AN OPEN QUESTION TO THE TRAINING GROUP.

This is reality. No Chi Sau. No Wooden Dummy techniques. No Forms. Just blood, pain, and exhaustion.

This is something we should ask ourselves at least once a month.

What is Wing Chun for?
Is it for cage fighting?
Is it for any type of exhibition fighting?
Is it for dealing with unexpected random violence?
This type of question should be easy to answer but very few students can or do.
Wing Chun is not a combat Sport, therefore, it must be for random violence or arguments that have boiled over otherwise known as “Street Alteracations”.
If we take the time to watch street altercations, and there are plenty online, not only is it impossible to tell what style anyone does, but it is equally difficult to decide if anyone involved has any kind of training at all.
Keeping this in mind, that no one appears to know what they are doing, do we think that the answer we are looking for, the answer to random violence, lies in an organised fighting system?
For us this refers to Wing Chun but it could be any or all organised systems.
There is so much more to a street altercation than people who have no street experience give any credit to.
Most Modern Day Students tend to see all violence through the lens of M.M.A. Boxing or action movies.
Is there an easy and ready way to counter this failure?
We could use the internet to educate ourselves and fill this gap.
The late Kimbo Slice was a ferocious and much-feared fighter on the Miami underground fight scene, no one was surprised when he turned up in the M.M.A.
What was a surprise was that he was nowhere near as dominant as he was on the street.
Combat sports, Match fights, and exhibition bouts are above all else entertainment, and there are rules in place to make sure that the punter gets their money’s worth.
Rules and planning make for a much more even match-up where success is less easily achieved.
On the underground circuit Kimbo’s main strength was his phenomenal punching power, he was unmatched in a stand-em-up and knock-em-down street fight, but pro fighters are so much harder to corner or pin down.
The best pro-fighters tend to be exceptional movers.
Even Mike Tyson who had a punch like a falling fridge moved like a dancer.
A rather large Elephant in the room with regards to M.M.A. v Street is that in the M.M.A. a submission carries the day, on the street, it is the last man standing.
In the one documented fight that Kimbo slice lost, against Sean Gannon, it was more a case of passed out and not knocked out, towards the end of the fight, both men were noticeably exhausted, Kimbo was just the first to fall over.
If we fall over in a street altercation we know what comes next.

This was two big, strong, fit men, exhausted to the point of dropping, we cannot and must not ignore this point.
Again towards the end of the Kimbo Slice v Sean Gananon fight both men were throwing air punches, and the few that landed had little venom in them.
This is reality.
No Chi Sau.
No Wooden Dummy techniques.
No Forms.
Just blood, pain, and exhaustion.
There is no doubt that both of these men were very good fighters, but they did not look it.
There is no doubt that both of these men trained, and trained seriously in an organised fighting style.
Kimbo boxed and Gannon was a BJJ man.
But neither of them looked it.
Using this as a template what do we think would happen if we faced either of them down?
Because whatever that is, and it may well be different for each of us, that is what we expect to get from our Wing Chun.
This post is getting overly long and as it is something I intend to pursue in our training going forwards I will leave it to sink in.
Needless to say, I believe that Wing Chun does have the answers we need, but answers alone are not enough.
We also need to do the work.

As an aside, both Kimbo Slice and Sean Gannon passed away far too young, perhaps it was their career choice

I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the strong.

Ecclesiastes 9:11