by cerebus on Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:30 am
The only thing that needs to happen for Tai Chi to become "known" as a combat art, is for those who practice and teach it as such to make "combat Tai Chi" very public and very visible.
This means fighting and winning in full-contact matches and posting the pics/ vids of it, writing articles for the MA magazines about Tai Chi for combat, putting out advertisements in magazines emphasizing Tai Chi as a combat art, putting out videos and books on the subject, and finally... someone producing a Hollywood movie on the subject. And VOILA! Hundreds of years of bad rep gone in just a few years. If enough people want to do all that.
Personally, I don't have the connections or know how for much of that (advertisements, producing videos, Hollywood movie connections), though I hope to contribute to at least some of it (fighting some more matches & showing them publicly, maybe writing some articles).
"Fool, the Devil drives!"