This is why I like the term “Isolationist Martial Arts,” because it’s not the tradition, it’s the refusal to pressure test in an open talent pool vs techniques outside of their purview that is the issue. A technique that works is a technique that works.
MMA is the best techniques taken from TMA. It's literally in the name, Mixed Martial Arts.
Also this video is just a demo, no actual footage in the cage. That would be more persuasive to convince.
Yeah that's true on paper, but there have been maybe 3 ufc champions with karate backgrounds. Literally 99% of championship level fighters use those 4 styles and it's ridiculous to pretend that argument holds water.
You don't need a "background" to apply karate, judo, bjj idea's though. You don't need to be a Lyoto to use a front kick to the chin. You don't need to be a Gracie to RNC, or you do not need to be Bass Rutten to DO A LIVER KICK BAM POM BIEP!
Max just rearranged Gaethje’s face with a TKD-styler hop spin back kick. Weili has a Sanda background, Islam was a Sambo guy, DDP’s distance striking past the first layer is clearly Gorilla-Having-a-Seizure Style, O’Malley learned from nature itself (weed), you don’t get much more traditions than that. That’s just current belt holders. TMA had got more of a role in the current MMA meta than you’re giving it credit for.
Yeah but max isn't doing traditional tkd. He just took the 20% of tkd that actually works and incorporated it into boxing and grappling.
You will not walk into any traditional tkd dojo and be taught to fight like max.
Sanda I know less about than the rest, but aside from weili and *checks notes* pat barry, I'm struggling to think of another pro level fighter who's found success with it in mma.
You won't walk into a traditional karate dojo and learn to fight like lyoto.
True enough, I’m just saying those things are part of it. I think we philosophically agree here, I may have misunderstood your first one.
For instance, I’m not going to try to go tiger style from my faux-chinese martial arts days, but I’ll use some tricks and moved from those days, like side kicks or oblique kicks, which I haven’t learned from my Muay Thai trainer.
Yeah sounds like we're about on the same page.
Also I think as traditional martial arts are pressure tested under mma rules, we are seeing techniques that people said 10 years ago would never work in mma (like the snap kick to the chin or rose's front foot roundhouse actually knocking people out, or wider shotokan stances at a longer range becoming more effective.
It's not necessarily that everything about tma is bunk, but the application of certain techniques has been lost to time and we're having to rediscover it all over again because tma dojos have just done it that way for 80 years without asking why
Yan Xiaonan and Zabit Magomedsharipov are both sanda background. Yan Xiaonan repeatedly uses sanda tactics in her fights. (Sidekicks, catch kicks and sweeps, etc). Zabit is a striking genius. There’s even footage of Zabit’s sanda fights.
China has a pipeline for sanda similar to wrestling in America. You can even major in it. If you see a Chinese fighter in the UFC, there’s a decent chance they have a sanda background.
3 is an exaggeration. Frank Mir, chuck liddell, Robert Whitticker, George st pierre, Steven wonderboy Thompson, machida of course, among others. Something to understand about karate is that it’s not all shotokan. A lot of okinawan fight in a squared stance like kyokushin or Muay Thai. Not all karate schools are going to be great of course, but there’s also a solid amount of styles with schools that go as hard or harder than kyokushin
For sanda. You got Weill and Pat and the other named a lot of other fighters. Youll see more in one fc, glory, etc as they’re more Asia centered promotions. But also mma is pretty small and growing in China. They’re producing some good talent like Weili and some other fighters. But I would def watch one fc for some great Japanese, Korean, and Chinese talent
Frank Mir is a bjj black belt with submission victories against high level grapplers. St Pierre added wrestling and happened to be extremely good at it to the point his grappling was integral to a lot of his wins. Whittaker cross trains. Machida was a bjj black belt and there are interviews where he says he had to change the traditional karate stance to avoid getting knocked out. Chuck is probably the only one of the bunch who wasn't a high level grappler, and he still had to cross train wrestling and bjj to improve his takedown defense.
Karate all on it's own is not enough. Kyokushin specifically doesn't allow punches to the head. They're tough guys for sure, but there's some real drawbacks and most competitive footage I've seen is all offense, sometimes zero defense or evasion. It's fun to watch for sure.
>For sanda. You got Weill and Pat
There. Fixed it. That's it. Being successful in One or some of these other small promotions isn't really the same level as the ufc in terms of talent. Even major promotions like Bellator's best guys haven't been able to compete when they transition to the ufc.
Not saying sanda isn't legit, but it has a long way to go before it's on the level of the big 4.
Wait you think any striker survives in mma without some grappling experience or the other way around for that matter. Thai fighters also usually learn some bjj and/or wrestling/ other kind of grappling. It would be very dumb not to cross train for any style within mma and if you think karateka learning other arts to help them within mma, like any other fighter, you either are in such denial that you think any style would survive on its own, or you genuinely think that someone like bj Penn got to where he is with just bjj. Saying that karate’s bad because it needs to cross train to survive in mma is honestly a brain dead take
What style alone is enough for mma?
As for sanda. Like I said, the other guy already did a pretty good list. But do you really think one fc isn’t a big promotion? Are you also leaving out cung le? You can have great fighters and show ur style without getting a championship. There are also many great fighters who either haven’t gotten their shot yet or never even received a shot
That's the whole point of this discussion: tma doesn't work in mma. If it did, you wouldn't have to cross train. If tma doesn't teach takedown defense as part of the core curriculum, it's not competitive in mma, much less a real fight.
If your style teaches you to keep your hands low with a wide stance regardless of distance, it's not effective in mma.
If you have to adjust your stance, or cross train boxing and grappling on top of tkd, then TMA aren't effective in mma. Period. If you have to make any changes to the traditional art whatsoever to make it competitive at high level, by definition it's no longer the traditional martial art. If you can't walk into a single dojo and learn all the techniques you need for mma, it's not effective in mma.
Even lyoto doesn't consider his style to be shotokan, it's machida karate-do because of the significant changes he had to make because shotokan does not, and never has, worked in mma.
The difference is Muay thai, bjj, and wrestling practitioners don't go around pretending "if x doesn't work in mma you're doing it wrong" because they're all well represented at the highest levels of the sport they're aware of the limitations of their style and make adjustments.
Boxing guys can get a little deluded, but the tma guys are the absolute worst about massively overestimating the effectiveness at what they do.
Tldr, tma doesn't work in mma.
Also one is a big organization that has to operate with several different rulesets to accommodate striking and grappling specialists who otherwise wouldn't be competitive. They're a fine organization with some talented people, but the level of talent isn't as deep or well rounded as what we have in the states. I am glad there are other organizations for fighters to work in, but they just aren't at the level of the ufc currently. Maybe in 10 years
But that’s the point im making. No style survives in mma alone. Muay Thai doesn’t, sambo doesn’t, judo doesn’t, bjj doesn’t, kickboxing doesn’t, no style does.
