a violent person I have good character, but I suspect bullies see your peace seeking attitude as a weakness and they dont think you have the orientation/guts to fight back/fight them, they treated you like doormat. It got me so annoyed and angry that I took a glass bottle and hit the head of that bully. Maybe I didn’t hit hard enough, the glass didn’t break. Fighting and politics was very distracting and destructive to legitimate activiites like using the mind to study and mental work. I think I had good academic results only because I had peace to focus on learning instead of drowning in anger as a result of rudeness and bullying from others. I was glad I could win them playing touch rugby with my agility, but I stay away from the real rugby because I dont dare getting violently crushed by heavy weight sized people in tackles.
It’s not in every one to be violent, I suspect you are young still, my advice is that if you’re here, some how self defense interests you,learn enough to be dangerous and surround yourself with peaceful people and your life will be better for it. Those who go looking for violence usually find it. The smaller in stature can be and are known to be smarter and more diplomatic, just don’t let the plight of a few racist new zealanders in the middle of no where get you down, there’s a whole big world out there. I go to a university where all my fellow engineering students are either middle eastern, asian or white, and believe me we’re the minority, I don’t think they think I’m less capable, but you never know?
Take care
What I replied to plumtart is just facts talk on how to debate with people who are racist. No offense if my comments offended you. As long it is facts, we are free to discuss or talk about anything for knowledge sharing. Race doesn’t tell good or bad but it’s the individual mentality. Any race, there are the good and the bad. The MMA group insulting and picking fight on other martial arts is indeed a good drive to make these traditional martial artist to restore actual fighting syllabus and strength/flexibility training that most have already dropped for being slacking and lazy.
I fear the safety of that Tai Shan Dong 7″ Chinese boxer. At this moment, he can use his size advantage to beat the other boxers. However, I worry that someone jealous of him would try to take him down using whatever methods, including shooting him from somewhere. I dont know if there is security scanning for the audience in the sports stadium where they hosts the game. Even the game of Miss universe beauty peagent is not immune from bad faith sabotage, i heard stories of candidates finding their gown being filled with pins and what goes on behind the smilely faces backstage
I was sent to learn judo as a kid. I didn’t like the idea of fighting to start with. I found pleasure in handling computer problems and creativity. I was raised in this christian school that preaches about faith hope and love. as a middle class born, i went to high class places and mind about manners and politeness. i have the concept of delivering good service to clients and bosses. i took interest in making computers work for someone. the concept of slaughtering someone sounds remote to me. im a small sized chinese so im not gifted with a 6 foot body. in the school that i went to, everyone was well behaved and there was no stealing, fighting or bullying. but when i was sent to new zea1and, things changed. the guys at school had no love, and there were fighting and bullying. teachers didn’t do much to stop it. the function of murdering someone in myself was just disabled even for self defense. i just didnt like violence. i lost hearing in one ear suddenly and that lesson taught me that health is not taken for granted and we should treasure life and use ourselves for good purpose. i can get bullied but i just absorb the damage. i see the world we live in nowadays have a mixture of different kinds of people, it gets quite out of control, your neighbour or the coworker next to you may sit and watch you suffer without a helping hand, and you cannot reason with rude bullies. they dont share the believe of fair play, love and peace. those that do mma fighting i think is another different kind of character, i think they are driven by money or trying to prove a point…..maybe somewhere along the lines of race superiority, or that they are the big bully not to be messed with. no matter how far behind are chinese fighters, etc. i want to give kudos to the chinese government for having original ways of thinking, living and inventing, preserving their cultures and values, and protecting their borders from aliens. who knows what happen next. The ISIS islamic people are expanding territory using their religion, military ruling and terrorism. The dont care about rule of law and common human decency.
Go to hell with ur murica sport, contaminated abc
I’m also not American, lol.
GTH with ur murica fail sport u contaminated abc
I was born in China. Lol.
First off, I absolutely loved your article. I just set up a BJJ school in Dali, Yunnan Province and have has very similar experiences to what you wrote up here.
There is one point that I think you completely left out though and I would love to hear your opinion on it.
When talking about Chinese Parents, you completely left out the Chinese Craze around the Olympic Games! Taekwondo is by now, more widely practiced in China than any form of Kung Fu and I think the main reason for that is that A: it features cool uniforms, belts and looks cool with all the high kicks but more importantly B: Taekwondo is in the Olympics. If BJJ is in the Olympics is also the most common question parents ask me before they sign their kids up.
So, do you recon that if BJJ were to become an Olympic discipline, would more people have their kids train it and as a result would have more professional MMA fighters in the long-term?
Now, to anticipate 1 potential argument for no, it wouldn’t is that Judo is a grappling art that is part of the Olympics and is definitely not practiced widely around China. To that I would answer that A: Judo is Japanese and the Chinese hate the Japanese (the one Judo school I ever visited was in Kunming and they claimed they were teaching Chinese Judo) and B: that Judo isn’t as efficient as BJJ – which is the reason why Grand master Helio had to change the system and develop BJJ in the first place and thus not as suitable for Chinese practitioners who are, as you mentioned in your article, usually of slighter build.
