Kung Fu and the UFC, which is more reality based?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Street/Reality Fighting
1

I was reading the official rules for the UFC the other day and I found it interesting how the rules of the UFC prohibit some of the most important and effective techniques found in the Chinese martial arts, techniques that also happen to be common in a real life and death conflict. This leaves me to wonder, which is really the more “reality based” art? In many magazines and websites, UFC related martial arts are being sold as being more realistic and effective than the traditional arts such as karate and kung fu. Many people are starting to look at traditional styles as being antiquated and as something that does not work in real life. The fact that very few if any kung fu stylists compete in the UFC does not help the situation. Before I continue, let’s look at the rules.

UFC rules, as approved by the Nevada State Athletic Commission – July 23, 2001

Weight classes:

Lightweight – over 145 lbs. to 155 lbs.
Welterweight – over 155 lbs. to 170 lbs.
Middleweight – over 170 lbs. to 185 lbs.
Light Heavyweight – over 185 lbs. to 205 lbs.
Heavyweight – over 205 lbs. to 265 lbs.
Bout duration:

All non-championship bouts shall be three rounds.
All championship bouts shall be five rounds.
Rounds will be five minutes in duration, with a one minute.
A one-minute rest period will occur between each round
Fouls:

Butting with the head.
Eye gouging of any kind. (this prohibits any kind of advanced eye gouging techniques found in most Chinese styles)
Biting.
Hair pulling. (again prohibits some of the most lethal techniques such as twisting or breaking the neck)
Fish hooking. (prohibits many effective eagle and tiger claw techniques)
Groin attacks of any kind. (prohibits many effective testicle kicks found in karate and kung fu)
Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent.
Small joint manipulation. (prohibits a vast array of chin na techniques)
Striking to the spine or the back of the head.
Striking downward using the point of the elbow.
Throat strikes of any kind, including, without limitation, grabbing the trachea. (again, this prohibits a large number of techniques, some of which are very important in Chinese martial arts, such as the fok sau of wing chun, or the eagle claw techniques used on the throat)
Clawing, pinching or twisting the flesh. (this would render most tiger and eagle claw styles useless)
Grabbing the clavicle. (a very effective chin na technique)
Kicking the head of a grounded opponent.
Kneeing the head of a grounded opponent.
Stomping a grounded opponent.
Kicking to the kidney with the heel.
Spiking an opponent to the canvas on his head or neck.
Throwing an opponent out of the ring or fenced area.
Holding the shorts or gloves of an opponent.
Spitting at an opponent.
Engaging in an unsportsmanlike conduct that causes an injury to an opponent.
Holding the ropes or the fence.
Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area.
Attacking an opponent on or during the break.
Attacking an opponent who is under the care of the referee.
Attacking an opponent after the bell has sounded the end of the period of unarmed combat.
Flagrantly disregarding the instructions of the referee.
Timidity, including, without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece or faking an injury.
Interference by the corner.
Throwing in the towel during competition.
Ways to win:

Submission by:
Physical tap out.
Verbal tap out.
Technical knockout by the referee stopping the contest.
Decision via the scorecards, including:
Unanimous decision.
Split decision.
Majority decision.
Draw, including:
Unanimous draw.
Majority draw.
Split draw.
Technical decision.
Technical draw.
Disqualification.
Forfeit.
No contest.

As you can see by reading this, half the techniques that are found in traditional martial arts are prohibited, not because they do not work, but because they are too effective in damaging the opponent and removing his ability to fight, often causing permanent or at least crippling injury. Despite all this, UFC related styles are sold as “real fighting” and traditional styles are mocked and viewed as systems containing mostly useless techniques. The fact that many traditional styles lost in these tournaments makes things worse, leading high school wrestlers to believe they could beat any black belt (I ran into this a few times). Yet how can you expect a fighter to win when the focus of his martial art is almost completely prohibited. So, as far as I’m concerned, the traditional arts of China remain the more reality based fighting art.

