Wu Gongyi vs. Chen Kefu

[cdobe]

cdobe,

I must carefully point out that I did not claim that my master would have gloriously defeated both of them, since I don't live in a kung fu movie and don't have a "master". To be fair and precise, I said that my untrained sister could have. It's interesting from a psychology point of view how far people will go in defending such an obvious display of zero combat skill in order to avoid cognitive dissonance and to perpetuate their romantic notions of the mystical effectiveness of Chinese Martial Arts in general. There's allowing for slight, mitigating circumstances, and then there's flat out intellectual dishonesty. Defending that clip is so far gone to the latter that it no longer bears serious discussion.

I didn't have you in mind when I talked about people who admire their master. I already finished with you one post before.

Do not try to psychoanalyze me. I have no connection to Wu Gongyi. I'm just fair and able to see why it doesn't look like a perfect example of Chinese MA.

[Doc Stier]

Doc,
did you take the restrictive ruleset into account (no grappling) ? And the big stress that such a public event causes ? Especially for a Chinese who could loose his face in front of so many eyes. I for one think that if you take all circumstances into account it is not that bad. You just cannot judge it by the standards of modern day boxing. You can at least say that both of them had a pair (Wouldn't you Americans put it this way ).

Gentlemen:

Nobody held guns to their heads to force them into this bout. They both willingly agreed to this match with full knowledge of the potential public loss of face which could occur. Or maybe they both deluded themselves into believing that they would so totally dominate their opponent that only he would publicly lose face.

Furthermore, martial art 'masters' and 'experts' supposedly train to control their mental functions and emotional reactions to live combat in addition to training their body, so how can "the big stress that such a public event causes" be used as an excuse for acknowledged 'masters'? Logic would suggest they knew in advance that this event and everything attendant to it would be quite stressful.

I certainly don't expect any martial artist of any style to express movement in live combat that looks exactly like the movement of their form set routines, but I also wouldn't expect the fighting method of an expert martial arts master of any style to be completely devoid of their style's movement patterns and techniques either.

Are we to believe that the potential fighting applications of their respective styles was any different in 1954 than it would be today? If not, where were these techniques when they needed them? Is it unreasonable to expect that we would see at least one or two automatic reactions or an occasional spontaneous response expressing their style's techniques from among all of their various form set movements?

And in that regard, both as a military combatant and as a professional martial arts teacher, I have personally seen the way in which my own automatic reactions have manifested spontaneous response movements in live combat fighting situations many times, movements that I could clearly identify by name in retrospect afterwards as form set postures I had practiced daily for many years time.

This is exactly what I would have expected of Master Wu and Master Chan.

Doc

[stephen yan]

[quote="GrahamB"]Face it Ed. You're his bitch.

[/quot



GrahamB , you are insulting someone whom kindly giving help to people .i thought that i only see low class hooligans in american movie , didn't think such nasty little brained hooligan also existed in net forum, you opened my eyesight .

[Andy_S]

Stephen:

Graham was not being serious - he is "taking the piss" out of Ed, just a mocking joke between friends (they have both been on this forum for years).

What do you think of the fight? I just re-watched and while you COULD see some White Crance combos from Chen, I could see little Taiji from Wu. The only two points that impressed me at all were
(1) Chen sidesteps and swipes, and Wu goes through the ropes; and
(2) Wu takes out Chen's right arm. (Chen later showed reporters the bruises on his arms from Wu's "light" strikes)

Gents:

The link posted by YM has a very, very interesting article about the fight and the cultural context at the time. Some points:
= Organizers were worried that it could end in death (such was the mystique surrounding gongfu at the time)
= Most of the audience had not even seen boxing before, so when they heard the sound of the strikes hitting, and saw the blood from Chen's snout, there was a shock of horror and ladies fainted...!
- Chen and Wu subsequently became great pals.
- Film of this event was kept secret for so long, it grew into a legend. Wu later said he wished he had shown more high level technique.
- There is also some interesting stuff about the disciples of the Wu later on, including the legendary Cheng Tin-hung and an incident when he was attacekd by assasins who painted their knives black so he could not see 'em...after he got out of hospital Cheng took his revenge.

Personally, I still think it is a crap fight, and most modern sanda or MMA is much more entertaining and shows much greater experience of fighting, but when you are a martial arts master who is not used to actually fighting (martial arts and fighters are very different beasts) perhaps the result is understandable.

[Ian]

In fact, can anybody here post any vid of somebody from their art fighting competitively bare-knuckle that looks better than that? (Not saying it's not out there, I'm just not sure I can think of any.... )

There you go, Graham. You nasty little-brained hooligan, you.

edit: my bad... these aren't bare knuckle. ah well.

[Andy_S]

Something very disturbing about that Sami fight...not the fact that a Taiji man is using Thai kicks...not the fact that his opponent is twitching convulsively while unconscious...but the pork the ring girl on the left appears to be packing in her pants when Sami comes out of the dressing room. Ring shemale? Nasty.

