Why no identifiably good Kung Fu in MMA events?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
1

Please help this thread get a lot of hits fellas, I’m hoping it will be a good one.

I’ve been doing some thinking lately, which is probably not altogether a good thing, but still…

I want to know why there has been no identifiably good Kung Fu in MMA? This is going to be a long one.

I work from the following structure:

  1. Self defense has as much, if not more to do with common sense, situational awareness and verbal cues and diffusement than fighting skill per se.

  2. Once a fight has been entered, you have exited the “self defense,” portion of your encounter, and entered squarely into the combat phase.

  3. Combat in the street, in this day and age, can be extremely dangerous, if not deadly. Combat undertaken for the purpose of proving who has the better style or who is the better fighter are no longer conducted in an honorable manner. Your opponent’s friend might cut you down.

  4. Many legal ramifications exist to street combat… and let’s face it: most of us have jobs we’d like to keep, and not be cornholed by bubba the one toothed wonder.

  5. Ringfighting is, by definition, combat sport. Certain rules are going to be in place to protect the safety of the fighters. These rules may vary from place to place. It is not “streetfighting,” but, it is as close as we can come, legally, these days without getting in some very real trouble. In other words, it’s the best we’ve got.

  6. Consequently, the logical place to test yourself is legal combat… a ring.

I pose the following common criticisms and my counterarguments:

  1. Criticism: “Grapplers have a ring fighting advantage because ring fighting imposes too many restrictions on when, where, and how strikes can be delivered, ie, no knees/elbows to the base of the spine, no soccer-style kicks to the head, etc.”
    Response: “Grapplers” suffer their fair share of annoyances too. The round system means that all that work to take you to the ground is nullified when the bell rings. Fighters are frequently returned to their feet if there is no ground action. As a grappler, I can no longer knee you in the head or the side from control positions. Small joint breaks are illegal. Lightwieght gloves have made repeated, full power head shots feasible and damaging. The gloves themselves are kind of a pain in the ass to grapple with. The softer surface reduces the impact of slams. In the end, it all works out about even.

  2. Criticism: “Dirty tactics,” are not allowed and this inhibits “traditional,” artists.
    Response: An attack delivered to the head with the hand is a “punch,” an attack delivered to the groin with the knee/foot, is a knee or kick. They are no more difficult to defend against than a regular closed fist punch or knee or kick. If you can’t punch me in the head, you sure as hell can’t eye strike or throat strike me or hit me in a specific pressure point. If I can counter a punch, I can counter an eye strike or throat strike. If I can defend leg kicks and knees to the body, I can defend kicks and knees to the groin. If you can’t hit my leg with a kick, you can’t hit my groin. If you can’t hit me in the face with a punch, you can’t eye strike me. Am I to believe then, that somehow, these particular techniques will make all the difference to a trained fighter who can presumably deliver knees, kicks and punches with bad intentions and dangerous results already? Also, shouldn’t a good MAist easily be able to adapt? Instead of a throat strike, you punch him in the face… that technique calls for a groin shot? Follow up with a kick to the midsection instead, etc.
    Eye-gouging, biting, throat tears, groin tears, fishhooks, accurate pressure point manipulation and flesh tears all happen within grappling range. If anything, the restriction on these techniques limits the one who has better control in the grappling range than anybody else. Surely, a stand-up type fighter would prefer that these techniques be eliminated!

  3. Criticism: “We train to have an edge against those untrained folks out there. The Ring isn’t real life. We train for things we might see in real life.”
    Response: And what if that untrained fellow adopts a Muay Thai stance and starts throwing punishing kicks… or that guy shoots in and doesn’t do the bum rush… or he throws a nice tight hook instead of a roundhouse swipe? You are either practicing moves that work on the untrained AND trained, or you are training poorly (this is not a dig on Kung Fu… I’ve heard this one out of a LOT of different folks). The corrollary is that if it works on the trained, then it has a good chance of working in the ring, unless otherwise prohibited.