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NHBfighting has rules, but what makes them effective, and more effective than what most people in the martial arts are doing is they train as they fight.

How do you know your techniques will work? In NHB they do them all the time and see the results.

training methods is what makes the difference. People who criticize traditional Martial Arts see what the majority of schools are doing here in the US. Not training realistically.

Its very common to see a boxer or wrestler beat a traditional MA because of training. If you took a MA, and fought heavy contact a couple times a week, broke out training equipment to work on timing, speed and power and fought different styles (not point sparring) you will become an effective fighter.

If you want to see how effective you are, ask a guy who trains for NHB to fight (There are many around the country). Tell him you want to be allowed to claw, poke,… and he will prob let you. they know from experience that theories sound good, but dont often work.

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I love this argument

Before I start, let me say I have studied Isshin-Ryu my entire youth (4 to 12), Hung Gar, Wing Chun, S Mantis and now E-Chuan (Internal Martial arts) – I love traditional Asian Martial Arts.

With that said, how many **** rules does a Kung Fu tournament have? It has all of the rules as UFC + You can’t elbow in most of them … you are covered from head to toe like the **** Michelin man … you usualy can’t take the guy down and if you do the action is usually stopped … the action is stopped in the guy runs out of the ring … the action is stopped if you clinch, ect, ect, ect.

So which is a better venue to demonstrate that you can handle yourself. I am trying to get to a level to fight in one of these events.

On the rare occassion that one of my hung gar or wing chun friends do want to spar – and boy do we have to tone it down – they have NEVER pulled off any crane techniques or tiger claws to my face, ect.

Why? Because those are simply strikes, they lack a delivery system. They lack the basic strong structure, the basic shielding, the basic stopping of the other guy to get in there and land a solid blow.

All of this is in their respective arts, but they don’t train the basics at full blast. I don’t need to stick my fingers into your eyes and grab the back of your face skull and pull it down. I need to jam you up and feed you a solid strike you can do nothing about. When I can do that, than I can hit you anyway I want to.

But when you just say, this is too dangerous, let’s do it in the air 1,000 times … yes, you make the strike smooth. But you lack the tools to get it in, and more importantly, you’re too busy $hitting your pants about the familiar situation of the other guy trying to beat your head.

I’m often embarrassed by my Kung Fu cousins. We need to stop making excuses and start making examples. Get out there and do it! Join the UFC and get disqualified. Make Tito grab his eyeball off the floor in front of everybody. How famous do you think you will become?

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dito

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I always wondered why high-profile NHB events have weight classes. Well, actually I know why, but it would be very interesting (to me) to see some “open weight” competitions.

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I think some of you are making assumptions about how I and other people at schools like ours train. We train in San Shou and our school has full contact sparring and fighting, with punches, kicks, elbows, knees, throws, sweeps and joints locks. In fact this should be a major part of the training in any traditional kung fu/wu shu school. Unfortunately I think I’ve already been stereotyped as being one of those guys that does nothing but forms and point sparring and thinks my techniques will work against anybody because they attack vulnerable targets. I believe very strongly that one has to engage in full contact sparring to learn how to actually deliver a blow. You have boxing gloves on, but as was already said, it’s the delivery of the blow, not the actual formation of the hand that matters.

Now what I was trying to say is that there are a few kung fu schools out there that engage in this kind of training AND they train in the traditional techniques of self defense that are very useful in self defense and real life conflicts. Because the fact is, in a real fight there are unpleasant things like eye gouging, biting, pulling and tearing on the ear lobe etc… Now if a traditional martial arts school trains in full contact fighting with all aspects of combat in mind, as well as training in techniques that are strictly prohibited in any fight sport, how can one say that the traditional style is less “reality based” than many of the sport oriented NHB systems out there.

Here is a fight clip of one of our instructors fighting in san shou.
http://chanskungfu.com/videos/danda.wmv

7

Couldn’t load the clip, but I’ll try later from home.

Didn’t mean to label or judge you, just understand the question and apply the “if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck” theory and types of posts that are on this board.