By the way, the reason why I say that Taekwondo is more popular than Kung Fu in China is because its what I see every day. Traditional Kung Fu is for old people in the park to practice at 6am in the morning, Sanda or Sanshou is for bullies and people that do want to become professional fighters. The only young people that train traditional Kung Fu are western travelers lured to overpriced Residential Schools by Kung Fu Panda and Chinese young people that hope for a career as a Movie Star and thus learn Wushu purely for demonstration purposes.
FYI, I have not met a single Shaolin Kung Fu teacher who was over 30 years old and not completely crippled in knees and back from decades of unsafe training methods and a short and dangerous career as a stuntman in the Beijing kung fu movie industry – so much for the longevity aspect of training kung fu. Now for the old people Kung Fu (more traditional styles), if there is no value other than flexibility and longevity to it, perhaps they should learn yoga (they can call it Chinese Yoga if that makes them more comfortable) instead and stop pretending that they are martial artists but their techniques are too deadly to use or try out.
Would you perhaps allow me to have this article translated into Mandarin and use it for informational and marketing purposes, giving you full credit of course?
Sure, as long as your translate it faithfully and link it back to our original post, we give you that permission. Thanks.
As for your question “Why can’t Chinese also learn to wrestle and grapple? ”
Chinese didn’t bother to learn how to fight. They see martial arts as non-benefiting activity that doesn’t bring income nor profit. Chinese mostly are materialistic apparently got brainwashed indirectly from hard lives caused by corrupt and bad leaders that wanted all Chinese to be too weak to fight back, unable to voice out, selfish, don’t care and don’t want to know attitude.
Today, all these must change and be eliminated to restore our old 文(civil) and 武(military) ability. Japanese and Koreans owned these 2 therefore, they care for their own people and fight for their own people. Chinese only adopt 文(civil) but erased 武(military) therefore, Chinese mostly still live like cows (prey) that can be easily threatened and controlled by the dozen lions (predator). If all Chinese began to adopt 武(military) and 文(civil), our race will be strongest. The original Kungfu infact does come with strikes, grappling, counter grappling & floor fighting.
Because of Mao banning kungfu, and latter ban lifted, the greed & lazy bastards overtook Kungfu organization management boards that they began to drop fighting syllabus replacing it with sports sparring pampered by too much rules that restrict almost all kungfu fighting moves. Wushu and Kungfu you see today no longer teach how to fight nor giving any acrobatic and flexibility training. The pattern they are doing are sports pattern that do not punch nor kick but just mere posing. Back in the old days, pattern teach practitioners to look and aim where they wanted to strike before giving real punch, kick, block, lock, grapple etc as if you’re fighting someone.
Testing to see if this posts.
If you post something that adds to the discussion we will approve it.
Best write .
Those Taiji 1954 fight video destroy my faith in Kungfu 😦
Really good article. I’ve been doing tma since I was 7… But as I’ve trained, I realized that my father ( first teacher) was really stuck to the old ways… he didn’t adapt to other fighting styles and techniques. I later started Wushu at 13 and Chen Tai chi… Wushu isn’t useful for me (I wanted to fight) but taichi is amazing for learning how to conserve energy and breathing.
I took my wing chun, hung gar and Choi lei fut and just took all the fighting movements. Such as punches, kicks, blocks, and etc. And drilled on them like no tomorrow. Looking back now, it’s very similar to MMA in respect to conditioning your fighting techniques that works for you. It’s also very similar to what Bruce Lee did. Ignored all the bull shit and get straight to the point.
Chinese martial arts needs to change. I really hope it does soon… You can never be good with one style. You need exposure to everything, turn fighting into a science, and train techniques that work with your body type. Big, small, heavy, long arms, short legs… Everyone is different. No one style fits all.
Thank you sir – you get it!
Donnie Yen was a rebel when he was young, due to the huge expectations and pressures from his parents as his mother is the founder of the Chinese Wushu Research Institute in Boston and his father was a scholar and a musician.[45] Yen joined a Chinatown gang in Boston, MA, in his early years. He was a very curious teenager who sought to exchange martial arts knowledge with people from different martial arts backgrounds which led to him gaining profound knowledge in practical martial arts, and having a reputation as a street brawler.
There’s one reported occasion that confirms him being an efficient martial artist. According to news reports by Hong Kong news channels in the late 1990s, Yen was at a nightclub with his then girlfriend, Joey Meng. Inside the nightclub, Joey got harassed by a troublesome gang who had taken an interest in her. Yen warned them to leave her alone but to no avail. As Yen and Joey left the club, the gang followed and attacked Yen. According to the news, Yen beat up eight members of the gang who were hospitalized.[46] This incident is still known in Hong Kong to this day – with people bringing it up in discussions concerning real fights as well as when comparing the practical fighting skills of various Hong Kong martial arts actors.