I realize that some KF types just aren’t interested in the ring… well, many MMA types aren’t either, so that can’t account for everybody. What about the ones that are? There have to be some good KF guys out there capable of bringing it to the ring and using identifiable KF in their matches. So where are they?

Once again, not trying to be offenseive, just trying to provoke some thought.

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Ever heard of San Shou? Why don’t any mixed martial artists fight in San Shou matches? Or do they? I have no desire to roll around on the ground with another guy if I don’t have to. The guy trying to rob me at the ATM probably isn’t going to know BJJ.

Speaking for myself, I plan on fighting in a few San Shou matches later this year. I think a lot of kung fu schools are just plain weak. A lot of the things you have listed are used as cop outs.
The old “Yeah, we don’t spar our techniques are too deadly.”

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I would go into a mma or nhb competition, but I don’t think they have any of those in Vancouver; and if they did, I would probably be to young any way… So instead I’ll have to settle for san shao, for now anyway.

4

Good topic

This seems to come up a lot, im of the ‘i dont like ringfighting camp’. I have many reasons for this not least of which ive done some ring fighting and found it to be the least combat driven of all the fighting ive ever done.
I also grew up in a ****e area where everyone knew how to streetfight to the point of people practising for hours a day on there own methods. I trained and exchanged blows with many of them and learnt to fight amongst guys who really did fight. I have always had an interest in fighting for some odd reason.
That said the reason i moved into traditional kung fu was actualy becouse i started to open my eyes beyond simply sport and trading blows.
I cant justify kung fu’s use in the ring so i wont really try ill just state some of the many reasons the real deal is not used.

“If you can’t punch me in the head, you sure as hell can’t eye strike or throat strike me or hit me in a specific pressure point.”

Merry no offence but i think you have a bit missed the point of this argument. In traditional arts at high level every strike is aimed at a lethal target so it becomes like reflex.
Saying that if you cant hit me you cant hurt me is one thing, but if they DO hit you then it will be somewhere you really dont want to experience. That and the second and third strikes are also going to be at similar targets. Try and imagine defending against someone launching a total barage of nerve,eye and joint strikes.
Ive said all along and will continue to say ring sports are designed for entertainment…
There is not much entertainment in two people trying to actively KILL each other.
“We train to have an edge against those untrained folks out there. The Ring isn’t real life. We train for things we might see in real life.”
Whoever said that had no idea about how there art was supposed to work. Proper kf systems are EXCERLENT for fighting against other arts. The point about real life training fair enough. We always train with the idea that our opponent may either be armed, have friends or be a skilled fighter.
The main thing here is… Good kung fu is brilliant in actual fights provided you understand it and have been taught properly. It’s honestly is next to useless inside a ring or sport fighting enviroment. Exception go’s to San Shou but even that has been adapted into a sport as well.
MMA and TCMA both have the same purpose its just sometimes they differ in method.
Many paths lead to the same peak.

Ive said this before and ill happily say it again…
In most real encounters the attacker is only going to pick a fight they are sure they will win. He is proberly a lot bigger than you are surrounded by his friends carrying a weapon or more than likely all of the above. Good kf systems are actualy designed to be able to give you a shot at getting out alive. This is when all those dirty tactics as you call them suddenly become a matter of do or die. In this situation if i can punch to the face i would rather be spearing to the eyes. What happens in a ring art where all the training is designed around not seriously hurting your opponent???

5

Easy Paul :slight_smile:

I’m quite familiar with San Shou, and, in fact, spent a good deal of time looking for a gym that taught that that fit my schedule lately.

Why don’t MMAists fight San Shou? I dunno, why don’t San Shou guys fight MMA? Works both ways.

Shonie Carter, a not too bad MMA guy recently got quite beat in a San Shou bout by Cung Le, who is a badass.

In fact, I think you’ll find that most MMA types highly respect San Shou and wish it would get bigger!

However, I have to address this point: The guy at the ATM trying to rob me probably isn’t going to know BJJ.