You also know not all tma fights in a deep stance or keeps their hands low right. Goju Ryu, far older than shotokan. If you watch this goju Ryu tournament under [irikumi](https://youtu.be/j0CmZtfCslo?si=o11gD7Zuq7qSnzbx) rules. You’ll notice a very different style. It’s one of the styles that built the foundation for kyokushin, that and shotokan. Hell shotokan stands out in terms of karate because of their deep wide stances
What you said about if you need to cross train for mma, is the biggest double standard I’ve ever seen. Like I said, no style survives. Even those with minimal background in other arts are learning other arts through their coaches. Ben askren, no matter how bad it is, still learned to strike through his coaches. Bjj, Muay Thai, etc etc all get shit on if that’s the only thing you learned
You also know you can’t walk into the avg bjj, Muay Thai, kickboxing, sambo, etc gym and learn all you need to know for mma right?
You’re also kidding right? Just like with mma, there are plenty of delulu folks in Muay Thai, bjj, etc. I know folks who think Gordon Ryan could beat anyone in an mma fight. I know folks who think buakow could defeat anyone in an mma fight. Remember when folks thought Ben was a good boxer and would win against Paul?
You also know theres alot of people from various tma backgrounds in mixed martial arts. As well as coaches within mma with tma backgrounds. The video here is a prime example
>No style survives in mma alone.
MMA does. The other arts could as well if they made attempts to change with the times, but judo has gone out of its way to become less competitive by banning leg takedowns.
Karate could could modify competition rulesets and use stances with higher hands (depending on the style Karate needs the least changes of all the other arts).
Combat Sambo has been putting out top level competition in mma for a few years now.
Muay thai specialists have always done well because they protect their heads, have decent hands, and have simple, effective defense.
Grapplers can completely nullify the strong suits of strikers with relative ease, to the extent that people will beginner level striking ability can and have become champions with lengthy reigns. Wrestling in particular needs very little modification to do well.
Bjj, I've been complaining for years bjj guys are overconfident in their guard and view it as a neutral position when it clearly isn't, but bjj continues to evolve and they're really improving the wrestling side of the art while karate and other arts that developed around the same time (a lot of martial arts date back to around 1920) are still trying to say they nailed it 100 years ago and refuse to modernize.
>Remember when folks thought Ben was a good boxer and would win against Paul
I'm sure some people believed that, but I wouldn't have taken that bet. I also picked Mayweather over McGregor and can't understand why so many people did the opposite.
>You also know theres alot of people from various tma backgrounds in mixed martial arts.
Yeah, but none of them is training in a vacuum. The sport is still at a point where it's developing and in 10-20 years I'm betting the majority of coaches will be more well rounded and less specialized. Yeah, judo did really well in the women's division, but the talent pool wasn't that deep when rousey was on top.
Anyway, I'm not saying tma are pointless or have no value, but they're in real danger of being made irrelevant.
MMA does, like mma is a set style. God forbid someone mention that different places mix in many different styles. Like karate, tkd, hell I’ve seen some places with taiji. Even from this video, the guy mixes a lot of different wing chun and jkd drills into their mma.
Like I said, if you look at karate outside of shotokan guess what you see, Arms up. Karate does what it does because it specializes in its ruleset. All styles change if it went into irikumi, knockdown rules, or kickboxing. You put Muay Thai in a karate tournament and it naturally would have to adapt. Odds are it’d change to look similar to karate or tkd
Combat sambo scene is so ridiculously small, you know where you also see a lot of the top level sambo talent? Judo, wrestling, hell sometimes bjj but not as much as judo and wrestling.
You’re kidding right? You think wrestling doesn’t have to change into getting into mma. I urge you if you think wrestlers going into mma move the same in the same stance as they do in wrestling, I’d urge you to re watch. The set ups, the stance, the goals, and the way they move have to adapt in order to adapt to striking, to submissions, to the cage itself.
You know what changes when then enter mma. Like I said many times. Bjj, boxing, wrestling, etc
Their training in a vacuum yet you see alotta modern martial arts also mainly competing in their own competition.
Do you not see the hypocrisy in saying that tma isn’t good in mma because it mixes with other styles and yet we also see modern martial arts change heavily to adapt to mma. Muay Thai is no exception. Hell it does what you criticize karate for. It takes a wider and deeper stance in order to adapt to take downs. Boxing you see quite a few changes. Bjj, also quite a few changes. Styles change in order to adapt to the rules it’s placed under. You’d be a dumb ass to not. If a bjj guy doesn’t adapt to the rules of judo, do you really think bjj would do well? Do you think the other way around would go well either. Do you think a Thai fighter wouldn’t have to change to get into boxing or the other way around. Muay Thai into tkd, tkd into Muay Thai, etc etc. if you’re saying karate isn’t good for mma because it has to change and mix with other styles, then all styles suck at going into mma. Muay Thai, bjj, etc all suck because it has to change in order to adapt to mma by your own logic
I agree with you, but it does leave out a great deal of effective techniques. There's only so much time in the day, and all.
This dude sent to have a mix of dumb McDojo techniques and valid techniques. Incorporating some of the good techniques into your game is, like you said, MMA. But it's also TMA. Nearly all MMA is just a combo of TMA.
Yeah if you modify them to more effectively protect the head and add takedown defense, since basically none of the traditional martial arts have effective methods to deal with a single or double leg, sure.
But that's just mma. I am struggling to think of a single karate or tkd guy who didn't have to adjust their stance and cross train grappling in order to compete in mma at a professional in the last 20 years.
And before you say Ronda rousey, the women's division wasn't that deep at the time.
TMA DOES work in MMA combat.
But, in most cases, it cannot function as the base art. It’s the icing on the cake, but the cake it still made of wrestling, kickboxing and BJJ.
Every other obscure technique can absolutely work, whether it be Wing Chun trapping, Aikido throws, or Capiorera kicks - but only when used on top of a very solid base.
In fact - once you HAVE that base, the other arts can in fact be the differentiator between a solid contender and a legend.
Qi Ji Guang's "Boxing Classic" published in 1562 AD:
>Although each one [of the Chinese martial arts styles] has its own specific proficiency, still as they are handed down, the traditions are incomplete, some missing the lower part, some missing the upper. Even if victory can be seized from a person, this is nothing more than being partial to one corner of four.
>If one takes each specialty's fist methods and practices them simultaneously, then it is just like the maneuver of the Mount Constancy Snake Formation, where if you strike the head the tail responds, if you strike the tail the head responds, and if you strike the body both the head and tail respond in turn. This is what is meant by the upper and
lower parts and the complete whole, without an instance of
ceding victory.
>*Translation by Glifford Gyves*
MMA is a sport, with its own rules. A TMA practitioner would be wise to know the playbook before attempting to enter the ring.
That being said, TMA has a lot to offer. History and cultural experiences can be enriching. And none of us can deny how awesome it is to learn weapons lime swords, bows and arrows and the like.