But if you guys are fighting and competing than you know the answer already. The rules aren’t there to make it harder for any one style, they are their to keep us from maiming and paralyzing each other, maybe even kill someone with a bad neck crank, ect.

So there is a core set up: kick, punch, throw, grapple, lock, submit… every style should have that.

You admitted that the skill lies in landing that clean strike, so there you have it. Everybody knows how to grab someone’s balls, poke their eyes and rip at their throat … these are no Kung Fu secrets … girls are pulling each others hair out there.

Its just the tone of these posts always sound like, “These NHB matches are prejudice against Kung Fu because we can’t use …”

Hell, allow full kicking, punching, elbows, knees, throwing, locking, the breaking of limbs, the non stop action until someone is KOd and ONLY invite kung fu guys … I’m guessing it would be a small card … forget adding the “other” stuff.

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“So, as far as I’m concerned, the traditional arts of China remain the more reality based fighting art.”

As long as u train against a resisting opponent then u’re GOOD. The joke is purely on the skools that do not train with resisting opponents and kick and punch the AIR.

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First of all, UFC is not REAL fighting, its more of a sport. All traditional martial arts(or almost all) were developed for maiming or killing an opponent, so wether u like it or not the mayority of their techniques ARE prohibited in this type of competition. Their sole aim is to try to disable an opponent as fast as you can because they were developed in times were war was common and were society wasn’t bound by any laws so you had to practice this techniques to defend your life even if it meant taking the one of another person. An other point,in traditional martial arts(at least kung fu) they don’t teach you to trade blows with ones opponents until one drops, they teach you to block and dodge until you see an opening, then hit or grab or pull one of the opponents vital points to take him down so in matches of boxing and kickboxing alike they are also limited, not only because alot of the techniques are prohinited because they may MAIM or KILL, but because they also were gloves and this limits the practitioner not only to normal punches(no other punches like phoenix eye, no other hand attack like the palm, and no grabs and hold) but it also reduces the ability to knockdown an opponent with little blows to weak parts(as trained in traditional martial arts) because the gloves reduce the impact. So traditional martial arts may not do well in those competition but in real fighting, where everything counts, Traditional martial arts are very effective. I’m not saying that MMA don’t work on the street(because they also really work on the streets) but only resalting that TMA fair better on the streets than in a ring or a competition. This is were the “sport fighting” aspect of the TMA comes in, as in for example: kung fu= San shou karate=kickboxing.

We really should look back at why this types of “sport fighting” arts emerged: because in now a days confrotations on the streets are rare(well in most places), so to keep the fighting aspects of the martial arts alive they were developed(but in a sport way: with rules and restrictions). I’m also aware that a lot of
kwons or dojos(or whatever) aren’t teaching these techniques well and they only teach form after form after form. This is what also causes bad reputation for TMA. But traditional martial arts taught the right way(which may be rare to find now a days), teaching not only forms but their combat aplications and practicing them with parteners endlessly to engraved them in the practitioners’ muscles memory, are extremely deadly.

I don’t think any of you would want to fight hand to hand a Shaolin monk or a Samurai(if they were still alive) in the street.

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But if you guys are fighting and competing than you know the answer already. The rules aren’t there to make it harder for any one style, they are their to keep us from maiming and paralyzing each other, maybe even kill someone with a bad neck crank, ect.

While I agree with this for the most part, there are some techniques that are prohibited that would not cause serious injury, but would make things a little harder for a ground fighter and a little easier for a traditionalist. For example, clawing or twisting the flesh is not allowed; nor is grabbing the collar bone allowed. I’ll give an example of how this would help a kung fu stylist on the ground.

