usawkf - solutions

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
1

Hi just some views/opinions, questions

have been out of the tournament seen for a couple of years and ove the past 2 years since the Tai Chi Legacy of last year have watched this USAWKF soap opera.

What’s the probelm here?

  1. Great organization but not enough fame to go around.

  2. it seems to always fall into traditional vs contemporary.

my suggestion is just separate the organization in to 3 parts.

  1. Contemporary Wu Shu (yeah kind of sneaky how china gets the olympics and suddenly makes the old compulsory forms obsolete. Not to worry they are out on tape. so one strike against A. Goh and his legions. but we have to bend to the will of china (its there game). and they seem to like him (kind of looks like mao I guess)

  2. Traditional Kung Fu. Just keep it real. We’ve all been bitching against the wushu guys but atleast they are the most organized. Try and get to practioners of the same style to agree on how a form is to be done (if they are lucky to look the same). But lets just be honest to ourselves, Wu Shu is the next big thing for Chinese MA. Either get on board or “break the board”.

  3. San Shou. Hats off to Shawn Liu. He’s been at it since the beginning and there is no one else who has earned the right to head this department. All egos aside he is the pioneer. Newbees are coming up and thats good for the sport. But there is only one george washington.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is lets look beyond our ego’s and think about the future of the sport. All this infighting only destroys the sport and prevents us from making Money$$$$. And that’s what it is, A Sport$$$.

just my 2 cents

eric :slight_smile:

eric Hargrove
ngokfei@juno.com

2

timeline…

just one thing to clarify - new compulsories were announced back in like 1997 or so (after the Rome worlds I believe). They just took a LONG time to finish them, agree on them, then produce and distribute the video tapes. The videos went on sale (finally!) in april, but the olympics decision wasn’t made til july…

and Goh’s not /that/ popular in China… he’s made a lot of enemies over there too.

-Raffi

3

Actually, there was a plan suggested that would have made the USAWKF the top organization. Then there would be divisions under it that would take care of Traditional, San Shou, Modern, Internal, etc… and then, the USAWKF top level would set some things that were standard across the board but the way things were done for each section would be tailored to those needs.

Goh never wanted to hear of this.

The Board is open to it but they got caught up with Goh’s garbage and then many other people, tired of the slow pace of trying to remove someone, jumped ship.

The organization is open to change…provided Anthony Goh is gone since he has been the one preventing change and sowing dissention all along. As long as everyone is fighting amongst themselves…he can do as he pleases.

To go to totally separate organizations is a REALLY BAD IDEA.

That is the way it was 10+ years ago. There was no communication between the divisions of people and no one worked for promoting a vast and multi-faceted art/martial area. Then, there were even more little generals and even more fakes.

Organize or die out is one thing that rings true here. We can all slink off into our own little corner and say it doesn’t affect us…

Then I see threads here complaining about this MCKwoon and that fake…

If there is an organization that raises the standard and gets recognized by many…even publications, the number of fakes and unqualified folks reduces because the light of day tends to run them off.

The USAWKF NEVER tried to tell anyone how to run their school or style. It did try to promote the arts, standardize judging for competitions, standardize sparring events, Taolu, San Shou events…and promote seminars and communication…that is until Goh derailed things.

4

ngokfei: To try and get the practitioners of a single traditional art to do the same form in the same way is virtually impossible. The form may have the same name and even follow the same basic pattern, but there will be variations from school to school, some small, perhaps some large variations. Even within a single kwoon no two people look exactly alike doing the same set.

Who would decide which way to do it is right? IMO, probably a better way to judge a traditional system’s sets would be looking at certain qualities such as spirit, balance, stability, power, and et cetera, based on that system. But even then, it does not mean the judges involved will be practitioners of that style.

Contemporary Wushu is more organized because that is its nature. It is an excellent athletic art/event, but other than sharing some common roots, traditional kung-fu systems and standardized Wushu are not at all the same, their purposes are different.

Whether it is a strength or a weakness, traditional kung-fu can never be standardized, IMO, due to its very diversity. But if someone performs a traditional set well, it ought to be obvious to anyone with an understanding of kung-fu, regardless of style.
Jim

5

Bingo!!!

Jim has it.

That is EXACTLY what we have been trying to do in the Traditional area for competitions and judging in the USAWKF.

For example, If you do northern styles, you are familiar with northern flavor, stances, spirit, body movements. You don’t have to know the form to know if it fits within Northern methods. You can, however, look at the routine and say “Well put together” or “Stupid flow”.

You can look at a person performing and tell if they are stable, have power, speed, focus, etc… All of these things are what a number of us have been trying to get done with the USAWKF rules and judging guidelines.

We have also been trying to get judge’s training going on. This has been a point where Goh stopped all development. If you have trained judges, then a dictator loses control of events…and eventually the organization.

This type of training was proposed for Internal, External Traditional, Modern Wushu, Push Hands, Free Sparring, and San Shou.

ALL under the umbrella of the USAWKF led by the Board and NOT Anthony Goh.

