Well, One of the reasons is USAWKF. This split thing makes kung fu look like a joke. www.usawkf.org and www.usawkf.com
CMA will never get any sponsors, because we can’t get our act together. Clowns are fighting over control of a nonprofit org. One side lost in court, but they won’t quit. And we wonder why TKD guys get adidas to sponsor them. TKD has messed up parts but their orgs have their acts basically together.
That is just one of many reason why USA CMA will always suck.
USA Kungfu doesn’t suck cause of that org. They aren’t even really that big of a part of kungfu outside of the “kungfu qigong californa click”. I agree the fighting is stupid between us but remeber TKD does so well cause they are all of the same style, KF org on the other hand are all different styles. If you had say…an USA shaolin kungfu org. That was an org. for monks students, I am sure they would do fine. But putting so many styles under 1 banner will always have problems. Not to mention we are big on democracy while PRC isn’t really known for that.
It’s not the only reason. Having a weak gov make tournament crappily run. No one will take us seriously. Any bum can judge our tournaments, and a the most throw together crap will win.
Richie, in my view, the more the good stuff stays rare the better.
Competion should be left to the realm of competitors. it has it’s place, but to learn an art form is about understanding the self and how to express oneself.
as a fighting art, kung fu is a great vehicle of understanding, but most KF people know that Kung fu is beyond just fighting.
Being a good fighter is a by product of many of the concepts and principles that practitioners seek to grasp by developing their Kung Fu.
fighting can be done without spending years learning and practicing such a thing as Kung fu and all it’s augmentation and supplemental training.
If these organizations place the importance on standardizing things and having everything trapped inside a rigid framework, then it will become more difficult for arts to be flexible and to grow to their full potential. Martial arts are still growing to this day. just look at how many well known styles have adapted and grown in the past 100 years, from Hung Gar to Wing Chun, these styles are in their totality very different from what they originally were but still maintain what they originally were.
The problem with organizing things is that often times you loose sight of the forest for the trees.
An organization can become a machination that eventually only serves itself and becomes heavy under the weight of it’s own self importance.
Besides, the PRC is one of the worst offenders as far as applying rigidity to martial arts and stripping martial applicabilty from these arts.
In China, Martial arts are a cultural icon, much the way motor cars are in the west.
Different paradigms, but the best cars come out of indie garages, just like a lot of the best Kung Fu players are unknown. Once they get “bought” by an organization, they lose something and become stale. If they remain always wanting to grow, then that is what they will do and innovation will be there.
peace
For competition:
My point was that USA kungfu orgs try to cover to wide of a base. I think each style should create it’s own. That way tournaments will be run with rules favoring that style and the judges won’t have to cover such a wide area of techniques. For instanse their should be a contemporay only org, a san shou org, a songshan shaolin org, a hungar org, a bak sil lum org, a wing chun org, and etc. This would help a little with the “crappy judgeing” but people will still want to mix it up with other styles. I feel in forms comps the only people fit to judge your forms are people from your style. Fighting is another thing all together though. If people really want to see high level competition it needs to become a well paying professional sport.
For other: I am not much into competion myself. I prefer focusing on the art of my kungfu, I like to challenge and develop myself by practiceing and contiplating my art by myself. I personally agree with Kung Lek on the self serving nature of MA orgs bsides I don’t need some dictater telling me what I can and can’t do with my art.
We have cats who are teaching who shouldn’t be. We have about 10,000,000,000,000 grand masters in one style. These weak teachers are then judging. The gov should be trying to weed out these cats. However, they are many of these cats in our gov.
Instead of whining about who is not qualified to judge and why, why don’t you start a movement, as GLW, a contributor to this forum, has suggested, to make people qualified to judge instead? Why don’t you inform them on what they should be looking for and why, and teach them how to judge?
A required certification for judging might not be a bad thing, either.
People could be required to become certified to judge particular forms or styles in competitions. As long as you can actually get them to go through the process and actually be at the tournaments so that you get some results from the system, I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
Leading coaches in the arts should be willing to help set up standards and judging criteria. Interstyle criteria would then be in order for those characteristics judges should look for that are common to all styles, as well as style specific criteria so they know what special characteristics should be present in specific styles.