[GrahamB]

Ed, I was just using the usual emptyflower banter to yank your chain - I hope you didn't take offense - in fact, I'm sure you didn't. But sorry if you did.

Stephen - you may find it hard to understand humor when its not in your first language. That might be something to consider before attacking people, you shouty little Chinese hooligan.

[GrahamB]

There you go, Graham. You nasty little-brained hooligan, you.

edit: my bad... these aren't bare knuckle. ah well.

Yep - that's the problem isn't it - easy to forget that Wu and Chen were bare-knuckle... There's plenty of Kimbo doing bare-knuckle on the net... but then if you'd only ever saw Kimbo in his last fight being knocked out in 14 seconds you wouldn't think much of him, would you? Compared to that, both Chen and Wu did rather well... ah, just shows it's a complicated thing

[Yuen-Ming]

ah, just shows it's a complicated thing

Yes it is !

I don't really like the "fight" but one has to really put everything in perspective to be able to get a more balanced opinion.

A few years ago they found the original video of the Nanjing first Leitai championship, which were supposed to be lost forever. I had tried my best to get a hold of them for some time but I failed.
A person I know had the chance to see the films and he told me that "any sanda junior guy of today would destroy them in a minute".

YM

[Ian]

There you go, Graham. You nasty little-brained hooligan, you.

edit: my bad... these aren't bare knuckle. ah well.

Yep - that's the problem isn't it - easy to forget that Wu and Chen were bare-knuckle... There's plenty of Kimbo doing bare-knuckle on the net... but then if you'd only ever saw Kimbo in his last fight being knocked out in 14 seconds you wouldn't think much of him, would you? Compared to that, both Chen and Wu did rather well... ah, just shows it's a complicated thing

Yeah mate, but that fight with Sami Berick was with MMA gloves, which isn't that much different than bare knuckle.

Honestly, if the Chen vs. Wu fight can be said to be remotely decent, I'd better start charging because apparently I'm a MASTER at martial arts.

This isn't a personal attack on anyone here (I haven't read the thread carefully), but if you (not YOU, Graham) want to claim these two gents *had* something, despite all the lessons to be learned from modern professional sport fighting, then I'd suggest you're really setting the bar low for yourself. Very low indeed.

[hopgarsansau]

just my two (3?) cents on the fight:


1. i think chan won that fight despite popular opinion, or should i say, had the upper hand. he hit more often IMO and more solid strikes. and he DID use lions roar combos albeit messily. footwork was also lacking (according to my sifu, if he had used different angles and gone in more without leading with his head wu wouldnt be able to handle it, but thats just his personal opnion) if you want to get really technical, look at the picture of wu vs chan, chan is in a "off" Jin choi arrow punch posture.

2. chan admitted he looked like crap in the fight. apparently he was only a few months into his training at the time.

3. wu gong yi was defeated by cheng tin hung later on based on this fight if i recall correctly



chan became a respected bak hok fighter and teacher and his association was widespread


btw someone brought up chen tin hungs assassination attemp, what was that all about if i may ask?

[Leishen]

This is one of the worst films/moments in the history of martial arts.

The white crane guy was by far more representative of his style. More rooted etc, like hopgarsansau said. However, he was bad too.
Wu was completely out of order from the very start. Stiff, all up, no rooting, no strategy, nothing that resemblles something martially trained not to mention Taiji principles.... The kicks too....what can I say.
There is no need for any excuse or explanations for this incident.
I could never understant how could this happened. His father was by all accounts a completely different kind of fighter.
It seems that a "brand name" of some family or being a son of some important person, isn't enough sometimes for someone to be a fighter, a gatekeeper or whatever. Nor fast forms, secrets, etc.
Only hard training and experience.

[hopgarsansau]

on top of that, cheing tin hung COMPLETELY DISASSOCIATED himself from wu family, despite what the article said, i believe it was just keeping it PC.

it was VERY pro-Wu.

[king-kong]

btw someone brought up chen tin hungs assassination attemp, what was that all about if i may ask?

Heres the link to the story on the Wu pages!
http://www.wustyle.com/en/new/mag_page.php?mg=1&cp=29
That Sami must be the same as in the Practical tai chi Apps video with Neil Rostock no?
That was a seriously quick KO. Cheng Tin Hung I imagine would be pleased that his practical style as labelled by Hong Kong MA journalists was still capable of helping to turn out fighters who train fighters,

[CaliG]

Personally I just think emptyhanded fighting wasn't WGY main thing at this time in his life. Maybe when he was younger he was into it but if you don't keep up your fight training your skills are going to diminish. That's why pro boxers train for hours a day, because at the pro level one day off is two steps back.

I think a lot of TJQ teachers get more into push hands, forms and qigong when they get older and perhaps that's what happened here. I can't really blame them though I like those things too but when fighting is your main focus, between striking, grappling, and conditioning it's hard to find a lot of time for all that other stuff.