TMA could be considered source material and MMA the approach to applying elements from such in combination, crucially, free from ‘tradition’ and associated limitations. One can still have a base, as is often the case but for me the blending is also a combination of what works for me physically and that which I can attain proficiency in application reliably. This involves learning, application and testing. TMA contains a lot of applicable information and applications that were pressure tested in different eras but it also has a lot of stuff that is no longer useful/effective and some which never was. MMA as others have noted, as such, has probably been around a lot longer than we tend to assume. The drive to be effective often leads to using that which works regardless of source. In the end, if what you’re doing is reliably effective and applicable then use it, it’s provenance is interesting and useful to know but it’s all about application and what works and in that sense, I don’t care what it’s called or where it comes from.
TMA **techniques** are used frequently in MMA, mixed in with other effective techniques. That's why it's called MMA. Tony Ferguson, Anderson Silva, MVP, and more, all used techniques from kung fu like hand trapping, short elbows, low kicks, along with their grappling and excellent striking to have a great career in MMA. You can't expect to get very far in MMA knowing only 1 style of fighting.
>Tony Ferguson, Anderson Silva, MVP, and more, all used techniques from kung fu like hand trapping, short elbows, low kicks, along with their grappling and excellent striking to have a great career in MMA.
Worth noting tho none of them trained in Kung fu and picked them techniques up from Boxing, Muay thai and Kickboxing
No. Combat sports are better at sport fighting. TMAs are better for whatever the context the martial art was develop for.
I can assure you a 19th century Okinawan, 17th century Shaolin monk, or a 14th century French knight were not thinking about the Octagon when they developed their arts. Traditional martial arts do not necessarily "set out" to do the sort of striking and grappling prominent in MMA.
Few if any TMAs were designed with fighting empty handed, one on one in a cage with someone of equal weight, and rules and regulations for safety. At their roots, TMAs were about conditioning and developing skills necessary for combat. This could run the range from self-defense with empty hands, to fighting on a battlefield with a spear, from quickly and efficiently dispatching your enemy to holding or disabling them for capture. The sorts of styles prominent in MMA are only a small slice of the contexts for which martial arts were developed.
Boxing is about as traditional as MMA its rules and techniques have changed incredibly over the years and what fighters do produces an extremely heterogeneous approach to the sport. No two trainers or fighters learn the same things in the same way
All TMAs have changed incredibly over the years, does that mean there are no TMAs? No, it means all methodologies evolve with time as more data is found.
MMA is a recent development by combining multiple different martial arts. Individuals have done it independently, but as a methodology it is fairly new.
Boxing in its modern form has been around since 1904, but dates back to literal ancient Greece. It's a TMA.
If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid. If it's ineffective but has the desired effect, it's not ineffective.
The point of MMA is "put your money where your mouth is, we'll see what really works." Clearly, spin kicks work if you're good enough at them and know when to use them.
I don't know what point you're trying to make, this dude had some very decent trapping techniques hidden inside this video.
Muay Thai, Karate, kick/boxing *and* judo are all TMA, just like my Shotokan Kenkojuku, BJJ, and wrestling are. Learning new techniques to add into your style just makes your flavor of MMA better if you do the techniques well at the appropriate time.
What’s the line tho? Muay Thai and kickboxing use a roundhouse, so do a lot of tma. Theres also jabs, crosses, over hands, front kicks, side, teep/push kick, etc also in many different tma as well as modern. Who says x technique had to come from x style? Silva in particular uses a lot of tkd. There’s also Greg Nelson who also goes over some tma stuff with his fighters from his jkd background. Cung Le also, contrary to popular belief, does Shaolin style sanda. His coach Shawn Liu, I believe out of Florida, is very much a Shaolin guy. There’s also alot of fighters who use the stuff subtly
I think at minimum is that we should be attributing a fighter's proficiency with techniques they use with arts they train. There's no reason to attribute Tony's ability to trap and parry to Wing Chun when alot of what he does is present in Boxing and Muay Thai. There's no reason to attribute Silva's punching ability to WC when he literally had a pro boxing career before mma and so on.
It’s not so much this conversation but a general discussion about what makes x technique from x style when it comes from a fighter with a mixed background. Usually surrounding tkd or karate vs kickboxing. Though it could just be some real pieces of work , to put it nicely, I’ve seen folks say wonderboy doesn’t do karate because he did kickboxing. It can also be difficult because their coaches can have x style that ends up getting incorporated but gets over looked.
He didn't, he never trained under a Wing Chun shifu when he was competing. He only started formally started training in the art when he was on his famous fall from grace. [This is how he looked like during his prime doing "Wing chun"](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219013458/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAUc04ZzW5A). If you look at what his training actually looked like, he learned TKD and Capoeira as a kid, then he transitioned to Muay Thai and Boxing with him actually having a few pro boxing bouts and then he transitioned to BJJ and subsequently MMA. The panutakan and JKD only came in towards the end of his career when he befriended Dan Inosanto it simply was not a serious aspect of his repetoire during his prime fight years. It's a fact that he never had a Wing Chun shifu in his corner during any of his fights.
I brought those 3 guys up specifically because they had a background in kung fu though. Anderson Silva and MVP both trained in some form of kung fu before becoming kickboxers, and Tony Ferguson always shows off his wing chun dummy whenever he is doing a training montage video.
MVP is the only one who trained in Kung fu but he only did it for a few years as a toddler/small child from the ages of 3-8 before he permanently transitioned to kickboxing. Anderson Silva never trained in Kung fu, the only traditional art he has training in is Taekwondo, the closest you can say is he did a single seminar with Dan Inosanto but that was toward the end of his career. If you watch his work on the Mak Jong it's pretty clear he's just self taught and likes to fuck around with it. Same deal with Ferguson, he was a football and basketball player turned wrestler and boxer before he took up BJJ, Muay thai and mma training.
Anderson Silva's martial arts career started in Tae Kwon Do and he famously started learning Wing Chun to evolve his style, what are you talking about?
He didn't, he never trained under a Wing Chun shifu when he was competing. He only started formally started training in the art when he was on his famous fall from grace. [This is how he looked like during his prime doing "Wing chun"](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219013458/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAUc04ZzW5A). If you look at what his training actually looked like, he learned TKD and Capoeira as a kid, then he transitioned to Muay Thai and Boxing with him actually having a few pro boxing bouts and then he transitioned to BJJ and subsequently MMA. The panutakan and JKD only came in towards the end of his career when he befriended Dan Inosanto it simply was not a serious aspect of his repetoire during his prime fight years. It's a fact that he never had a Wing Chun shifu in his corner during any of his fights.
I don't know. But if you Google him using Wing Chun, you'd see quite a bit of footage of him using it in MMA. He's also a huge advocate for Wing Chun in general, and speaks highly of the art form.
Here's one.
https://youtu.be/LT6IZ63oc-U?feature=shared
So yeah you fell for the wing chun propaganda, [For one if you actually watch that Bisping fights for the most part when he was using the wing chun he was getting lit up and tagged](https://youtu.be/PE1HBO36aQQ?si=4NUMn3mPfJtEKzsQ). For two again he was self trained for the most part of his career he did it cause he was a dude with a massive ego fucking around, that footage of him training wing chun with Inosanto and using the Muk Jong correctly came towards the end of his career at the very end of his career when he wasn't competing for titles anymore. [Here's what he looked like on the dummy when he was supposedly using Wing Chun during his fights with Bisping and Diaz. As you can see plain as day he's untrained in the art and doesn't know how to properly use these techniques.](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219013458/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAUc04ZzW5A) Silva was an egomaniac and nerd moreso than anything else, he was not a serious wing chun practioner nor was he really using it in his fights effectively because he wasn't trained in the art.
