I think wing chun can defete styles like bjj in open competition.
This has yet to happen, and would depend strongly on the rules. Most BJJers looking at competition including striking pragmatically accept they need to incorporate something like boxing or Muay Thai into their arsenal if they are to succeed in open competition. comparatively few WC people have embraced the converse.
The record of WC’ers against striking only boxers, full-contact karateka and MT stylists is hardly long or illustrious either. There have been some successes here, to be sure, but not that many and WC hardly even raises a blip on the MMA radar to date other something for the dumber BJJ trainees to poke fun at.
Some, like my Sifu and his students including myself, have felt the power of the dark side and joined the Empire - and started training in BJJ to COMPLEMENT our WC.
I don’t really think the DNA and evolution of species are that good an analog for the “evolution” of Wing Chun. Barring cosmic irradiation or WMD, DNA is more or less inviolate and a species does not change in a generation. A martial artist’s thinking, however, can change overnight and not necessarily because their strategies and tactics met the test of natural selection and failed.
Much WC training, particularly prior to about 1970, was conducted in a secretive and clandestine fashion - hardly put to exhaustive test or rigorous objective examination. The talk of “secret” techniques further prevents scrutiny, testing ,and selection.
In talking about the evolution of WC, what is it?
A devastatingly effective combat art? How well then does it stand up to the criminal underclass tooled up with guns and edged weapons? Will Dubya’s army be attacking the Iraqis with bil saos and tan dars? In many ways H2H skill is the least important aspect of intelligently avoiding or surviving street crime.
A combat sport? Not doing real well in that regard at present. Yes, I know some WC people have pretty impressive tournament and ring records, my Sifu is one of them, but overall our penetration into sportfighting is pretty dismal.
Is it a social program designed to make the practitioner a more moral and enlightened being through adherence to the tenets of Chinese philosophies, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism? The disputes and long argument on the “a question answered” thread might show this to be failing miserably, as did the Cologne incident and the 1996 NY incident. Joe NewStudent in the 21st century doesn’t go to an MA school to immerse himself in a Chinese culture which arguably is dying - he’s there to learn some skills if someone confronts him walking home from the bus stop. Westerners might have been looking for the Oriental Mystique in the 70’s, but not now.
A fitness program? A self-development movement?
A tradition or art/craft, in the same way as Hungarian Folk Dance or Rene’s Appalalacian Folk Pottery.No need for evolution here - indeed, in many ways ruthless Darwinian style natural selection is gradually watering it down or wiping it out. People like Rene, Robert Chu and the VT museum are doing good here, though if they could stop the adolescent squabbling about who is a better historian than who then things might improve.
If it is a tradition which is becoming less relevant to the real world other than as a curiosity, what is lost should it be lost? Maybe a lot. But what, and why is it important?
For WC to survive, it will need to meet the needs of a changing populace in a changing environment who have access to more information than ever before and whose needs are more diverse than ever before. A flexible approach is needed lest the style become marginalised as a curiosity with little practical application to real world activities, be they self-defence or sporting.