Nope… but what if he DOES?! Or what if he’s a wrestler or judoka or sambist or…

in other words, what if he’s trained?

Jon, good points, of course.

Here’re my counter arguments:

How often do you try to actively, and at full power:

eye spear
throat strike
joint strike,
etc.

I would think that if you did this alot, then people would run out of sparring partners really quickly!!! Related argument–if you DON’T practice them full speed, how do you know you can actually pull it off?

“Try and imagine defending against someone launching a total barage of nerve,eye, and joint strikes.”

Try and imagine somebody defending against a barrage of knees and elbows to the head, and a swarm of punches designed to knock you out. I mean, I REALLY don’t want to get kneed in the face. A barrage is a barrage, plain and simple. Are you suggesting that the strike delivered by a kung fu practitioner is so potent that if one gets through and lands, then the fight is effectively over?

“Dirty tricks,” may be a matter of life and death. I agree. But they are much easier to ADD ON as part of your training, than they are to rely on and miss. I can eye gouge with the best of them. Why? Because I have the ability to control the head as part of my grappling training. It’s not a great leap of imagination to eye gouge at this point. I also have the ability to joint lock, choke, or reverse postions, get up and run. I don’t want to limit this to groundfighting, because i’m not talking about that. I just use those as examples because I’m more familiar with them

I believe that everything you say is important to self-defense. I also believe that these tactics are best used to supplement sound basic martial skills such as punches, knees, elbows, throws, kicks and some groundwork.

While you bring up some good points, you seem to be falling back on “Kung Fu is too deadly for the ring.” That at least is how I interpret your comment about

“ill just state some of the many reasons the real deal is not used.”

Is that what you mean when you say that?

And as far as techniques designed not to injure the opponent, having been heel hooked until I tore my MCL, and could not walk, having choked unconcious one of my training partners, having watched my friend knock his opponent out etc, I think it’s safe to say that the techniques are designed to seriously injure the opponent.

6

I think KF can hang

If you get someone worth a ****.

Majority of KF schools are lame, and I support KF.

But anyway, I would guess why you don’t have good KF guys in UFC type bouts has to do with KF history. In general exhibitionism is looked down upon.

UFC is not typical of the MA community, and it is debatable whether it is the best testing grounds. I have spared grapplers before and dominated the encounters. Perhaps they just suck, I don’t know. Point is UFC has a narrow scope within the MA community, and it doesn’t provide much incentive to participate.

I saw a UFC grappler on the TV show “Blind Date”, bragging about how he could beat up 99.9% of society. Don’t exactly know what he was basing his figures on, but he came across as a *******. I mean if this is what kind of people the UFC attracts, I can see why people aren’t interrested. Needless to say he didn’t make a love connection.

7

Wow. What a way to start off the new year–with a troll topic we’ve never seen before on KFO. (Can you hear the sarcasm dripping…?)

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Reemul,

Placing your skills on display in a fighting match was frowned upon? Then how did all those masters wind up fighting people of different styles all the time in the Kung Fu verbal histories?

I mean, were talking about arts that were supposedly born in trial by fire here! (I’m not doubting it, just saying that IF the verbal histories are true, then some of these founders were scrappers :slight_smile:

Also, I guarentee that there is SOMEBODY out there who has “good” Kung Fu who would fight in MMA competitions. This isn’t China and there are probably some guys out there without that mindset that are good at what they do.

Secondly, I am NOT talking about ONLY GRAPPLERS here!!! MMA has a groundfighting component, true, but that’s not really what I am getting at. I use the grappling examples because it is what I am most familiar with.

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Hey Budokan,

How nice of you to be so freakin’ pleasant.

Unlike some of the trolls, I’m trying to get some thoughts on this and feel it out, and discuss it in an intelligent way. Sorry if that bugs you, but there has to be a REASON, or set of identifiable reasons for this current situation.

It may simply come down to “because when you train for something, you get good at it…” ie, I wouldn’t do Wrestling and expect to do well at a kickboxing tournament.