6

internal

How do you envision traditional internal forms vs modern “internal” forms? At the Competitions I’ve been to, traditional taiji competes against modern “taiji”, and the judges are only familiar with the modern, so the traditional gets routinely trashed.

Merciless is Mercy.

7

That is handled by the division.

For example:

USAWKF events typically have the following:

Modern Wushu Events :
divisions by gender…
Changquan,
Nanquan,
Dao,
Jian,
Gun,
Nangun,
NanDao,
Chiang,
42 Taijiquan
42 Taijijian

Internal divisions:
Yang
Chen
Sun
Wu
Wu/Hao

then maybe the following:
24 Posture
48 Posture
Guangping
Cheng Man Ching
Other
..then
Taijijian
Other Internal weapons
…etc…

So what ends up happening is that if you are doing 42…the division is all 42. If you are doing Yang style, it is ALL yang in the division. the goal is to get it as close to comparing apples to apples as possible.

This means that what has to happen as well is training judges and certifying them to judge in the areas they are trained in. For example, a person could be certified as an Internal judgeor just as a Taijiquan judge.

Also, a person could be certified as a Head Judge in Northern styles but a regular Judge in Internal… Then the role the person takes is set in a national event.

Goh put up a road block to this from the beginning while others on the board like Pat Rice, Nick Gracenin, Jimmy Wong, and Jeff Bolt wanted it to happen.

The common thread after a competition when people talk centers around how good or bad the judging was…then how people did and how much fun or not fun it was. If a competition has honest and fair judging by qualified judges…everyone feels like it was worthwhile.

8

After reading all the responses, I still fall back on my idea that the divisions should be separated into different organizations. Don’t want to have a “Mc Organization” who thinks it can equally handle all the differences.

  • Traditional External Kung Fu Organization

  • Traditional Internal Kung Fu Organization
    (tai chi, xing yi, ba gua, etc.)

  • Wu Shu Organization

  • San Shou Organization.

Traditional Teachers should be on there own and not try to attatch to the newly found fame of WuShu.

And as for Goh did this and Goh did that who cares. He must of done something correct for the IWU (i think) to acknowledge his organization and not the others.

eric Hargrove
ngokfei@juno.com

9

actually

the USAWKF ‘inherited’ the recognitition from the IWUF from one of the groups that merged together to form in it 1993 (I think it came from Nick Gracenin’s contemporary wushu group, but I’m not 100% clear on the chronology, I’m sure GLW can clarify).

It wasn’t as if they said ‘hey, this Goh guy has a good organization, lets go with him…’

and either way, his leadership since then and especially since 1995 has been pretty bad… little or no progress.

-Raffi

10

I will attirbute your opinion on the separate organizations to youth and not having been involved in the situation under both scenarios.

I HAVE been involved in situations where there were separate entities. I can tell you that when you take it and slice it up that way, there is NO HOPE for corporate sponsorship. That is a big thing. Do you want to see things grow and be recognized…bring in corporate money. To get that, you MUST have a broad base. Splitting things up weakens that base. Simple numbers

If you think the politics of one organization is bad…multiply it by 3. That is what happens. They just get to be more focused politics. Trust me, while Shawn Liu may have done a lot to organize and promote Sanshou, he also has done some things to exclude a few very talented people. With a single organization, there is no one to arbitrate and bring these people back together…so you end up excluding more and more people. It fractures even further.

The traditional folks…without an umbrella organization, they can’t even get into the same room. It is like people fighting in a burning building.

The modern people don’t fight with the others but the coaches fight and cheat amongst themselves…(see the Goh Team Trials)

Economy of scale and bringing things together is the only real solution to this (I have been working towards this with others since 1986…)

This does not mean that the three areas can’t have their own divisions and their own shining stars…but there has to be a common vision…promote the various facets of Chinese Martial Arts…

As for the IWuF recognition… Goh had NOTHING to do with that one. Nick Gracenin did most of the work. Goh took all of the credit he could. In fact, when Goh was in his NACMAF days, the IWuF was a forbidden subject. If you went to a NACMAF event and did Modern Wushu, you did not have your own division, you were disqualified. They did NOT know squat about TRADITIONAL Northern fist…mistook it for Modern Wushu because all of the judges were mainly southern style folks with a few mediocre northern folks there.

The hope for all of us to see this set of martial arts develop in the US and get the recognition it deserves is in getting organized and getting corporate money. If Korean and TKD could do it for the Olympics, what does it say about CMA if we can’t…

11

glw

youth, why thank you. thought i was getting kind of old.

Actually been around for quite some time. Since in creation of nacmaf when they wanted to out so the east cost group under wai hung. That’s why Tai Yim got his ears verbally boxed. Also been around since Jeff Bolts Texas tournament scene. But even then thats just the recent attempt at organizing Chinese MA. Try me going back to the time of Oriental World of Self Defense in NYC.

