What I hate about tournaments is......

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
1

  1. Tinfoil swords that go “ka chang”

  2. Caucasian people dressed in traditional Chinese clothing

  3. Judges who aren’t qualified

  4. Ambiguous/subjective sparring rules

  5. Politics/Drama

  6. the entire Creative/Musical division

  7. Staffs that would work great as pool cues

  8. Traditional forms performed with “Wushu flair”

  9. That song from the Wong Fei Hung soundtrack

  10. Cheesy techno music (please see Creative/Musical division)

  11. Annoying MC’s

  12. Crappy unhealthy and overpriced food

  13. The fact that you are instantly awarded extra points for forms if you:
    a) are Asian
    b)Dressed in a “snappy” outfit
    c)Make a lot of noise
    d)Make facial expressions like you are straining to take
    a sh)t.
    e) under 5’5"

  14. Point sparring

  15. Karate guys with mullets and more patches on their uniforms than a TGIF Fridays employee.

  16. Waiting around all day for your 15 min of competition

Please feel free to expand on my list…

:wink: :smiley:

2

LOLOLO That was rich!

3

Then why do you enter?

I feel your pain though. The above was why I stopped. However, admittedly, I own a uniform that exposes my arm and most of my chest on one side… I think it’s a swordsman uniform, or something… someone on kfm referred to it as that once - but It looks really cool, so I would do my forms in it, attempting to get extra points for appearance.

4

Originally posted by SevenStar
Then why do you enter?

To remind myself why I don’t go to tournaments…haha.

5

Anyone remember Jeff Bolt’s sparring idea? Spar for a few minutes and then get a judge’s score like a forms competiton

They scored you on “how you moved”, your “Chinese martial art flavor” and other totally intangible things

“how’d you do in your fight”

“I must have done bad, I only got a 7.3”

:smiley:

6

the other guy got a broken nose, dislocated shoulder and three bruised ribs, but he got an 8.3, so he musta won the fight. :smiley:

7

What I hate about tournaments is…

b!tches that complain about the politics of tournaments.

jus teasin:p

sort of :mad:

:smiley:

8

What I hate about tournaments is…

Running into the same people competing in the beginners division year after year.

Spotting the lady who taught kickboxing at your old kwoon competing in beginners sparring.

Schools which bring a dozen competitors and they compete using the same form.

Pink or orange Wushu outfits.

Hugely overweight or underweight competitors.

Sifus who walk right up to the judges during the competition and demand better scores for their competitors.

Schools that do poorly, bring up “Honor” and demand their money back.

Overpriced water.

9

Anyone remember Jeff Bolt’s sparring idea? Spar for a few minutes and then get a judge’s score like a forms competiton

They scored you on “how you moved”, your “Chinese martial art flavor” and other totally intangible things

Doesn’t sound too bad… it’s basically like most forms competitions, but you get to hit somebody :smiley: People getting random scores while hitting each other vs. People getting random scores for doing 3 minutes of bad taiji… hmm…

10

That horrible noise they play during Muay Thai fights.

Kids from the local TKD school doing glowing numchunk demos.

Watching the MT guys limping out to their cars with their legs wrapped in giant ice packs. Ouch!

11

Re: What I hate about tournaments is…

Originally posted by Fu-Pow
9) That song from the Wong Fei Hung soundtrack

I feel your pain. And its always the non chinese that try to be more chinese then the chinese :frowning:

i dont see anything wrong with wearing frog button shirts, its traditional, sorta. not like im wearing it all the time.

12

…Obnoxious wushu people saying “Haaooo” every 10 seconds!!!

PLEASE SHUT UP WUSHU PEOPLE!!! YOU SOUND LIKE THE SEAGULLS IN FINDING NEMO!!!

Also, judges for forms divisions who clearly aren’t interested in what’s going on in front of them, and sparring rules that make it **** near impossible to use Chinese martial arts in the competition ring.

13

sandbaggin…how long have they been in intermediate now?

instructors who judge their own students higher than what it is obviously supposed to be. kinda compromises the judge’s integrity all the way around.

wushu people who compete in traditional that claim their form is traditional but it just has that wushu flare.

sleepy judges who only wake up when they see a butterfly kick and useless tumbling and score high for it in the traditional events..

but for the flip side, i get to travel and meet new people!

14

Originally posted by rogue
That horrible noise they play during Muay Thai fights.

that “noise” is art. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I like it.

15

…being there…

16
    1. The fact that you are instantly awarded extra points for forms if you:
      a) are Asian
      b)Dressed in a “snappy” outfit
      c)Make a lot of noise
      d)Make facial expressions like you are straining to take
      a sh)t.
      e) under 5’5"

and weigh less than 75 kilos

that “noise” is art. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but I like it.

Suppose you are right. Makes you fight better, just to get done with it so you can get out of the ring and get away from it all. Just kidding, that noise-art is ok at the right time, but after a whole day of listening to the same (or sound like the same) tune, can work on your nerves.

Tournaments are ok, if the judges know what they are doing and if there are no politics, but then again, in a perfect world ….

17

Solutions:

Know not to show up to at least 1:30 if you’re a man and only there to spar … and know even then you will most likely wait till 3:30.

Bring a walkman so you can lay back in the stands and just chill out … no unwanted music, kids screaming, ect., ect.

Bring your own food or go out to eat knowing you have time to kill anyway.

Walk around a little bit. Check out some kids forms and sparring, some adult forms and weapons forms. Shake a few hands.

18

well, now that you know what you don’t like about it, what are you gonna do to change it so that it fits a modality that in turn fits your point of view?

Because, no one is going to change it for you…you know. :stuck_out_tongue:

cheers

19

i dont see whats wrong with putting a little wushu flair in a form if you can perform it well. i did it at wong to a form i couldnt do well and it was jsut sloppy, but forms you know well whats wrong with performing them at real speed? if you have the stances and power and basics of the form down it will look better IMO.

20

Originally posted by Shaolinlueb
i dont see whats wrong with putting a little wushu flair in a form if you can perform it well. i did it at wong to a form i couldnt do well and it was jsut sloppy, but forms you know well whats wrong with performing them at real speed? if you have the stances and power and basics of the form down it will look better IMO.

I think the problem was that the wushu “flair” added to a traditional form makes it non-traditional :wink:

I personally don’t enter tournaments much anymore. I did well in the few I entered, but I found that I couldn’t stand the waiting around all day for my 15 minutes :wink:

I’m considering entering some tournaments around here in the future, just to test out my xingyi/bagua, once I get to the level i’d like to be with them :slight_smile: I likely wouldn’t enter forms divisions, though… I do much better in the sparring/continuous sparring divisions.