Malaysian Tan Sri and Martial Arts Star Michelle Yeoh has said that Donnie Yen is the fastest guy she has worked with.[47] Other martial arts stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li have also stated that Yen may be the best fighter in terms of practical combat in the Asian Cinematic Universe.[48]
World class fighters such as former Strikeforce Middleweight Champion Cung Le and former World Boxing Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson, who have worked with Donnie Yen in films Bodyguards and Assassins and Ip Man 3 respectively, have both claimed that Donnie Yen is an incredible martial artist and will do well in authentic combat.[49] While filming Ip Man 3, crew members were afraid that Mike Tyson, who had been a professional boxer, would forget the choreography and throw real punches to injure Yen. However, it was Yen who fractured Tyson’s finger while using his elbow to block Tyson’s punches.[50] Tyson has since said in various interviews that Donnie would beat him in a real fight. Yen remained humble and downplayed the entire event, claiming that it was purely an accident. (c) Wiki
I loved your article it was wonderful!
I agree with you in many levels. Im not equal deep minded as you are. but i got some interesting ideas.
one point i wanna tell you about is fighting experience. of course with this article you have wrought you are a very clever person. anyhow asian traditional “players” doesnt have any life/death fighting scenarios like MMA has. Thats 1 problem
If someone in kung fu fighting would get equal life/death experience like in mma there style would evolve in same tact as MMA does.
Another problem is the money. In pure self defence you dont have the same econmy to evolve your style. very few asian ppl can live with there training.
but if a pure defence system person get som life time experience and exercice like hell just mabey they will turn up like Bruclee.
So the problem in asians styles is probably the fighting scenarios.
You have Krav maga as ex. thats a fighting system i belive working and many countries use that in there militaries.
krav maga is created in Israeli. its not a asian style tho. but still they have diffrent life/death senarios and with that they can evolve as the same tact as MMA.
So mabey exercise pure self defence system can make you as a better fighter.
imagine you have boxing u understan ju jutsu and then u throw some super wierd punches in the ring
mabey u will chock your opponent, cuz you changed your boxing style in 4 sec.
Many styles forget about oh what do i do on the flour. or feel like learning fall teqnique like in aikido, jutsu, parkour is wasted in time.
as you say if u go to university and only learn divide and some + you will regret it cuz you dont have al the tools u will miss some basic stuff like minus, multiplications you need many diffrent basic stuff to clear university or being a scientist.
of course more stuff you learn and som stuff you need to throw away
to be a good figther no mather if it is MMA or Tradtional martial art system.
There are great Chinese martial artists or practitioners of Chinese martial arts. folks like Sifu Hisham in Taiwan are doing great work and are highly regarded even by Mixed martial artists they have kept the martial part intact. the problem is that we don’t know about them. The “martial mentality” usually varies from culture to culture and Mixed martial arts has taken on a very loud aggressive boastful in your face attitude no doubt because of its foundation and purpose. its only natural for many of its practitioners to have a I am better than you mentality. it is true that a lot of culture was lost during the turbulent times of the revolution in China, and a lot of folk there would be the first to admit that they are only now rediscovering things. there are many posts online of mma fighters grounding and pounding other lesser skilled martial artists but there’s also a video of Maiquel Falcao getting brutally beaten in a street fight. The reality is that we loose touch of reality because of our own ego this has been a long time problem with “traditional martial artists” and is a problem of “modern martial artists” all your toughness and skill wont mean squat if you get shanked and your guts are hanging out. for me the question of why no wushu fighters are in mma is just as odd as asking why no krav maga practitioners, or African stick fighters, or wwe wrestlers, or european fencers, or aikido masters or kaliripayatu practitioners or ninjutsu practitioners don’t thrive in the cage. tom brady is a hell of a quarterback I wonder if he’d stand a chance against James Durant in basket ball? sport Sanda has made an ok impact because its is designed for that kind of competition. shuai Jiao no doubt would do well in the cage similar to judo because they are both designed for that type of competition. Sambo has pretty much proven itself because like sanda it was a military art translated to a sport for the ring….see the trend? my point because a particular system of fighting may not “work” in an octagon with octagon rules doesn’t render it useless a solid punch to the throat would damage anybody and no amount of bjj muy thai training will make your eyes immune to a thumb. A good way to break away from the “martial arts illusion” would be to go to prison or join the military and go on tour or the French foreign legion where your pretty much expendable. Fighting is universal dogs n cats wrestle all the time what refines is the mind. I am in no way bashing mma btw I respect the skill of a lot of these fighters at the same time I respect the skill of the young man who does changquan and can do 3 360s in the air but has no knowledge of actual combat.
One additional thought…it would seem that Donnie Yen is more than just an actor. According to news reports by Hong Kong news channels in the late 1990s, Yen was at a nightclub with his then girlfriend, Joey Meng. Inside the nightclub, Joey got harassed by a troublesome gang who had taken an interest in her. Yen warned them to leave her alone but to no avail. As Yen and Joey left the club, the gang followed and attacked Yen. According to the news, Yen beat up eight members of the gang who were hospitalized. He hospitalized eight me and received only minor injuries.
True
Great article, i read it like 1 year ago and cameback to ask this: after that much time, how happy were you with the sucess that was UFC Shanghai? It was a great day for chinese MMA fans, huh? Maybe you know how much of a impact it had in China sports fans?
It’s a good start. UFC has some potential new stars.