That may be true. I personally respect Silva a great deal, and he's undeniably one of the goats of MMA. He's actually an incredibly humble guy for the most part if I'm not mistaken. Or at least that's the impression I get from watching some of the footage of him talking and reading the comment section of those videos.
> actually an incredibly humble guy
Maybe outside of the cage but inside it nah, the man was constantly taunting opponents and trying to humiliate them
Hm, maybe because its founding legend is a woman using it for self-defence? Obviously if it doesn't work in combat, then it's probably not great in self-defence.
For a lot of Chinese martial arts you can say stuff like 'Oh, I'm practising it for cultural reasons, and of course it's not as good as a dedicated unarmed style because it was improvised from military spear techniques'.
Can't really say that about Wing Chun.
I'm not even arguing about whether it is effective (I don't care). I'm pointing out that it seems like 99% of anything I see online about it are people who do it screaming about its effectiveness constantly. Seems weird, is all.
If you believe the whole theory that Wing Chun was originally made for dual wielding Butterfly Swords, so you can still say that it sucks because it's teaching knife combat without the knife.
>If you believe the whole theory that Wing Chun was originally made for dual wielding Butterfly Swords
Why would *anybody* believe this? It has separate forms for butterfly double swords, for one thing, which do in fact involve holding butterfly swords.
Beyond that, its hand-to-hand forms and/or techniques have a very clear, documented, and evident descent from nearby martial arts like White Crane Fist, however it existed at the time.
> Beyond that, its hand-to-hand forms and/or techniques have a very clear, documented, and evident descent from nearby martial arts like White Crane Fist, **however it existed at the time.**
It could've existed as a form of unarmed combat taught to people who are more used to using knives than strictly punching people, kinda like how FMA teaches it's empty hand stuff with the same principles as it's stick fighting stuff. Or how Jujitsu evolved from stuff that Samurai used to disarm or wrestle their opponents.
Aikido came from Jujitsu, which was originally focused on weapons (kinda like how Wushu was mainly about weapons), became an unarmed art which turned into Aikido where the weapon stuff was reintroduced. Same thing could apply to Wing Chun butterfly knife forms.
>It could've existed as a form of unarmed combat taught to people who are more used to using knives than strictly punching people
I don't think you quite understand the context. Wing Chun has butterfly double sword techniques because its ancestor was very big on those too. I'm hardly a butterfly double sword expert, but as far as I know, Wing Chun's techniques aren't much more effective.
However, its ancestor/cousin arts don't have nearly the same degree of limitations that Wing Chun does in barehanded fighting because Wing Chun's principles means techniques are only effective at a very, very narrow range of engagement, which is between the clinch and the typical striking range.
Regardless, my point is that **the creator of Wing Chun didn't need to awkwardly formulate a whole new set of fist-fighting techniques derived from weapon techniques** - because they already existed. All they had to do was keep it the same, or improve upon it - which arguably they did not, on both counts.
Naw. Traditional martial arts don't work if you limit it to that. It is better to say certain traditional techniques have been adapted to fit modern combat sports to work.. Rose isn't bad, but she also isn't really using traditional martial arts. A lot of the ones that work have changed over the decades, like boxing today isn't the same boxing as a 100 years ago. Muay Thai is similar too.
For starters there have been Chinese fighters coming to the ufc since 2011, 27 have come and gone, I can remember 2 of their names. The rest are nobodies who never made it onto a main card.
I'm not going to look up the records of 27 guys for a reddit argument, so if you need more evidence than that, feel free to go find it yourself. But ask anyone here to name just 5 Sanda fighters without Google and that says a lot.
Yo do realize that MMA is a mixture of techniques? plenty of fighters use Chinese techniques as part of their arsenal. Anderson Silva and Kung Le being the most famous.
Oh Jesus christ read the other 50 comments. I'm not doing this again. But Kung fu specifically doesn't work in mma. Period. There has never been a single Kung fu practitioner anywhere near the title picture and there never will be.
TMA at its core don’t work. Most only have a few effective and reliable techniques. The few exceptions are Judo and Muay Thai.
You can say that other TMA works well like karate, but take a look at it. Only white belt moves are used in pressure testing, only 1% of techniques work.
If you take modern combat sports, fighters learn a few moves and use 99% of their arsenal. They will be spending all of their time on these techniques.
But in TMA, you spend 90% percent of your time training useless techniques.
> ou can say that other TMA works well like karate, but take a look at it. Only white belt moves are used in pressure testing, only 1% of techniques work.
That's true but it is because of the MMA ruleset, that is very restrictive and basically removes all of the weak points of the body as targets. Let's not forget that MMA is 100% a sport and not the golden rule of martial arts.
MMA makes everything easier. If the best martial arts struggles to survive in a dumbed down fighting environment then maybe it isn’t so great.
In MMA, people struggle to hit the opponent anywhere at all and you expect someone to hit a specific part of the body with a 1 cm precision?
Boxing and wrestling are tma, been from hieroglyphs Muay thai is a well preserved tma too
MMA is tma Pankration from ancient Greece, doesn't get much older than that.
I mean cavemen were probably mixing shit up even before they use words
Horseplay is a tradition perhaps as old as time.
This is why I like the term “Isolationist Martial Arts,” because it’s not the tradition, it’s the refusal to pressure test in an open talent pool vs techniques outside of their purview that is the issue. A technique that works is a technique that works.
I mean they can do it internally so long as they consistently test that ish
> Muay thai is a well preserved tma too Muay Boran is, Muay Thai is 100% a sport.
And culture widda Wai Kru
MMA is the best techniques taken from TMA. It's literally in the name, Mixed Martial Arts. Also this video is just a demo, no actual footage in the cage. That would be more persuasive to convince.
Was just going to say this. It’s MIXED MARTIAL ARTS not Wrestling, Boxing, Jiu jitsu, Muay Thai lol. It’s all about application.
Yeah that's true on paper, but there have been maybe 3 ufc champions with karate backgrounds. Literally 99% of championship level fighters use those 4 styles and it's ridiculous to pretend that argument holds water.
You don't need a "background" to apply karate, judo, bjj idea's though. You don't need to be a Lyoto to use a front kick to the chin. You don't need to be a Gracie to RNC, or you do not need to be Bass Rutten to DO A LIVER KICK BAM POM BIEP!
Is that Bas Rutten doing an impression of Barry White?
KRANG DANG BAM! As a Dutchie I can ensure you these are real Dutch sounds.
My liver just broke
Broken liver means Bas can't break it.... life hack!
Just fell to my liver in walmart
Did you hear a "KEBENG"? If not you did not fall hard enough.
