johnwang wrote:If in the next 20 Gung Li fight that nobody can take him down then what conclusion can we draw from it? Does that mean a guy with strong rooting can do without ground fight experience?
I say yes anyways.
I drew this conclusion after running a little experiment for years when I was in the military and constantly meeting, BJJ, Judo, Sambo and even your field, SC artists.
I would tell them no punching unless they want me to punch back but I would stand there and resist their takedown with no offensive moves on my part. They could do whatever they liked and if they could make me even take a knee in 90 seconds they won. Often they strugggled for 5 minutes exposing the back of their head and spine trying to grapple me to the ground. Then I would tell them times up.
I am fully aware that if they punched and connected (ie a softening technique) then they would have had a better chance but thats my game and I'll play that with a grappler anyday. Also another little thing that I also teach. Disengage the ego (for non grapplers) when you go to the ground and try to get away and stand back up. Is not your element and you are a fish out of water. It's very difficult to grapple with someone who is running away from you.
Another time when showing a Tiger technique I was ridiculed (by a SC artist) for a low gung bu stance that placed my leg out front with heavy weight on it. The guy scoffed and said I was asking to be reaped/sweeped. I dropped my hands and said nice point. It is always good to know each techniques weakness. I asked if he was good at reaps and being a SC artist (and instructor, I was actually at his class and was just BS'ing with a fellow student after class) he felt that in fact he was well versed in reaps. A few seconds later after he tried to kick, sweep, reap and hook my leg to no success (we weighed the same amount by the way) he said that he would have to really do it with spirit to make it work. I did not quite get his meaning (You SC guys can be ruthless which was the other lesson I learned that day!) He came at me again and while I sat there with my hands down at my side he tried to sucker punch me. Because I was in tiger mode he got blocked with tiger claw which ripped into his arm's skin taking the momentum out of his follow up reap to my leg. He would no doubt have knocked me out if I had not been relaxed and receptive to him coming at me.
I am also sure someone like Cung Le could kick my leg out from under me (BTW his trainer is a Hung Gar student of my Grandmaster and no I'm not saying Cung Le does Hung Gar but the importance of stance is no doubt emphasized in his training. See outtakes on the cult video "Kwoon")
That does not answer the thread question but in my experience grapplers always have an excellent center of balance and my sweeps usually just bruise their leg and get them angry, against boxers and tournament fighter the sweep works wonderfully. Just like the bad guy said to Daniel-San in Karate Kid III many (TMA's) tournament fighters are sucker for the low sweep. (Daniel then kicks the dummies shin board until he bleeds) Ok you can ban me for that reference now....