A few years back, back when I only had two years of training and a purple sash, I was often challenged by a wrestler that I worked with. Thanks to events like the UFC he got it in his head that a wrestler could beat any traditional martial artist no problem. One day he walked up to me and put me in a tie up and then a standing headlock, I hadn’t had any grappling training so I couldn’t really do anything. This embarrassed me and ****ed me off, so a few days later when he started taunting me again, I told him that he could try to put me in a headlock again, or any submission hold, and I would still beat him without punching or kicking him. He agreed and he tried to put me in headlock and throw me. I slipped out of it the first few times before he finally threw me to the ground by my neck. He was laying on top my chest while cranking my neck forward so I couldn’t breathe. He asked, “Do you give up?” remembering my tiger claw techniques, I simply reached over and grabbed his side with a clawing motion and squeezed as hard as I could while twisting violently, the poor guy literally started to scream and begged me to stop. I actually let him put me in a slightly different position afterwards, this time I couldn’t reach his side, so I reached up and grabbed him behind the neck with my left hand, again he started to scream while leaning his head back in pain, so I grabbed his trachea with my other hand and demonstrated how I could simply crush his windpipe. He never tried to wrestle with me again.

Now every thing I did in that situation would have been against the rules in the UFC, techniques that would normally compensate for a lack of ground skill are not allowed at all, thus making the ground fighter’s game a little easier.

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Originally posted by Evolution Fist
But if you guys are fighting and competing than you know the answer already. The rules aren’t there to make it harder for any one style, they are their to keep us from maiming and paralyzing each other, maybe even kill someone with a bad neck crank, ect.

THis is the exact reason for why TMA don’t fare well in this competitons. Thats their purpose(when you find yourself in a fight), killing,maiming and/or momentarily or permantely disableling ones opponents, in order to save ones life. This competitions are “safe”, and are directed to see who is still standing of the two people competing after they brutalize themselves with hit and chokes. This is not the way of fighting(well at least real fighting).

I have heard that Sifu Shi Yan Ming’s philosophy on fighting is very simple: who ever strikes first wins the fight. So Strike First and Strike Hard.

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Originally posted by Shao Lin Long
First of all, UFC is not REAL fighting, its more of a sport. All traditional martial arts(or almost all) were developed for maiming or killing an opponent, so wether u like it or not the mayority of their techniques ARE prohibited in this type of competition.

If a person can’t use the principles of their art without using “lethal” techniques, I question their training. A grappler can take you down, mount you and eye gouge you, or fish hook you from a rear mount, etc. but can also operate outside of that environment.

the majority of tma techniques are NOT limited, only a small handfull of them.

Their sole aim is to try to disable an opponent as fast as you can because they were developed in times were war was common and were society wasn’t bound by any laws so you had to practice this techniques to defend your life even if it meant taking the one of another person.

  1. any MA in a fight wants to take you out ASAP

  2. most martial arts were NOT designed for use in wars and battles. they were village styles, family styles, etc. used for protection.

An other point,in traditional martial arts(at least kung fu) they don’t teach you to trade blows with ones opponents until one drops, they teach you to block and dodge until you see an opening, then hit or grab or pull one of the opponents vital points to take him down so in matches of boxing and kickboxing alike they are also limited, not only because alot of the techniques are prohinited because they may MAIM or KILL, but because they also were gloves and this limits the practitioner not only to normal punches(no other punches like phoenix eye, no other hand attack like the palm, and no grabs and hold) but it also reduces the ability to knockdown an opponent with little blows to weak parts(as trained in traditional martial arts) because the gloves reduce the impact. So traditional martial arts may not do well in those competition but in real fighting, where everything counts, Traditional martial arts are very effective.

strikes like the phoenix eye are not prohibited in MMA and you can do them with mma gloves on. the gloves allow for hand dexterity, and you can grab, lock, phoenix eye, etc.

I’m not saying that MMA don’t work on the street(because they also really work on the streets) but only resalting that TMA fair better on the streets than in a ring or a competition.

nonsense.

We really should look back at why this types of “sport fighting” arts emerged: because in now a days confrotations on the streets are rare(well in most places), so to keep the fighting aspects of the martial arts alive they were developed(but in a sport way: with rules and restrictions).

this is true. a great example is judo. During the meiji, after the tokugawa, there was no need for soldiers, and the use of the sword was banned.

part two to the story though - kano and his judo guys whooped up on the jujutsu guys. why? because the judo format allowed them to spar.