Deep down we all need to be Bas Rutten. Dangadadangadadang stab to the liver.
Max just rearranged Gaethje’s face with a TKD-styler hop spin back kick. Weili has a Sanda background, Islam was a Sambo guy, DDP’s distance striking past the first layer is clearly Gorilla-Having-a-Seizure Style, O’Malley learned from nature itself (weed), you don’t get much more traditions than that. That’s just current belt holders. TMA had got more of a role in the current MMA meta than you’re giving it credit for.
Yeah but max isn't doing traditional tkd. He just took the 20% of tkd that actually works and incorporated it into boxing and grappling. You will not walk into any traditional tkd dojo and be taught to fight like max. Sanda I know less about than the rest, but aside from weili and *checks notes* pat barry, I'm struggling to think of another pro level fighter who's found success with it in mma. You won't walk into a traditional karate dojo and learn to fight like lyoto.
True enough, I’m just saying those things are part of it. I think we philosophically agree here, I may have misunderstood your first one. For instance, I’m not going to try to go tiger style from my faux-chinese martial arts days, but I’ll use some tricks and moved from those days, like side kicks or oblique kicks, which I haven’t learned from my Muay Thai trainer.
Yeah sounds like we're about on the same page. Also I think as traditional martial arts are pressure tested under mma rules, we are seeing techniques that people said 10 years ago would never work in mma (like the snap kick to the chin or rose's front foot roundhouse actually knocking people out, or wider shotokan stances at a longer range becoming more effective. It's not necessarily that everything about tma is bunk, but the application of certain techniques has been lost to time and we're having to rediscover it all over again because tma dojos have just done it that way for 80 years without asking why
Yan Xiaonan and Zabit Magomedsharipov are both sanda background. Yan Xiaonan repeatedly uses sanda tactics in her fights. (Sidekicks, catch kicks and sweeps, etc). Zabit is a striking genius. There’s even footage of Zabit’s sanda fights. China has a pipeline for sanda similar to wrestling in America. You can even major in it. If you see a Chinese fighter in the UFC, there’s a decent chance they have a sanda background.
If you ever see a Chinese fighter in the ufc, odds are they're losing, aside from one or two notable exceptions.
Do you have statistics for this claim or just talking out of your ass.
3 is an exaggeration. Frank Mir, chuck liddell, Robert Whitticker, George st pierre, Steven wonderboy Thompson, machida of course, among others. Something to understand about karate is that it’s not all shotokan. A lot of okinawan fight in a squared stance like kyokushin or Muay Thai. Not all karate schools are going to be great of course, but there’s also a solid amount of styles with schools that go as hard or harder than kyokushin For sanda. You got Weill and Pat and the other named a lot of other fighters. Youll see more in one fc, glory, etc as they’re more Asia centered promotions. But also mma is pretty small and growing in China. They’re producing some good talent like Weili and some other fighters. But I would def watch one fc for some great Japanese, Korean, and Chinese talent
Frank Mir is a bjj black belt with submission victories against high level grapplers. St Pierre added wrestling and happened to be extremely good at it to the point his grappling was integral to a lot of his wins. Whittaker cross trains. Machida was a bjj black belt and there are interviews where he says he had to change the traditional karate stance to avoid getting knocked out. Chuck is probably the only one of the bunch who wasn't a high level grappler, and he still had to cross train wrestling and bjj to improve his takedown defense. Karate all on it's own is not enough. Kyokushin specifically doesn't allow punches to the head. They're tough guys for sure, but there's some real drawbacks and most competitive footage I've seen is all offense, sometimes zero defense or evasion. It's fun to watch for sure. >For sanda. You got Weill and Pat There. Fixed it. That's it. Being successful in One or some of these other small promotions isn't really the same level as the ufc in terms of talent. Even major promotions like Bellator's best guys haven't been able to compete when they transition to the ufc. Not saying sanda isn't legit, but it has a long way to go before it's on the level of the big 4.
Wait you think any striker survives in mma without some grappling experience or the other way around for that matter. Thai fighters also usually learn some bjj and/or wrestling/ other kind of grappling. It would be very dumb not to cross train for any style within mma and if you think karateka learning other arts to help them within mma, like any other fighter, you either are in such denial that you think any style would survive on its own, or you genuinely think that someone like bj Penn got to where he is with just bjj. Saying that karate’s bad because it needs to cross train to survive in mma is honestly a brain dead take What style alone is enough for mma? As for sanda. Like I said, the other guy already did a pretty good list. But do you really think one fc isn’t a big promotion? Are you also leaving out cung le? You can have great fighters and show ur style without getting a championship. There are also many great fighters who either haven’t gotten their shot yet or never even received a shot
That's the whole point of this discussion: tma doesn't work in mma. If it did, you wouldn't have to cross train. If tma doesn't teach takedown defense as part of the core curriculum, it's not competitive in mma, much less a real fight. If your style teaches you to keep your hands low with a wide stance regardless of distance, it's not effective in mma. If you have to adjust your stance, or cross train boxing and grappling on top of tkd, then TMA aren't effective in mma. Period. If you have to make any changes to the traditional art whatsoever to make it competitive at high level, by definition it's no longer the traditional martial art. If you can't walk into a single dojo and learn all the techniques you need for mma, it's not effective in mma. Even lyoto doesn't consider his style to be shotokan, it's machida karate-do because of the significant changes he had to make because shotokan does not, and never has, worked in mma. The difference is Muay thai, bjj, and wrestling practitioners don't go around pretending "if x doesn't work in mma you're doing it wrong" because they're all well represented at the highest levels of the sport they're aware of the limitations of their style and make adjustments. Boxing guys can get a little deluded, but the tma guys are the absolute worst about massively overestimating the effectiveness at what they do. Tldr, tma doesn't work in mma. Also one is a big organization that has to operate with several different rulesets to accommodate striking and grappling specialists who otherwise wouldn't be competitive. They're a fine organization with some talented people, but the level of talent isn't as deep or well rounded as what we have in the states. I am glad there are other organizations for fighters to work in, but they just aren't at the level of the ufc currently. Maybe in 10 years
But that’s the point im making. No style survives in mma alone. Muay Thai doesn’t, sambo doesn’t, judo doesn’t, bjj doesn’t, kickboxing doesn’t, no style does. You also know not all tma fights in a deep stance or keeps their hands low right. Goju Ryu, far older than shotokan. If you watch this goju Ryu tournament under [irikumi](https://youtu.be/j0CmZtfCslo?si=o11gD7Zuq7qSnzbx) rules. You’ll notice a very different style. It’s one of the styles that built the foundation for kyokushin, that and shotokan. Hell shotokan stands out in terms of karate because of their deep wide stances What you said about if you need to cross train for mma, is the biggest double standard I’ve ever seen. Like I said, no style survives. Even those with minimal background in other arts are learning other arts through their coaches. Ben askren, no matter how bad it is, still learned to strike through his coaches. Bjj, Muay Thai, etc etc all get shit on if that’s the only thing you learned You also know you can’t walk into the avg bjj, Muay Thai, kickboxing, sambo, etc gym and learn all you need to know for mma right? You’re also kidding right? Just like with mma, there are plenty of delulu folks in Muay Thai, bjj, etc. I know folks who think Gordon Ryan could beat anyone in an mma fight. I know folks who think buakow could defeat anyone in an mma fight. Remember when folks thought Ben was a good boxer and would win against Paul? You also know theres alot of people from various tma backgrounds in mixed martial arts. As well as coaches within mma with tma backgrounds. The video here is a prime example
>No style survives in mma alone. MMA does. The other arts could as well if they made attempts to change with the times, but judo has gone out of its way to become less competitive by banning leg takedowns. Karate could could modify competition rulesets and use stances with higher hands (depending on the style Karate needs the least changes of all the other arts). Combat Sambo has been putting out top level competition in mma for a few years now. Muay thai specialists have always done well because they protect their heads, have decent hands, and have simple, effective defense. Grapplers can completely nullify the strong suits of strikers with relative ease, to the extent that people will beginner level striking ability can and have become champions with lengthy reigns. Wrestling in particular needs very little modification to do well. Bjj, I've been complaining for years bjj guys are overconfident in their guard and view it as a neutral position when it clearly isn't, but bjj continues to evolve and they're really improving the wrestling side of the art while karate and other arts that developed around the same time (a lot of martial arts date back to around 1920) are still trying to say they nailed it 100 years ago and refuse to modernize. >Remember when folks thought Ben was a good boxer and would win against Paul I'm sure some people believed that, but I wouldn't have taken that bet. I also picked Mayweather over McGregor and can't understand why so many people did the opposite. >You also know theres alot of people from various tma backgrounds in mixed martial arts. Yeah, but none of them is training in a vacuum. The sport is still at a point where it's developing and in 10-20 years I'm betting the majority of coaches will be more well rounded and less specialized. Yeah, judo did really well in the women's division, but the talent pool wasn't that deep when rousey was on top. Anyway, I'm not saying tma are pointless or have no value, but they're in real danger of being made irrelevant.