But it’d be nice to try and elucidate those answers in an intelligent way, instead of getting labeled a troll by somebody who happens not to like the topic.

Care to contribute anything this morning or are you just going to lambaste me?

I use this board as a way to roll things around and see what comes out. Sorry if that gets your panties in a wad.

10

Jon

I’m just wondering John, you stated:

“In traditional arts at high level every strike is aimed at a lethal target so it becomes like reflex.”

Does that mean you will aim for the throat and eyes in every encounter? Alot of times when you are attacked it isn’t life or death. Some guy throws a punch at you after an argument and your going to try to rip his throat out? Some drunk grabs you because you were looking at his girlfriend and your going to blind him for life?

There are different degrees of “reasonable force”. If you have one response for every situation you may find yourself in a whole lot of trouble with the law. Imagine being indicted for second degree murder when a you could have as easily just knocked the guy out. Imagine your wages being garnished for the rest of your life because you blinded somebody instead of just an assault charge for breaking his nose.

I am also wondering how you realistically train these techniques without seriously hurting each other.

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MP - Happy new year dude. :slight_smile:

“6. Consequently, the logical [best] place to test yourself [in regards to combat] is legal combat… a ring.”

I would disagree with this premise. I’ll agree with you that ‘hard sparring’ variety methods (of which ring-fighting is one) is required to ‘pressure test’ your abilities. The ‘ring’ provides an excellent venue for finding a variety of very skilled and determined opponents in this regard; this is it’s ‘pro.’ However, it also has a ‘con’ - that the situational variables in a ring are severely limited, whereas you can encorporate a wide variety of ‘role-playing scenarios’ in your ‘outside of a professional or amateur ring’ ‘hard sparring.’ This ‘con’, I think outweighs the ‘pro’ and dethrones the ‘ring’ as the ‘best’ place to test yourself for combat.

Sorry about all the single quotes… it’s a bad habit I’ve gotten into of single-quoting things with questionable meanings in hopes people will use their common sense to understand which meaning of the word I’m using.

Criticisms…

  1. Grappler’s advantage - This one should be rewritten to say ‘some styles of fighting are clearly advantageous in some ring situations whereas they would not necessarily be on the street.’ Which is undeniably true. I would be hesitant to generalize martial arts so broadly as ‘strikers’ and ‘grapplers’ in this context, allthough it’s en vogue. So this no longer becomes a striker vs. grappler debate; but it is still important to realize that the [rephrased] ‘complaint’ is a fact. For better or for worse.

  2. Dirty tricks - A red herring. For the most part I agree with you. But see above, point 1, as it has some implications here, although none that extend beyond what has allready been discussed in it’s context.

  3. Training to deal with untrained individuals - In the strongest form of this argument (-> We will never face people of skill X, only people of lesser skill Y, so we don’t have to be THAT good), it is, as you suggested, nonsense. There is a more rational version of this argument (-> We will never face people with specific skills A&B, which are independant of general fighting ability, thus while we have to maintain the same general level of fighting ability, the need to find counters to A&B is greatly diminished) which holds some merit. How much merit this holds depends on your situation.

As an addenum, remember that there are individuals trained in kungfu that are doing very well in mixed style tournaments (eg. Tim Cartmell), and there are also large organizations of chinese
ringfighters with excellent standards of training (eg. Mike Patterson).

Also remember that all the ‘stuff’ you attribute to ‘traditional styles’, in many people’s viewpoints (such as mine) doesn’t
belong to them at all. Of course I know you know that, but it’s still worth pointing out for the sake of the thread.
…

Mixed responses to other posters:

Paul - Mixed Martial Artists DO compete in sanshou; and do quite well.

Jon said - “In traditional arts at high level every strike is aimed at a lethal target so it becomes like reflex.” - Jon, this is another red herring. Every ‘high level’ practitioner I have met (even being very liberal with the term) has been able to control where they struck and how hard. I hope you aim for this in your own practice as well, lest you some day crush the trachea of an old woman who bumps into you in the supermarket.