Seen it all. I guess the desire to but together an all inclusive organization is just a shadow of the modern “masters”. who think they can teach every style out there.

enough said as its only my opinion and I’ll not comment again.

thanks for the feedback.

eric Hargrove
ngokfei@juno.com

12

Actually, the reason Tai Yim left USAWKF a few years ago had NOTHING to do with NACMAF or anything like that. when NACMAF and the USCMAC joined together to become USAWKF, Tai Yim and Anthony Goh were on the best of terms. The falling out had to do with Lu Xiaolin and some violations of trust there…finding his material being taught without permission and a disagreement between Lu and Yim…and then having Goh take Lu’s side… Best guess is the Tai Yim never brought that many competitors to events but Lu did…

The splintering of all Chinese arts is deplorable and will nto improve as long as people with different interests run down others who are not into the arts for the same reason. The Modern vs. Traditional vs. Sanshou…stuff. They all bring in interest and events work better when you have all of those things going on at the same time. More of a something for all interests.

The real key here is that corporate sponsorship has always been lacking. It REALLY SUCKS that the US Sanshou team pretty much has to pay their own way. The US Taolu team has to pay its own way…and all of us Traditional folks…absolutely NO international venue for anything…and even if there were, we would have to pay our own way. There is no way of getting talented young people into the arts or of making sure that there is a communication level going on.

We have gone from no one talking to anyone …to more open communication to now having everything fractured. Now I am NOT saying that the different areas should not and cannot have theri own ways of working…but an open affiliation that promotes all of them and then is a public face that can be used for corporate sponsorhsip and even for getting things to venues like pay per view…Jeff Bolt has been the pioneer in that …but it lost money due to poor advertisement and even poorer corporate sponsorship.

We all have much more in common than differences but as long as we all allow this infighting to go on we wioll get what we have. what I am saying in short is that we all know too well what does not work…we have been doing that. What we need is a new approach and a better set of goals that work to get things out in the open.

Having a national competition two years in a row where the rules are the same as the previous year would be a great start.

Maybe it is just the old hippie in me but coming together has always seemed a better course to me.

I can also say that out of all the people who have been involved in this stuff, the ONLY one who has NOT made personal gain the main thing has been Jeff Bolt. While you may or may not agree with everything he has done, he has NEVER profitted by his work. In fact, he has lost lots just to make things more workable.

13

I need to clairfy a bit for Ngokfei (I did not mean to come off too harsh).

First off, the old addage of “if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’v always gotten” tends to apply here. Before the USAKWF was around, there were a number of organizations and NONE of them talked to each other. Some of them actually kicked you out of their org if you were a member of one or another orgs besides theirs.

So, I don’t think going back to this model is workable.

Second, there has been a problem with everybody and his dog getting the idea “I’ll host a tournament…make some money and do it right” Then you end up with competitors having to choose which one to support - limited funds…and time - and it is a far cry from a win win situation. A lot of bad blood has come about from this.

Some of these events are fine…but it takes a lot of hard work and planning to do a good large torunament. Small torunaments are OK but the level of competition is limited. Then you have those events where it is obvious that the promoter is only interested in the money and not in a good and fair event for the competitor.

Then there is the biggest problem of all. We have many athletes and instuctors who do many things and ffer many things in their schools. You have some that do Traditional AND Modern form…but traditional fighting. Some who ONLY do modern. Some who do Traditional and Sanshou…and so on.

Now you take 3 or 4 or whatever organizations. They all have to provide value for the membership money they charge. The would have regular member dues, professional (coaches and teachers) and then even school dues. Now, many orgs. require their students to pay member dues to different orgs. this makes things more expensive…but that is not the real problem. If you are in a school that does Taijiquan, Traditional Kung Fu, and Sanshou, and there are Inernal, Traditional, Modern, and Sanshou orgs, do you join all 3 or do you join one…2…which one…and then, if the events are all scattered around and not timed together, which ones do you attend. Each event takes away from classes and cost travel time and money.

So, do you say, Well…I will go to this one and not that one… Then, if you only go to Sanshou, you don’t see the connection back to traditional techniques… If you only do Taijiquan, you don’t get to know or see other people who do external… and so on.

This type of thing, although still better than 25 different individual’s orgs is still not something that builds unity.

Now, if there can be separate organizations that tie together and have membership in one mean membership in the org that ties together…and then have them coordinate their events so there is economy of scale and competitors do not have to choose betewen groups, that is great…but the main way that happens is that those who are on the leadership board of one org tend to be on the other org’s as well. And that is not different from a single entity very much.

But still, the bottom line for ANHY organization is that joining it MUST provide a peceived value to the member. No one is going to give an organization much money if they do not feel that they get anything back from it. Right now, NONE of the organizations give ANYTHING MUCH to its members for the membership dues. This has to change or siad organizations will wither and die…and rightfully so.

Service for fee…or extinction.

14

Just revisiting an old thread.

Has the organization been able to overcome its short comings etc.?

15

echooooo:D

16

no it hasnt. it still has problems. not a lot of people like them but they are the only ones that have like official recognization by iwf or whatever so they have to like them.

17

I can’t think of any real improvements it’s made. What’s the benefit of being a member other than having a shot at making the U.S. wushu team (which has never appeared fair anyway)?