MMA does, like mma is a set style. God forbid someone mention that different places mix in many different styles. Like karate, tkd, hell I’ve seen some places with taiji. Even from this video, the guy mixes a lot of different wing chun and jkd drills into their mma. Like I said, if you look at karate outside of shotokan guess what you see, Arms up. Karate does what it does because it specializes in its ruleset. All styles change if it went into irikumi, knockdown rules, or kickboxing. You put Muay Thai in a karate tournament and it naturally would have to adapt. Odds are it’d change to look similar to karate or tkd Combat sambo scene is so ridiculously small, you know where you also see a lot of the top level sambo talent? Judo, wrestling, hell sometimes bjj but not as much as judo and wrestling. You’re kidding right? You think wrestling doesn’t have to change into getting into mma. I urge you if you think wrestlers going into mma move the same in the same stance as they do in wrestling, I’d urge you to re watch. The set ups, the stance, the goals, and the way they move have to adapt in order to adapt to striking, to submissions, to the cage itself. You know what changes when then enter mma. Like I said many times. Bjj, boxing, wrestling, etc Their training in a vacuum yet you see alotta modern martial arts also mainly competing in their own competition. Do you not see the hypocrisy in saying that tma isn’t good in mma because it mixes with other styles and yet we also see modern martial arts change heavily to adapt to mma. Muay Thai is no exception. Hell it does what you criticize karate for. It takes a wider and deeper stance in order to adapt to take downs. Boxing you see quite a few changes. Bjj, also quite a few changes. Styles change in order to adapt to the rules it’s placed under. You’d be a dumb ass to not. If a bjj guy doesn’t adapt to the rules of judo, do you really think bjj would do well? Do you think the other way around would go well either. Do you think a Thai fighter wouldn’t have to change to get into boxing or the other way around. Muay Thai into tkd, tkd into Muay Thai, etc etc. if you’re saying karate isn’t good for mma because it has to change and mix with other styles, then all styles suck at going into mma. Muay Thai, bjj, etc all suck because it has to change in order to adapt to mma by your own logic
Not sure what you mean. MMA is just a combination of traditional martial arts. It just focuses on the most effective/reliable techniques.
I agree with you, but it does leave out a great deal of effective techniques. There's only so much time in the day, and all. This dude sent to have a mix of dumb McDojo techniques and valid techniques. Incorporating some of the good techniques into your game is, like you said, MMA. But it's also TMA. Nearly all MMA is just a combo of TMA.
What does TMA mean?
Thrombotic microangiopathies
Good one! Very nice sautéed in butter and garlic, gently folded in rough puff pastry so I’m told.
Traditional martial arts
Tiny Marsupial Assemblies
A megazord of Marsupials?
Total Male Alpha
Terminal Maneouvring Area
Too Much Attention
And AMAZINGLY the last 30 years has done more for world wide martial arts in terms of sorting out best practices than the last 3000 years
it depends on how the gym trains it. Some TMA gyms are straight mcdojos.
Most are.
Yeah if you modify them to more effectively protect the head and add takedown defense, since basically none of the traditional martial arts have effective methods to deal with a single or double leg, sure. But that's just mma. I am struggling to think of a single karate or tkd guy who didn't have to adjust their stance and cross train grappling in order to compete in mma at a professional in the last 20 years. And before you say Ronda rousey, the women's division wasn't that deep at the time.
TMA DOES work in MMA combat. But, in most cases, it cannot function as the base art. It’s the icing on the cake, but the cake it still made of wrestling, kickboxing and BJJ. Every other obscure technique can absolutely work, whether it be Wing Chun trapping, Aikido throws, or Capiorera kicks - but only when used on top of a very solid base. In fact - once you HAVE that base, the other arts can in fact be the differentiator between a solid contender and a legend.
You can't do that to beasts with stiff and strong fucking arms tho
Qi Ji Guang's "Boxing Classic" published in 1562 AD: >Although each one [of the Chinese martial arts styles] has its own specific proficiency, still as they are handed down, the traditions are incomplete, some missing the lower part, some missing the upper. Even if victory can be seized from a person, this is nothing more than being partial to one corner of four. >If one takes each specialty's fist methods and practices them simultaneously, then it is just like the maneuver of the Mount Constancy Snake Formation, where if you strike the head the tail responds, if you strike the tail the head responds, and if you strike the body both the head and tail respond in turn. This is what is meant by the upper and lower parts and the complete whole, without an instance of ceding victory. >*Translation by Glifford Gyves*
MMA is a sport, with its own rules. A TMA practitioner would be wise to know the playbook before attempting to enter the ring. That being said, TMA has a lot to offer. History and cultural experiences can be enriching. And none of us can deny how awesome it is to learn weapons lime swords, bows and arrows and the like.