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Braden:

Perhaps it would be better to say “some RANGES of combat are advantageous in the ring and disadvantageous in the street,” rather than some styles. TECHNICALLY speaking I could use my wrestling skills to stay on my feet rather than take the fight to the ground. Does that make sense?

As far as the ring being the best place to test yourself, I think we’re working from slightly different definitions (Ah, the BANE of internet conversations!)

When I say the ring is the best place to test yourself, given the cons of the street, I mean that it is the best way we’ve got to pit your personal combat skills against another opponent outside of training. I tend to separate training and “contests,” if you will, in my mind, and that bias in my thinking manifested itself that way.

I also think that the ring provides another pro in that it removes “scenarios.” If you truly wish to measure your “combat skill,” so to speak, best to do one on one. In multiple opponent scenarios, the focus is on escaping… making enough room to leave. If you happen to take somebody out on the way to making that space, well and good, but if you can make an opening large enough to sprint through and leave, then you have “won.”

In this, the goal of self-defense is different than sport. In self-defense, I have to be good enough to leave. That may require the personal combat skill to beat the opponent, it may not, it may even require that you have MORE martial skill than just beating the opponent… maybe you are in an unusual situation where winning means you have to beat 3 people at a time! But if you can leave, generally, it is “winning,” and, honestly, that requires less straight personal combat ability and more awareness…a skinny dude with no training who breaks a bottle on the bar and sticks it in his very large opponents face then throws chairs out of his way and runs like heck has just executed pretty good self defense by awareness, even if his personal combat is lacking.

In sport, though I HAVE to be good enough to beat my opponent to “win.” I believe that ring strategy is not the same as awareness… you cannot introduce unexpected variables beyond yourself… just what you bring to the ring.

So I certainly believe self-defense and sport are seperate, but I still believe that the measure of a persons’ all-around personal combat skill is success in the ring, against what is hopefully a decently trained, game opponent.

Success in sport does not indicate success in self-defense. Cung Le is one dangerous man, but he fails in self defense if he ****es off a guy with a gun who shoots him.

However, Cung Le’s personal combat abilities are not in question, regardless of his self-defense acumen. And that is what I seek to measure with ringfighting–personal combat ability.

Dirty tricks are sort of a red herring, but I think, as you pointed out, it plays both ways :slight_smile:

Certainly there are some Kung Fu guys out there with some MMA ring success. I don’t doubt that some exist. But, speaking in generalities, there doesn’t seem to be much of it. The title of the thread was perhaps too harsh, but I didn’t mean NO good Kung Fu of course… just that there doesn’t seem to be much. And I’m hoping that perhaps, with this thread, we can get some consensus on why.

Unless of course, Ralek hijacks the thread and Budokan yells at him all day. :wink:

As for the San Shou guys… PROPS!!! :slight_smile:

Happy New Year to you too Braden!

13

I don’t personally believe that there is a single definitive environ for testing ourselves or our martial arts. In the UK for some years now, a number of former bouncers/bodyguards have held great influence in the martial arts media by drawing on the fact that so few martial artists have had much if anything in the way of actual in yer face fighting experience - and consequently, have been able to promote in a very generalised way, their own perspective on things - in particular by manipulating inexperienced peoples fears about the real deal - should it ever arise for them.

I got my real experience in a ‘front-line’ occupation - the Police - over a 13 years streets period, and my experience was far broader than the bouncers - but more importantly it was ‘different’. There were completely different sets of considerations between say massive urban riots or terrorist threats on the one hand and dealing with drunken nightclub customers on the other. Of course bouncers deal with other things to, and so do the Police.

That said, I wouldn’t generalise my experience or even the conclusions from it.

What I do believe however, is that some form of reality testing is important. Competition is one such example - there are many others.

It’s what we do with that experience - how we asess it, criticise - relativise it, that is important.