With input from a number of sources, no one school or sub-style or whatever would be able to dominate through influence, only through superior performance.
Good point Sam Wiley. What has GLW started so that these reforms can take place?
orgs?/
We have our own org, which governs our school and we don’t compete. Not saying we’re any better than anyone else, but we don’t train for belts or competition. Our teacher looked into getting involved with orgs. back in the day, but pretty much predicted what exists now, and said Fu<k that.
By the way, Shaolin Kungfu inside the PRC …Baawhaahahahahah!
WTF TKD gets sponsorship because for on it is popular and it has competitions with a fixed set of rules. As noted, being a single style helps too. Then again it’s easier for a MMA to get sponsorship. The reason? They compete.
What the CMA folks should do is pick either Sanda or San Shou for competions and start promoting the heck out of them. For better or worse having competions is the only way to get sponsors, who are using the event for advertising their product. No competions, no spectators, no sponsor.
Right now the CMA banner is lucky, you have Cung Le who is a great fighter, a respected fighter, a fun fighter to watch and is also now promoting SS. Get behind him, find out how to sponsor regional San Shou events, pick a superbowl event like K-1 to compete in. Compete in the Sabaki challenge. In other words if the CMA are disorgonized, get off your butt’s and establish Sanda or San shou fighters in established fight venues.
We have cats who are teaching who shouldn’t be. We have about 10,000,000,000,000 grand masters in one style. These weak teachers are then judging. The gov should be trying to weed out these cats. However, they are many of these cats in our gov.
The problem is everyone thinks their teacher or group should be the one’s setting the standards. What makes you so sure you wouldn’t be the one “weeded out”?
“What makes you so sure you wouldn’t be the one “weeded out”?”
Thank you! I hear alot of people say how government control would be good for improving martial arts but I think the cost would be to high. Good stuff would get eliminated and you wouldn’t have as much opportunity to learn. Also who decides what stays and what goes? Whole styles could be left behind just because the guys in charge didn’t like it(for instance say a wing chun guy is in charge what would happen to CLF?). USA is a FREE country we would not approve of that kind of regulation. If that’s what you want you need to move to a communist country, cause we don’t do that here. Anyway I like the carnage of CMA if it was all neatly packaged by the government that would be so boring.
You’re right. USAWKF.com forgot about sharing information in the quest for some stupid tournament and usawkf.org are just turds.
shaolind
if a wing chun guy was in charge, nothing would happen to choy lay fut. really.
we’d be too busy bickering amongst ourselves.
Richie,
I did not get into too much detail with him about it. I remember remarking pretty much the same thing that everyone else seems to complain about, and he made that suggestion. I’m sure that if you sent him an e-mail or left a post addressed to him he would be happy to discuss it in more detail. I personally have no clue what the criteria I mentioned above would be.
Let me give you a brief…if possible, histoy of attempts to improve Chinese Martial Arts (CMA) in the US.
Way back when about 1984 or 1985, there were NO CMA events. You had to go to things like NASKA and deal with Karate judges for form and fighting. If you were lucky, you might have ONE division for ALL CMA forms and ONE for ALL weapons. GET REAL…
Then we in Houston tried something novel. We formed the Southwest Regional Chinese Martial Arts Association. We then ended up in 1985 with the FIRST CMA ONLY competition. It was held at the Hofheinz Pavilion at Univerisyt of Houston. I was the technical coordinator of the event. We tried to gather as many of the qualified teachers for judges as possible. Jeff Bolt was the organizer and promoter.
It was rough but it was the first of its kind. The scope of the organization was too small and was ONLY for traditional wushu. then in a year or so, we held the first CMA ONLY national event at the Wyndham hotel in Houston. It was the largest of its kind and the FIRST one to be held in something other than a gymnasium. In fact, the hotel ballroom and convention center events of today were patterned after this one. It was a technical success but a financial failur. Jeff Bolt (my teacher at the time) spent a good while digging out of the red ink. But from this came the formation of the USCMAC (US Chinese Martial Arts Council). We continued to work on the rules for competition. We began to try to get TRADITIONAL WUSHU folks from across the country involved and we also began to include CONTEMPORARY WUSHU divisions in the plans. The TRADITIONAL divisions ran according to traditional rules and the Contemporary divisions ran according to the IWuF rules. People like Nick Gracenin, Pat Rice, Jimmy Wong, Liang Shouyu, and others began to be heavily involved.