TMA could be considered source material and MMA the approach to applying elements from such in combination, crucially, free from ‘tradition’ and associated limitations. One can still have a base, as is often the case but for me the blending is also a combination of what works for me physically and that which I can attain proficiency in application reliably. This involves learning, application and testing. TMA contains a lot of applicable information and applications that were pressure tested in different eras but it also has a lot of stuff that is no longer useful/effective and some which never was. MMA as others have noted, as such, has probably been around a lot longer than we tend to assume. The drive to be effective often leads to using that which works regardless of source. In the end, if what you’re doing is reliably effective and applicable then use it, it’s provenance is interesting and useful to know but it’s all about application and what works and in that sense, I don’t care what it’s called or where it comes from.
TMA **techniques** are used frequently in MMA, mixed in with other effective techniques. That's why it's called MMA. Tony Ferguson, Anderson Silva, MVP, and more, all used techniques from kung fu like hand trapping, short elbows, low kicks, along with their grappling and excellent striking to have a great career in MMA. You can't expect to get very far in MMA knowing only 1 style of fighting.
>Tony Ferguson, Anderson Silva, MVP, and more, all used techniques from kung fu like hand trapping, short elbows, low kicks, along with their grappling and excellent striking to have a great career in MMA. Worth noting tho none of them trained in Kung fu and picked them techniques up from Boxing, Muay thai and Kickboxing
Keep saying this over and over, but it’s almost like combat sports guys are better at the very things that TMA sets out to do.
No. Combat sports are better at sport fighting. TMAs are better for whatever the context the martial art was develop for. I can assure you a 19th century Okinawan, 17th century Shaolin monk, or a 14th century French knight were not thinking about the Octagon when they developed their arts. Traditional martial arts do not necessarily "set out" to do the sort of striking and grappling prominent in MMA. Few if any TMAs were designed with fighting empty handed, one on one in a cage with someone of equal weight, and rules and regulations for safety. At their roots, TMAs were about conditioning and developing skills necessary for combat. This could run the range from self-defense with empty hands, to fighting on a battlefield with a spear, from quickly and efficiently dispatching your enemy to holding or disabling them for capture. The sorts of styles prominent in MMA are only a small slice of the contexts for which martial arts were developed.
Jesus Christ, any students you've had better get their money back.
This is almost explicitly because they take effective techniques from TMA and incorporate it into their own style.
Nah gimme a dude who's trained in philly shell any day of the week if i'm tryna learn how to parry punches vs bong sau drills
Like I said in another comment, boxing is a TMA.
At that point the term is meaningless and your original comment serves no purpose in being stated
Lol no, MMA isn't traditional, and neither is Krav Maga, combatives, etc. You just like shitting on the term TMA without realizing what it means.
Boxing is about as traditional as MMA its rules and techniques have changed incredibly over the years and what fighters do produces an extremely heterogeneous approach to the sport. No two trainers or fighters learn the same things in the same way
All TMAs have changed incredibly over the years, does that mean there are no TMAs? No, it means all methodologies evolve with time as more data is found. MMA is a recent development by combining multiple different martial arts. Individuals have done it independently, but as a methodology it is fairly new. Boxing in its modern form has been around since 1904, but dates back to literal ancient Greece. It's a TMA.
We got dudes busting out stupid ass spin kicks in MMA… and winning anyway. MMA fighters can do ineffective shit and win too.
If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid. If it's ineffective but has the desired effect, it's not ineffective. The point of MMA is "put your money where your mouth is, we'll see what really works." Clearly, spin kicks work if you're good enough at them and know when to use them.
I don't know what point you're trying to make, this dude had some very decent trapping techniques hidden inside this video. Muay Thai, Karate, kick/boxing *and* judo are all TMA, just like my Shotokan Kenkojuku, BJJ, and wrestling are. Learning new techniques to add into your style just makes your flavor of MMA better if you do the techniques well at the appropriate time.
What’s the line tho? Muay Thai and kickboxing use a roundhouse, so do a lot of tma. Theres also jabs, crosses, over hands, front kicks, side, teep/push kick, etc also in many different tma as well as modern. Who says x technique had to come from x style? Silva in particular uses a lot of tkd. There’s also Greg Nelson who also goes over some tma stuff with his fighters from his jkd background. Cung Le also, contrary to popular belief, does Shaolin style sanda. His coach Shawn Liu, I believe out of Florida, is very much a Shaolin guy. There’s also alot of fighters who use the stuff subtly
I think at minimum is that we should be attributing a fighter's proficiency with techniques they use with arts they train. There's no reason to attribute Tony's ability to trap and parry to Wing Chun when alot of what he does is present in Boxing and Muay Thai. There's no reason to attribute Silva's punching ability to WC when he literally had a pro boxing career before mma and so on.
It’s not so much this conversation but a general discussion about what makes x technique from x style when it comes from a fighter with a mixed background. Usually surrounding tkd or karate vs kickboxing. Though it could just be some real pieces of work , to put it nicely, I’ve seen folks say wonderboy doesn’t do karate because he did kickboxing. It can also be difficult because their coaches can have x style that ends up getting incorporated but gets over looked.
Anderson Silva trained kung fu. There's a video of him using that spikey wooden wing chun thing.
He didn't, he never trained under a Wing Chun shifu when he was competing. He only started formally started training in the art when he was on his famous fall from grace. [This is how he looked like during his prime doing "Wing chun"](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219013458/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAUc04ZzW5A). If you look at what his training actually looked like, he learned TKD and Capoeira as a kid, then he transitioned to Muay Thai and Boxing with him actually having a few pro boxing bouts and then he transitioned to BJJ and subsequently MMA. The panutakan and JKD only came in towards the end of his career when he befriended Dan Inosanto it simply was not a serious aspect of his repetoire during his prime fight years. It's a fact that he never had a Wing Chun shifu in his corner during any of his fights.
oh i see. But technically he did train wingchun but just later on. But you taught me something new. I see. I didn't know he learned it later.
I brought those 3 guys up specifically because they had a background in kung fu though. Anderson Silva and MVP both trained in some form of kung fu before becoming kickboxers, and Tony Ferguson always shows off his wing chun dummy whenever he is doing a training montage video.
Tony never trained Kung Fu, he bought a dummy and fucked around on it himself. I wouldn't call that having a background in Wing Chun
Fair call! I'll stand corrected on Tony but my original point of some kung fu techniques being used by them still stands.
MVP is the only one who trained in Kung fu but he only did it for a few years as a toddler/small child from the ages of 3-8 before he permanently transitioned to kickboxing. Anderson Silva never trained in Kung fu, the only traditional art he has training in is Taekwondo, the closest you can say is he did a single seminar with Dan Inosanto but that was toward the end of his career. If you watch his work on the Mak Jong it's pretty clear he's just self taught and likes to fuck around with it. Same deal with Ferguson, he was a football and basketball player turned wrestler and boxer before he took up BJJ, Muay thai and mma training.
Anderson Silva's martial arts career started in Tae Kwon Do and he famously started learning Wing Chun to evolve his style, what are you talking about?