Most traditional martial arts training is a symbolic substitution for something that in ‘reality’ may never happen. So inductive are the rituals and training protocols, that many of us mistake the ‘virtual’ world of abstract training for the real thing - in one of its many guises.

In the absence of true mortal combat - and I don’t mean the puffed up ritualised displays that often pass for ‘kong-Sau’ in TCMA, most of us will never be fully tested.

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In the absence of true mortal combat - and I don’t mean the puffed up ritualised displays that often pass for ‘kong-Sau’ in TCMA, most of us will never be fully tested.

Thank heavens for that!!!

Steven T.

Any thoughts on why there hasn’t been more success for Kung Fu in MMA events?

15

“Perhaps it would be better to say ‘some RANGES of combat are advantageous in the ring and disadvantageous in the street’…”

Well, yeah. I didn’t mean to say styles. I just meant… well, there’s no word for it. But one individual’s approach may be better suited for the ring, but not the street - and again this varies by what ring we’re talking about.

“When I say the ring…I … to pit your personal combat skills against another opponent outside of training…”

Ok, I’d definitely agree to that then. I thought you meant specifically an amateur or professional ring fighting circuit. Specific to the original topic, all sorts of kungfu guys ‘could’ be doing exactly this, but we’d still never hear about it if they don’t bring it into official contests.

“I also think that the ring provides another pro in that it removes ‘scenarios.’ If you truly wish to measure your ‘combat skill’…”

I see what you’re saying. You’re trying to isolate ‘self-defense’ on one hand with ‘combat skills’ on the other, as mentioned in your original post. And you’re saying here that removing ‘scenarios’ better hones in on ‘combat skill.’ I think that’s reasonable enough, although I disagree. I think there’s alot of pure ‘combat skill’ testing/training that requires a ‘scenario’ of some kind - not necessarily multiple-opponent. I’m under the impression that BJJ schools work alot with scenarios - for example, where a bout will start with one person allready in inferior position, to isolate certain skills. This specific example is a little contrived to isolate ‘combat skills’, but it’s more that I hand in mind by ‘scenarios’ than the multiple opponent stuff. A further example I can offer is that in baguazhang training, we work out alot from being attacked from behind, directly from the sides, etc. I think this is a valuable and realistic tool which you will never see inside a ‘ring’ as such (although if we’re extending the definition of ‘ring’ to include nonformal but competitive engagements outside training, there’s no reason why you COULDN’T play scenarios in them). This speaks to my main ‘beef’ with overemphasizing ‘ring’ training if your goal is self-defense - and that is that the variables, in regards to how the confrontation evolves, is not just ‘potentially different’ in the ring vs the street, but is ‘often the inverse’ thereof. Even speaking just of ‘combat skills’, for example, the way ‘range’ evolves in the ring, has in my experience, been quite different to the way ‘range’ evolves in a street encounter. Being ideally suited to one will require a different set of skills to being ideally suited to the other. This is a difficult task for anyone, and I’m not saying ‘MMAists’ are less inclined towards this than ‘TMAists’ (actually I’m uncomfortable with the terms and don’t want to imply any judgements about such a division). I’m only saying I think it is an important concern to keep in mind - and is one of the reasons why I may see the ‘ring’ in a different light than you do.

As for why there’s not ‘more’ kungfu guys hitting the popular circuits, I’m not sure. It’s undeniably true that… uh… that that is true. It’s also undeniably true that proportionally fewer people who train what they would call kungfu approach adequacy for self-defense or competitive fighting. Maybe that is all there is to it. Maybe it’s because chinese kungfu culture has always emphasized ‘amateurism’ (in the literal sense of the term) - tradtionally, most kungfu teachers and what we percieve of as kungfu ‘professional’ fighters have in fact all been amateurs and held down unrelated ‘day jobs.’ Maybe it is because skill in groundfighting has become a staple of the competitions you have in mind, and for some reason kungfu proponents have been slower to adopt that kind of training than other martial artists. There’s countless possible reasons. Personally, I don’t much care, as it has no effect upon my training. Although the stuff we’ve discussed above is certainly interesting and pertinent.

