The main point of my post on this thread was that wing chun, or any style of fighting, should focus on its forte… But some ground fighters reacted so defensly to what I’d said it’s as though I’m thretenting their livelyhood. Are you mixed (MMA) people so insecure about youslef that you need to justify your ground fighting?
Say you had studied German for the past 5-years, would you elect to take an examination in Chinese? No – you would take the subject that you are strongest in, which would be German. The same holds true for wing chun disciples. If you were to engage combat, you would choose to fight standing, using wing chun techniques, becuase that’s what you have been training to do for many years.
Regardless of what you mixed people may think (basically I couldn’t care two faaks), there are considerable disadvantages to fighting on the ground for a wing chun fighter. For example, the reduction of your repetoire of techniques, the inability to apply damaging punches, the lost of your powerful kicks and, to me, the most important aspect of all, that of mobility. Mobility is extremely important becuase it’s one of the main aspect that works the most effective against an opponent that’s stronger and bigger than you. With mobilty, we don’t have to face the force of a bigger and stronger opponent head on (we have already discussed this aspect in another thread: fighting on the blind side). That’s why I said you should get back up as quickly as possible if you are down – so that your most important attributes and fighting tools are available to you. With standing, you need not make contact with your opponent and thereby negating any form of resistance. Any techniques that is meet with resistance, like trying to force your opponent’s arm into a certain position, is very much strentgh reliant.
Also, there is clearly one situation in which ground fighting is seriously comprimised. That of multiple attackers. This aspect has always been avoided or dismissed by the Gracies… because they have no real answer to it. They say things like: it’s impossible to beat multiple skilled fighters anyway. But the truth is, in real life we do get attacked by multiple assilants, and they aren’t ALL skilled fighters. Most cases it’s just bums with little skill, but the point is, it IS possible to defend oneself against multiple attackers standing up, even though they may be bums, but it IS impossible to defend yourself from this kind of attack on the ground.
Not only that.. 99% of all fights start standing up, so for the ground fighter you need an extra step to take us down on the ground first. And, as most real world fighters know, that, my friend, is the hardest part of the fight – unless you are talking about the receipiant of the bombarding kicks and punches!
In an ideal world we would probably learn wing chun for stand up fighting, and BJJ or Pakistani JJ for ground work. But in real life this isn’t always easy, and there are others issues to contend with. For example, do we have the time or money to learn a completely different style? Or, more importantly, is there any conflicting principles \ issues between the two different styles?