But traditional martial arts taught the right way(which may be rare to find now a days), teaching not only forms but their combat aplications and practicing them with parteners endlessly to engraved them in the practitioners’ muscles memory, are extremely deadly.

those applications are practiced via cooperative drills though…

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Originally posted by Sim Koning

Now every thing I did in that situation would have been against the rules in the UFC, techniques that would normally compensate for a lack of ground skill are not allowed at all, thus making the ground fighter’s game a little easier.

how good of a wrestler was he? pain compliance is not the answer and usually only makes a person mad. I’ve been clawed, pinched, bitten…it’s not gonna make me let go, firstly. secondly, I wouldn’t be trying to just hold you down, as you say he did. If we are fighting and on the ground, I will be striking you, waiting for that opening when you give me a limb I can break in half, unless I decide not to be on the ground, in which case, I’d be looking for the most efficient way to get up.

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how good of a wrestler was he? pain compliance is not the answer and usually only makes a person mad. I’ve been clawed, pinched, bitten…it’s not gonna make me let go, firstly. secondly, I wouldn’t be trying to just hold you down, as you say he did. If we are fighting and on the ground, I will be striking you, waiting for that opening when you give me a limb I can break in half, unless I decide not to be on the ground, in which case, I’d be looking for the most efficient way to get up.

Now don’t get me wrong, I never said ground skills were not important, I’ve dabbled a bit in judo and jiu-jitsu for that reason. If a kung fu stylist has no ground skills whatsoever, he is still going to lose very fast. All I was trying to say is that kung fu specializes in certain techniques that would help level the playing field a bit since no matter how much he cross trains in jiu jitsu, he will never be as good at it as someone who does nothing but.

I’m not talking about simply pinching and biting, anyone idiot can do that, and like you say the ground fighter could probably put himself in a position to do it better. To use the techniques I’m talking about, you do have to know what you are doing, and unless the grappler has cross trained in eagle claw, he is not going to know how to do them as well as the eagle claw guy in the same way the eagle claw guy is not going to be able to do jiu jitsu techniques as well as the grappler. A good reference to see the techniques I’m writing about would be Yang Jwing Ming’s Chin Na books.

About my confrontation with the wrestler, you have to realize it was a “friendly” contest and I was just showing him that I can do more than kick and punch; otherwise we would have been kicking and punching each other. Nor was I simply pinching him, I knew what I was doing as far as the clawing techniques, since I train in tiger claw. I wouldn’t be trying to use that to defeat him in a real fight, but I would be using it to make things much more painful for him, at least in hopes that he might try to change his position and give me an opportunity to get free or back up. But I do know the basics of ground fighting, otherwise I would lose no matter what I do.

15

strikes like the phoenix eye are not prohibited in MMA and you can do them with mma gloves on. the gloves allow for hand dexterity, and you can grab, lock, phoenix eye, etc.

This is true, and if remember correctly, the instructor in that video clip I posted used it (not in that fight though) once while wearing those type of gloves and broke a guy’s cheekbone. In fact he told me when his knuckles are free that’s how he likes to punch.

those applications are practiced via cooperative drills though…

Depends on the school. A good kwoon teaches you in this order: basics, forms, two man drills, light contact free sparring, full contact free sparring. In my opinion this is the best way to train.

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Originally posted by Sim Koning

A good reference to see the techniques I’m writing about would be Yang Jwing Ming’s Chin Na books.

I’ve seen him in person. He’s very skilled.

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I just got back from class and my back is killing me =(. Well anyway I talked to the guy in the video clip, Duncan Duffin, he is one our instructors at the school, he told me that he is flying to California to train with Cung Le as well as fight on his team. He has already trained with Shawn Liu. I guess he is going to fight one of the Fairtex guys and he wants me to spar with him to help prepare, mainly because I’m a good kicker like the Thai Boxer will be.