16

Hrmm… well… all that said, I can hypothesize from my situation…

If I was interested in formal fighting competition (which I’m not), I would need an entry-level venue (got to start somewhere), which is neither a karate/muay thai/boxing/kickboxing/etc venue (whose rules would completely invalidate everything I do), nor a wrestling/grappling venue (ditto); and I would need one that allows bare hands and elbow strikes, including to the head.

There’s no such venue available to me.

So this could be contributing to it.

17

Braden,

I too am uncomfortable with the ideas of TMA and MMA, but it’s sort of what we’ve got going. So long as we both understand each other, I suppose it’s ok. :slight_smile:

I see what you mean… to you, the ring might be like an isolation drill, and not combat per se. And I do mean a ringfight, non training type… where the other guy wants to knock your block off (within the rules). I don’t suppose it HAS to be on some sort of tournament circuit, but that IS more what I had in my mind, a sort of formal engagement with a referree and possibly some judges and an audience and ring card girls :slight_smile:

And I agree that training for a ring fight does not translate to training for self defense. Adjustments have to be made for that, absolutely.

Now, I still believe that PRIDE and UFC level events are the best measure of combat skill widely available, without legal and death problems. We disagree there, primarily because of a difference in definition of ‘combat,’ but I think we can both live with that.

Especially since the real question is “Why is Kung Fu not particularly well represented in MMA type events?” Whether by quality or quantity, we both seem to agree that Kung Fu hasn’t fared too well. I guess I’m just trying to get a feel for why this is the case. I know there are a lot of “why’s” but I’m sure there is some sort of basic level, a small list of things that could be close enough to true to be considered right. I’m kind of hoping that can be uncovered!

18

Braden,

Could the use of fight gloves be considered bare hand enough for you? Open fingered, padding only on the back of the hand to the first knuckle, 4-6 oz.

There are venues that allow elbows. Although it may be hard to find amateur rules with elbows… hmmmm…

Ok… in what way would the normal rules of MMA events severely inhibit your style of fighting. Not trying to challenge, trying to gain an education. Lack of Baguazhang knowledge makes me not understand what you are talking about :slight_smile:

19

Goodness! I’ve never even heard of it. I’m only vaguely familiar with Silat in that it means so many different things to so many different people.

I know what you mean. I’m a blue and I wouldn’t train with me if I was all I had to go to :slight_smile: I think purples can do a fine job, however.

Is this something like Pencak Silat? I am SO lost here… ah, wait. I seem to recall some forms of silat being grappling oriented, and I THINK they frequently assume the opponent is armed. Maybe that’s it. I just don’t know.

20

The gloves I’ve worn wouldn’t cut it. We spend alot of time on some specifics of striking surfaces with the open palm which require both unrestricted articulation of the fingers and having the entire surface of the palm exposed, and backpalm if we’re backpalming. Don’t want to get any more specific than that, since it’s more something you have to touch (or, more specifically, be smacked with) if you haven’t felt it before. But.. you know.. believe me or don’t. :wink: Maybe someone with skill could pull it off from gloves, but I suck enough as is; I certainly couldn’t. Oh, to clarify - the only closed fist strike I have learnt from my teacher is an uppercut. Backfists and hammerfists are common from some other teachers. It’s almost all palm work with the hands though.

For elbows: Yeah, the problem is finding an entry level amateur venue that allows them. I’m sure they’re out there, but they’re not accessible to me personally. I guess if the hypothetical me had money to burn, he could travel… but that’s just another constraint keeping most people like the hypothetical me from competeing.

What other rules related stuff are you unsure about?

Oh, BTW, even though this is all a hypothetical discussion - These are just concerns coming from my training, which is pretty peculiar and rare by kungfu standards. Whether or not others have their own concerns along these lines, I can’t say. I maintain that things like ‘I only train to hit the throat and tear out eyeballs’ aren’t valid arguments, besides which there are much better vital targets which are legal in most MMA venues.