Originally posted by t_niehoff
[B]A couple things . . .
Ray asks for “constructive comments.” Well, how much more constructive can I be than to tell you to fight as part of your training, and to understand why it is absolutely essential? Just do it. The irony, Ray, is you don’t get what it means to be “constructive.” Constructive means helpful. A heap of dry-land swimmers offering each other advice on how to swim in the water or train to swim in the water isn’t “constructive” (it’s all just speculative theory, trying to infer from what they do on dry land about how it will be in the water); someone telling you to go get in the pool is “constructive”. The former won’t help you swim, the latter will. [/B]
Ok good enough comments. It depends on what level to fight at. We have people who fight street fights and people who work as bouncers and they do fine. They never stepped into a boxing ring or trained ground fighting and they have been bouncing for years. Maybe it’s their aggressive attitude that makes them succeed. Even with no fighting training these guys would be a handful. I think we are talking about non world class professional fights in all this discussion.
There is a black bouncer here who looks like Mr. T. He never set foot in a boxing gym or has trained grappling but no one in the past 20 years has ever beat this guy and most bouncers on the island have tried. He trained some classical Hung Fut styles, a bit of this and that and now trains in Ba Gua and QiGing out of a book. He is solidly built, can hit like a truck and means business when he fights. He said he has a respect for the art of Wing Chun. One of our students trains Ba Gua with him.
Real fighting to me is the people who do that again and again in real unpredictable situations. Ring training is a different kind of game. Once you put on the gloves then the heavier guy has the advantage. The boxer will have the advantage in most cases. So in that venue it is better to stick to boxing. In wrestling, technique is one thing but hitting the gym to lift weights and just get really fit is maybe a bigger factor. But against professionals, the most current techniques are a must. Yesterday’s Gracie techniques won’t work.
The guy I saw the other night boxing had a killer attitude, was very experienced by his talk but he wasn’t in shape and so he got creamed. If he was attacked on the street then most of the time he would probably come out fine with his level of fitness. But for the prefessional or Olympic ring it won’t cut it.
The levels talk in Wing Chun stuff from David is just a joke. You can’t be serious all day long. Most of us aren’t in a life and death war. Personally I have seen people go from straight pure Wing Chun training into street combat and the results were good. These guys just went in confidently and did their stuff. If the other guy was close enough to hit them then they were close enough to hit also and they certainly didn’t lack in speed or power or hand techniques. A lot of street and bar type start a fight in chi sau range and that’s their undoing.
One talented guy I know had no martial arts background. He trained in the Kenneth Chung system and was a student of one of my students. He did the forms and chi sau and then got himself a job as a bouncer. He had quite a few encounters and did pretty well in all cases. Then he moved to England and became a Bobby or police officer or cop. He said in that part of London it was pretty rough and he had frequent occasion to use his Wing Chun. He sent us a letter to say the stuff really works. Then he had some matches with some martial arts police officers there and defeated them so they asked him to be a self defense instructor. If this guy was a real student of Ken’s he would be much better even.
His teacher was even more fearless. He had also the standard Wing Chun background, never touched a boxing gym and never set foot in a BJJ school. But he also became a bouncer with quite a few fights. He also tried his hand at a couple of people from the kickboxing school who thought they could take him but he took them out. This guy weighed 220 pounds. He said some of the characters who came in to cause trouble weighed in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. This guy was very smart in that he made friends with both the police and the Hell’s Angels. The Angels are pretty good back up I would say.
Later this guy became a correctional officer. He went on to study Gracie Jujitsu, and a few other things and now does Karate. But he said when the going gets tough, he still relies on his Wing Chun training.
This same guy had a match with this other bouncer who was a student here. The bouncers credentials were impressive in that he competed in Kyokoshin Karate for 5 years, did 9 years of Choy Lee Fut, maybe 5 years of Hung Fut , sparred around with the black bouncer I mentioned above and had a job in another city as a gang enforcer. He was mentally tough. He was also tall but his weight was maybe 200 pounds. He also got beat. Still he was a good fighter. The next day he might have won, who knows?
The only time a student told me he had real problems was in a tournament setting where the fighters did hit and run tactics. The bouncers who work in bars tell me the standard chi sau training (which can include punching, kicking, elbows, take downs , sweeps, head butts etc.) just did fine. They told me they wouldn’t like to go to the ground to get kicked in the head by the guy’s buddies or to roll around on broken glass.
So in our neck of the world that is our experience. Some people enjoy working out with other arts and others don’t. But really from our experience I can’t say that the people who don’t spend time in the boxing gym or on the mat were not realistic and effective fighters because they were successful in the situations we are all supposedly training for. I think this is not a forum for professional fighters.
With a Wing Chun club, you can make the training as aggressive as any two individuals like. One of our members visted Wong Shun Leung’s school and there split lips and bleeding noses in chi sau were just a normal part of the training. This student asked these guys if they liked that kind of training and they said they did because they wanted to make sure it would work on the street for real. We never trained that way for liability reasons but still some of the students were pretty good.
One new police guy we had trained for six months with us. He just did the first form, some drills and chi sau. Then he got assigned to work up North. He said since he was a rookie cop they threw him into six major brawls with lumberjack types throwing hooks, uppercuts and anything else. He said he came out unscratched. He said he was never so scared in all of his life. I asked him what it was that really helped and he said it was mostly the idea of going down the centerline to punch. But he said it was a little frowned upon because they prefer more controlling methods that don’t draw any blood. It doesn’t look good inthe media when the police draw blood (other than by shooting the guy).
So this is just our experience. Maybe hanging out in boxing gyms and BJJ studios would have made these guys even better but they didn’t have the time or interest for that nor did they see any good reason to do that because the stuff they had worked good enough for them.
We also had a guy here who was number 2 in Germany for stickfighting one year and who used to hang around with a gang of 200 guys that fought regularly against the skinheads. He had 8 years of BJJ. He thought the regular Wing Chun training was very good. He knew most of the top in WT in Europe. He also worked as a bouncer here and said he found the Wing Chun very useful in the non weapons type of fighting. Fortunately he was a nice guy.
I have a lot more of these kinds of stories. So I can’t say other people’s ideas are wrong. All I can say is here is our experience. There isn’t just one way to learn how to fight. Some people’s chi sau gets pretty close to reality maybe even closer than BJJ. I am a fan of both boxing and BJJ though so don’t get me wrong.
Maybe other people can state their experiences in these kinds of matters? No one knows the skill levels of anyone on this forum or their students or about their successes and failures, no matter how they train. Maybe some people just run through tires and punch trees all day long. But I wouldn’t put them down for that nor assume I could beat those guys up or suggest they should train in a different way. I would be interested to hear their results in fighting though.
