[QUOTE=RGVWingChun;853872]I love it already. Wing Chun has certainly taught me the same things: Win at all cost! The other day I was invited to participate in an MMA program and boy was it boring!!! I stuck around afterward with a friend who was in charge of coordinating the program and showed him the difference between wing chun and mma. The one thing that I made clear was the wing chun is not a game - its not a sport or for entertainment like UFC, etc…no disrespect to those practitioners, but lets face it, the rules of those competitions are what make it entertainment.
[/QUOTE]
This is part of the street-sport or “real fighting” myth – or more accurately, delusion – sold by the TMAists out of necessity. It’s necessary for them to explain why they can’t step in a ring/cage/gym and perform (fight) without looking like the unskilled, out-of-conditioned posers that they are. Their answer: because “real fighing” is anything goes, and that the rules limiting certain foul tactics limit them from using their most deadly stuff, etc. This is the same old nonsense we’ve been told for years, the same stuff the Gracies tried to put to rest with their “Gracie challenges”, the the early vale tudos, NHBs and UFCs. That “rationale” (and I use that word very loosely since it doesn’t involve rational reasoning) is based on a number of fundamental mistaken assumuptions about fighting – which, of course, is not surprising since the people making them have little to no genuine fighting experience (to put that more plainly: they, like this guy, don’t know what they are talking about).
Out in the streets, there are no rules, and its not for a title or to move on to the next round, etc…it could be for your life or somebody elses. Gotta do what you have to do and wing chun gives you the tools to do just that.
Moses
Yes, in a “streetfight” or when you are attacked or mugged there are “no rules.” So what? Does the fact there are no rules mean that you will be able to do anything you want – that your opponent will just let you poke him in the eye or whatever? Of course not. To do whatever you want against a genuinely resisting aggressor coming at you with 100 intensity takes real SKILL. And if your opponent has higher level attributes or skill or both, it takes a lot of SKILL to beat him. It doesn’t matter if BJJ or MT or WCK “has the tools” if YOU can’t use them with SKILL. It doesn’t matter if BJJ or MT or WCK “has the tools” if you are not conditioned for the fight. WCK doesn’t give you SKILL. WCK doesn’t give you the conditioning you need for the fight. Fighting SKILL and CONDITIONING comes from FIGHTING, by doing and practicing the very thing(s) you want to do as you want to do them under the same conditions you want to do them.
What nonfighters like this guy fail to realize – because they never fight – is what is really involved in fighting. For instance, on the ground, yes, you can bite, fishhook, gouge, etc. You can use all those foul tactics IF YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER YOUR OPPONENT. If you don’t, those things will be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to pull off (and, btw, those foul tactics won’t “win” the fight) . And this is because controlling your opponent on the ground is the fundamental skill that permits you to strike or submit (incapacitate), to actually “end” the fight. And if you are not controlling him, unless he is a complete scrub, he’ll be trying to control you.
Practitioners of judo, sambo, catch, BJJ, etc. (ground fighitng arts/sports) recognize this because they fight on the ground. And their training revolves around controlling you on the ground – by practicing that in sparring against other really good fighters. When these “sport” guys are attacked or mugged or when they fighting the ring/cage/gym, they are able to do what they train to do: control their opponent on the ground and use that control to then finish the fight. Because they will control you when they hit the ground, they can use fishhooking, gouging, biting, etc. against you (as set ups) and you won’t be able to use it against them. It won’t matter that it is a “no rules” situation. What matters is that they have the skills to control you and you won’t have the skills to control them.
And its the same for free-movement stand-up or on the inside/clinch. For example, in MT “sport” you can’t kick to the groin or punch the throat. But MT fighters highly develop their kicking and striking skills. Do you think in a “streetfight” they couldn’t kick you in the groin instead of the stomach or leg? Of course they could. Can they practice really kicking their training partners in the groin? Of course not. But they can relatively safely practice in 100% sparring kicking their opponents on “nonfoul” targets and by doing that develop really good kicking skills. When the situation changes, from sport to “street”, they will still have those skills, and all they will need to do is alter their tactics (in this case the target). This is why the situation will determine the tactics but the root or fundamental skills you NEED are the same (regardless of the situation). In different fighting situtations (street, sport, gym,etc.) you may need to use different tactics but the fundamental skills you will use in all those situations is constant.