Then, Philip Starr with the AAU came in with his words of “Lets work together” WE all took him at his word. Then a few months later he is setting the AAU against the USCMAC for his own personal gain. This caused things to stagnate for a couple of years.
In 1989, there was another large event in Houston. At that time, Grandmaster Wang Jurong attended from Shanghai…as judge in Chief. She was then selected to head the USCMAC as honorary advisor.
Then in 1993 or 1994…memory for dates is what it is… NACMAF and USCMAC joined forces. NACMAF was headed by Anthony Goh and had been running according to some haphazard rules.
Madame Wang remained as the advisor and the head official at all national events. Anthony Goh became president with Jeff Bolt as vice-president. Jeff Bolt could have easily been the president then if he had wished…but he was wanting to take a lesser role and work on improving things rather than adminstrative stuff.
Folks like Tai Yim, Brendan Lai, Chan Poi, etc… were involved. Then, one by one, Anthony Goh alienated them. It was typically his way or the highway. Others of us worked at keeping things going and improving the rules.
I personally wrote the first software programs to automate the management of a CMA competition. Goh then had one of his folks rework the ideas but in such a way that it did more to mess things up than to streamline the event.
I continued with others such as Vince and Daphne Curtis, Tim Niiler, Ty Nunez, and many more to develop the rules…and push for judges training and certification. Most of the board was for it but NOT Goh.
In 1999, Goh took some liberties with nominating an ineligible person to sit on the IWuF technical committee as well as in using USAWKF letterhead to call for the removal of then IWuF chairman, Li Jie WITHOUT approval or a vote from the highest USAWKF body, the Board of Directors.
Jeff Bolt was requested and convinced to call for a vote to request Goh to resign. The vote was held and Goh was requested to resign unanimously. Some board Members then rescinded their vote and Liu Yu and Jimmy Wong, in disgust with Goh and the turncoat members who would not stand their ground, resigned. Jeff Bolt spoke with them about how important it was to stay united and they rescinded their resignations…
Goh has maintained that the vote was illegal. It has been held legally several times since and has resulted in Goh being removed. Goh still refuses to recognize it.
As far as the US is concerned, Goh has no real control. The only thing he has is a seat on the CONTEMPORARY WUSHU’s PRC organization, the IWuF and the PANAM council…but this is only for the Contemporary Wushu competitiros for the USA Team.
once Goh was gone, we reworked the rules and events and improved them.
The court case was NOT where Goh won. It was requesting a court injuction for Goh to cease and desist. However, Maryland law, where the USAWKF was incorporated, requires the plaintiffs to prove that without the injunction, the organization will be irreparably harmed - perhaps driven into non-existence or bankruptcy…or ruined reputation wise… This was not done to the court’s level although the case was possible to remove Goh…but this can run into tens of thaousands of dollars…for what?
The board has chosen to continue on to improve things regardless of Goh.
Goh supported people who worked to have crooked judging…I personally ran afoul and had many arguments with such people. An event is ONLY as good as the honesty and sincerity of the judges. Without that, it is worthless.
We have worked on getting ANYONE involved who wants to make things better.
Try WWW.USAWKF.COM NOT .ORG… and send Jeff Bolt E-mail for any information or ideas. He WILL respond. Try the same thing with Goh…see how long you wait.