I guess all my point was with this thread is that there are a few Kung Fu schools out there that train for real combat as well as traditional forms and weapons. We even do kali stick and knife drills. Sometimes it can feel a little weird when you are showing a student how to kill someone with a knife, especially when you consider that his blood would probably spray in your face and you would have to watch a man die in front of you. You also learn really fast just how difficult it would be to defend yourself from a knife attack when the other guy is faking and resisting. I think way too many schools out there are risking people’s lives by teaching them knife and gun disarms that wouldn’t really work, I think the best way to learn how defend against a knife is to learn how to attack with one.

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Originally posted by Sim Koning

Depends on the school. A good kwoon teaches you in this order: basics, forms, two man drills, light contact free sparring, full contact free sparring. In my opinion this is the best way to train.

Originally posted by Shao Lin Long

All traditional martial arts(or almost all) were developed for maiming or killing an opponent, so wether u like it or not the mayority of their techniques ARE prohibited in this type of competition. Their sole aim is to try to disable an opponent as fast as you can because they were developed in times were war was common and were society wasn’t bound by any laws so you had to practice this techniques to defend your life even if it meant taking the one of another person. An other point,in traditional martial arts(at least kung fu) they don’t teach you to trade blows with ones opponents until one drops, they teach you to block and dodge until you see an opening, then hit or grab or pull one of the opponents vital points to take him down so in matches of boxing and kickboxing alike they are also limited, not only because alot of the techniques are prohinited because they may MAIM or KILL, but because they also were gloves and this limits the practitioner not only to normal punches(no other punches like phoenix eye, no other hand attack like the palm, and no grabs and hold) but it also reduces the ability to knockdown an opponent with little blows to weak parts(as trained in traditional martial arts) because the gloves reduce the impact.

Out of curiosity, how do you train full contact with the techniques that shao lin long is referring to? During the tokugawa era of japan, jujutsu exponents did not spar for the very reason SLL mentioned. sparring wasn’t introduced until the advent of a sport art - judo.

19

Originally posted by Sim Koning
I just got back from class and my back is killing me =(. Well anyway I talked to the guy in the video clip, Duncan Duffin, he is one our instructors at the school, he told me that he is flying to California to train with Cung Le as well as fight on his team. He has already trained with Shawn Liu. I guess he is going to fight one of the Fairtex guys and he wants me to spar with him to help prepare, mainly because I’m a good kicker like the Thai Boxer will be.

Awesome! When is the fight? I’m currently training for the thai boxing nationals.

You also learn really fast just how difficult it would be to defend yourself from a knife attack when the other guy is faking and resisting. I think way too many schools out there are risking people’s lives by teaching them knife and gun disarms that wouldn’t really work, I think the best way to learn how defend against a knife is to learn how to attack with one.

I couldn’t agree more.

20

Out of curiosity, how do you train full contact with the techniques that shao lin long is referring to? During the tokugawa era of japan, jujutsu exponents did not spar for the very reason SLL mentioned. sparring wasn’t introduced until the advent of a sport art - judo.

You mean like tiger claws, throat strikes etc…? We don’t, we put gloves on, but if you can punch a guy in the face, it doesn’t take much to change the formation of your hand and strike him with a more sophisticated fist technique, like a single or fore knuckle strike, its not that hard to strike a guy in the neck either, I’ve done that by accident with both me legs and my hands. The point is we train the nasty stuff in the forms, and we do it until they are perfected. Full contact training teaches you how to deliver the blow, though usually with a fist, that fist can easily become something else in a real fight, since the delivery method is essentially the same. The key in kung fu is to combine the two, forms and fighting. Full contact sparring has always been a part of shao lin, though in the past it was done bare knuckle and on a 5’ raised platform.

As far as clawing and small joint manipulation, that can be done without causing serious injury, which leads me to wonder why its not allowed in the UFC, are they worried the crowd will construe it as cheating?