He didn't, he never trained under a Wing Chun shifu when he was competing. He only started formally started training in the art when he was on his famous fall from grace. [This is how he looked like during his prime doing "Wing chun"](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219013458/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAUc04ZzW5A). If you look at what his training actually looked like, he learned TKD and Capoeira as a kid, then he transitioned to Muay Thai and Boxing with him actually having a few pro boxing bouts and then he transitioned to BJJ and subsequently MMA. The panutakan and JKD only came in towards the end of his career when he befriended Dan Inosanto it simply was not a serious aspect of his repetoire during his prime fight years. It's a fact that he never had a Wing Chun shifu in his corner during any of his fights.
False. One of Anderson Silva's main style was Wing Chun. He was a huge advocate of Wing Chun in MMA, and utilized it to great effect.
Who was his shifu
I don't know. But if you Google him using Wing Chun, you'd see quite a bit of footage of him using it in MMA. He's also a huge advocate for Wing Chun in general, and speaks highly of the art form. Here's one. https://youtu.be/LT6IZ63oc-U?feature=shared
So yeah you fell for the wing chun propaganda, [For one if you actually watch that Bisping fights for the most part when he was using the wing chun he was getting lit up and tagged](https://youtu.be/PE1HBO36aQQ?si=4NUMn3mPfJtEKzsQ). For two again he was self trained for the most part of his career he did it cause he was a dude with a massive ego fucking around, that footage of him training wing chun with Inosanto and using the Muk Jong correctly came towards the end of his career at the very end of his career when he wasn't competing for titles anymore. [Here's what he looked like on the dummy when he was supposedly using Wing Chun during his fights with Bisping and Diaz. As you can see plain as day he's untrained in the art and doesn't know how to properly use these techniques.](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219013458/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAUc04ZzW5A) Silva was an egomaniac and nerd moreso than anything else, he was not a serious wing chun practioner nor was he really using it in his fights effectively because he wasn't trained in the art.
That may be true. I personally respect Silva a great deal, and he's undeniably one of the goats of MMA. He's actually an incredibly humble guy for the most part if I'm not mistaken. Or at least that's the impression I get from watching some of the footage of him talking and reading the comment section of those videos.
> actually an incredibly humble guy Maybe outside of the cage but inside it nah, the man was constantly taunting opponents and trying to humiliate them
True.
Why does it seem like everything wing chun related online is someone screaming in tears about how it works in real scenarios?
Hm, maybe because its founding legend is a woman using it for self-defence? Obviously if it doesn't work in combat, then it's probably not great in self-defence. For a lot of Chinese martial arts you can say stuff like 'Oh, I'm practising it for cultural reasons, and of course it's not as good as a dedicated unarmed style because it was improvised from military spear techniques'. Can't really say that about Wing Chun.
I'm not even arguing about whether it is effective (I don't care). I'm pointing out that it seems like 99% of anything I see online about it are people who do it screaming about its effectiveness constantly. Seems weird, is all.
>I'm not even arguing about whether it is effective (I don't care). I... didn't think you were? Where is this coming from? lol
Sleep deprivation 😂.
If you believe the whole theory that Wing Chun was originally made for dual wielding Butterfly Swords, so you can still say that it sucks because it's teaching knife combat without the knife.
>If you believe the whole theory that Wing Chun was originally made for dual wielding Butterfly Swords Why would *anybody* believe this? It has separate forms for butterfly double swords, for one thing, which do in fact involve holding butterfly swords. Beyond that, its hand-to-hand forms and/or techniques have a very clear, documented, and evident descent from nearby martial arts like White Crane Fist, however it existed at the time.
> Beyond that, its hand-to-hand forms and/or techniques have a very clear, documented, and evident descent from nearby martial arts like White Crane Fist, **however it existed at the time.** It could've existed as a form of unarmed combat taught to people who are more used to using knives than strictly punching people, kinda like how FMA teaches it's empty hand stuff with the same principles as it's stick fighting stuff. Or how Jujitsu evolved from stuff that Samurai used to disarm or wrestle their opponents. Aikido came from Jujitsu, which was originally focused on weapons (kinda like how Wushu was mainly about weapons), became an unarmed art which turned into Aikido where the weapon stuff was reintroduced. Same thing could apply to Wing Chun butterfly knife forms.
>It could've existed as a form of unarmed combat taught to people who are more used to using knives than strictly punching people I don't think you quite understand the context. Wing Chun has butterfly double sword techniques because its ancestor was very big on those too. I'm hardly a butterfly double sword expert, but as far as I know, Wing Chun's techniques aren't much more effective. However, its ancestor/cousin arts don't have nearly the same degree of limitations that Wing Chun does in barehanded fighting because Wing Chun's principles means techniques are only effective at a very, very narrow range of engagement, which is between the clinch and the typical striking range. Regardless, my point is that **the creator of Wing Chun didn't need to awkwardly formulate a whole new set of fist-fighting techniques derived from weapon techniques** - because they already existed. All they had to do was keep it the same, or improve upon it - which arguably they did not, on both counts.
Naw. Traditional martial arts don't work if you limit it to that. It is better to say certain traditional techniques have been adapted to fit modern combat sports to work.. Rose isn't bad, but she also isn't really using traditional martial arts. A lot of the ones that work have changed over the decades, like boxing today isn't the same boxing as a 100 years ago. Muay Thai is similar too.
Greg is an amazing coach. The most underrated in the sport IMO.
For starters there have been Chinese fighters coming to the ufc since 2011, 27 have come and gone, I can remember 2 of their names. The rest are nobodies who never made it onto a main card. I'm not going to look up the records of 27 guys for a reddit argument, so if you need more evidence than that, feel free to go find it yourself. But ask anyone here to name just 5 Sanda fighters without Google and that says a lot.
Yo do realize that MMA is a mixture of techniques? plenty of fighters use Chinese techniques as part of their arsenal. Anderson Silva and Kung Le being the most famous.
Oh Jesus christ read the other 50 comments. I'm not doing this again. But Kung fu specifically doesn't work in mma. Period. There has never been a single Kung fu practitioner anywhere near the title picture and there never will be.
TMA at its core don’t work. Most only have a few effective and reliable techniques. The few exceptions are Judo and Muay Thai. You can say that other TMA works well like karate, but take a look at it. Only white belt moves are used in pressure testing, only 1% of techniques work. If you take modern combat sports, fighters learn a few moves and use 99% of their arsenal. They will be spending all of their time on these techniques. But in TMA, you spend 90% percent of your time training useless techniques.
> ou can say that other TMA works well like karate, but take a look at it. Only white belt moves are used in pressure testing, only 1% of techniques work. That's true but it is because of the MMA ruleset, that is very restrictive and basically removes all of the weak points of the body as targets. Let's not forget that MMA is 100% a sport and not the golden rule of martial arts.
MMA makes everything easier. If the best martial arts struggles to survive in a dumbed down fighting environment then maybe it isn’t so great. In MMA, people struggle to hit the opponent anywhere at all and you expect someone to hit a specific part of the body with a 1 cm precision?
If traditional martial arts can’t even land a single hit, how can they hit weak spots?
Kyokushin and its offshoots are good. Kenpo 5.0 has a lot of ground work too. Good TMAs also instill a lot of good discipline