"A required certification for judging might not be a bad thing, either. "
That is exactly the direction we are going. We are trying to make it so that at any event, the judges are INVITED by their qualifications. If you are not qualified and invited, you don’t judge…gone are the days of “This is my teachers brother…he can judge too”
"People could be required to become certified to judge particular forms or styles in competitions. As long as you can actually get them to go through the process and actually be at the tournaments so that you get some results from the system, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. "
That is the direction we are going. Having people go from competitor, to judge in training…where you have to work at EACH job in the event so you know what happens administratively…and then training with video and demos of what to look for and how to score…so it is consistent. This takes time to develop…and many of us have other jobs…
"Leading coaches in the arts should be willing to help set up standards and judging criteria. Interstyle criteria would then be in order for those characteristics judges should look for that are common to all styles, as well as style specific criteria so they know what special characteristics should be present in specific styles. "
You would think so…but many times, the best judges are NOT the most exalted teachers. Judging requires a broader level of knowledge and a more open mind. For example, I had one competition where in a Trad. Northern Division, a competitor came out and did Trad. Fanziquan. Fanzi is Trad. northern…but I only had ONE judge besides myself who knew what they had seen. That type of thing requires training.
“With input from a number of sources, no one school or sub-style or whatever would be able to dominate through influence, only through superior performance.”
EXACLTY!!!
Stop the complaining and start putting up some money!
The CMA doesn’t need more organizations it just needs someone to set up the contests. Look at Kancho Ninomiya of Sabaki fame and Kazuyoshi Ishii founder of the K-1, they started their respective competions, set the rules and promoted them. Same with Pride and UFC. These guys are businessmen and that’s what San Shou and Sanda need, a person or a group of people who want to make some money and know how to make some money promoting the events. And one more thing, willing to shell out a decent purse to draw the top fighters.
Jeff Bolt has done a great job in showcasing CMA and deserves great support.
BUT_ apart from san shou competitions as Kung Lek points out there are many reasons to study CMA- including real self defense- not competition. In several styles including mine- there is IMO as good or better kung fu in NorthAmerica right now than in many other parts of the world.
Style by style the situation can vary. In Chen style PRC and CXW in Australia is still way ahead of everyone else.
And since modern wushu is a or even the national sport the PRC is way ahead. But in many southern styles many good people have moved out of Hong Kong in several styles.
It is an exciting time for the transmission of CMA- some of it not yet well transferred… while in some styles pretty good transferring has taken place. If you search right you can get very good wing chun, choi lee fut, hung gar and southern mantis
in the US. Bad ones tooo <g>
http://www183.pair.com/~wkf/nat2001/nat2001rules.html
for the USAWKF rules…
As for needing businessmen to run things…in part this is true but it is also NOT true in a large part.
The whole idea behind what Jeff Bolt and company have been trying to do since the mid 1980s is NOT at all about money. It is about bringing all of the CMA folks together and getting them to talk and share.
If this happens, the unqualified teachers begin to disappear since there is a forum to compare one person with another.
The idea was to offer competition for those who wanted to compete - form as well as fighting. There was also to be a continuum of fighting…from continuous sparring that rewarded NOT stopping like in point sparring…but gave points for technique, reaction, attack, defense, etc… and then a person could move into Sanshou if they wished…where it IS full contact.
The events and organization was also supposed to provide a venue for seminars, discussion, CMA folks to get together and socialize, cross hands in a friendly way, all of those things.
Not everyone takes advantage of these possibilities…but that is the goal.
Before Jeff Bolt’s events, the concern was by businessmen for profit. You had and still have events that are obvioulsy run for profit and treat the competitor like a commodity or worse yet, like cattle.
Well, first off, ANY CMA organization should belong to the members. If this is true and the members expect accountability from the officers, things will go the way the members want it to.
Next, any event is done for the competitor or attendee. If you keep this in mind and expect something for the dollars you spend on them…and then hold those promoting the event accountable afterward…things improve. This is basic marketplace economics.
There are a lot of opinions and people out there willing to say how things are bad and whatever.
Wouldn’t it be great if even 10% of those willing to complain were willing to put some time into making things better?
GLW, I completely agree with you. As a USAWKF member I’m wondering why this correspondence isn’t happening on our web site! This seems to be the problem to me. I’m one of the members that has done nothing to help because I have no idea what needs to be done and where to apply to help. I’m not a competeter although I have trained a few, so I have’nt been introduced to too many people in this way. This is stuff I expected to find out about on our web site. Now that the upsurper controvercy seems to be dying down, we seem only to be concerned about the olympics.