it was interesting seeing a fight from 50+ years ago.
That is true…
Thanks for the video.
Originally posted by SifuAbel
[B]Not this stupid video, [SIZE=10]AGAIN[/SIZE] !!!
Lord almighty, don’t tell me some of you have never seen this? This clip has been circulating for ten years. The CMA community laughed at it. [/B]
Along with every other community. Martial or not. Heck Im sure the thread and needle community laughed.
Originally posted by DragonzRage
sevenstar,
I found the link on a military/law enforcement forum’s h2h fighting section.
Cool. I guess I won’t delete it if people are out there looking at it.
At least they did fight…
Sure, and to some degree I can respect that but it doesn’t mean that they fight well. I’ve seen the video before and here is my take on it, being “pro” CMA.
They’re supposed to be masters, but they fight like sissies. There could be some reason why their form sucked, their technique delivery sucked and over all their fighting was sloppier then normal and what not. However, from what I understand these two guys call themselves masters and that is what I have issue with. I have met plenty of people who would have made quick work of those guys and who aren’t anywhere near calling themselves masters. If you want to call yourself master and want to claim to have mastered fighting - since that is what a martial artist claiming to be a master is to me - then you had better be able to fight and fight well.
If you know a system inside and out, can even teach it really well and build great fighters, your not a master in my view, your a sifu, a teacher.
Bmore…do you remember what you told me when we watched this clip? Would you mind explaining it here?
Hmm.. I watched the first minute or two.. were they defending at all? I didn’t really see any blocking 
maybe I’m too inexperienced to see though, I dunno…
lkfmdc will probably kill me if i screew this up but basically all i said wuz:
the skinny dude looks like he’s trying to do some long bridging and trying to throw some trademark tibetan white crane long arm punches, even managing to combo up and land a few- but he seemed too timid to actually sit down on them and put some body behind them.
the old dude hardly looks like he’s doing wu style, but then wu style (either one) is probably the style of taichi i have the least exposure to. he really just looks like a ticked off old dude who’s trying to slug it out.
basically I give kudos to the young’n for trying to use some technique, but being intimidated by a larger, older, obviously more motivated opponent.
FYI- I have a shorter clip of this at the beginning of the movie “Rivals of the Dragon”. It’s not as linear, but it’s closer to the action so you can see their faces & bodies better; plus it goes through some of the moves slow-mo.
its nice to see…made me more thankful i’m learning from a TCMA master who can fight using his kung-fu…!
got any clips we can see?
Yeah I noticed the white crane guy did visibly try to employ some of those long arm swinging strikes that you see in some kung fu styles. But he still did a very poor job of applying them effectively.
From what i know of tai chi’s fighting applications, I saw nothing remotely tai chi from the wu guy. i did a little more research on this fight. From what I was able to dig up, the two guys were indeed very established and reputable masters within their styles. Both of them were pretty high up on the pecking order. If I was a practitioner of either one of their styles, I would find this rather disturbing. It was ridiculous how the fight was described on certain tai chi and white crane sites. I read it referred to as “an epic battle” and “a life and death match that awed thousands of spectators” among other things. One wu tai chi site praised the skills of wu gong yi by saying that the white crane master he fought was a much younger and stronger man known for being a deadly fighter. It then goes on to say that altho the fight was declared a draw, it was only stopped to prevent a fatality. Apparently, wu had inflicted such massive damage using his tai chi technique that the white crane master’s face was bleeding uncontrollably.
GEEZ, I wonder if the people who wrote this stuff have ever even seen the video of this fight.
you never know. they did land lots of hits… 
My opinion, nothing more…
Neither fighter seemed comfortable in real combat, and neither fighter seemed able to mount a truly useful offensive. I’ve heard people touting one hit one guy takes to the head as a show of toughness- but really, hits to the head happen, one in a whole fight is not noteworthy.
It’s hard to judge the style off of a clip where the practitioners are too dogged down with issues of dealing with aggresiveness, issuing aggresiveness, and distance and timing. I suspect you’d get the same response from training a boxer how to jab, hook, slip, uppercut, bob & weave, but never actually having him spar or fight as part of a comprehensive training regimen.
I just don’t think those guys have any real fight experience. I don’t care what principles they were trying to implement- they were visibly uncomfortable fighting or using aggression. I don’t see how that’s even arguable, that’s what the clip I watched showed.
I’m not dissing their knowledge at all. They may have been fonts of martial knowledge. I’m just saying that they weren’t fighters. I’ve known great fighters who learned what they know from guys probably no better able to fight than that. The difference is, the great fighters were able to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and real application. To each their own.
The titles are sometimes honorary, sometimes relate to intellectual contribution to the art(or artistic), and sometimes are due to fighting ability, or even combinations of the three. As such, there’s gonna be some people who understand their art from an artistic or intellectual level, but don’t have the capacity for violence needed to really fight. I’d say that’s the case in this vid.
I’m sure I’ll get flack on this from both sides. On the one hand, I am another TMA’ist saying “this vid isn’t indicative of what I do”, because it isn’t, because being comfortable fighting is important to my training. On the flip side, I’m “dogging” two titled practitioners of kung fu. But I’m old enough to know people with those titles from China who I could utterly destroy, and I know I’m not special, and I know its because they are less comfortable really fighting than I am.
Good thread, dude.
the skinny dude looks like he’s trying to do some long bridging and trying to throw some trademark tibetan white crane long arm punches, even managing to combo up and land a few- but he seemed too timid to actually sit down on them and put some body behind them.
Yeah!
JK actually yes watching it again I thought I saw that stuff too…but I haven’t studied Wu Style Tai Chi or and Crane styles…
It looked like there might have been some blood on the white crane guys shirt but it was hard to tell bc the video is old and B/W
and if indeed the crane stylist is trying to employ kung fu techniques…it looks like he is trying a lot harder than most people I know…and hes doing it when a lot is at stake (fighting in front of many people) not just in the kwoon…
BTW did you guys see that Ric Flair chop wooooo
I think that’s a fair estimation KC.
Technique wise they may have known what they were doing.
Experience wise, in front of an audience like that, they definitely looked like they didn’t have much.
Like MKC said, props to the youngin for actually tryin some stuff.