the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Bhassler wrote:

Steve James wrote:The jacket style is interesting. And, why do traditional Mongolian wrestlers wear sleeves but no gi?

Traditionally, only men are allowed to wrestle in their big competitions. The story (as relayed to me by a Chinese man who lived in Mongolia for six years due to the Cultural Revolution) goes that at one point a woman disguised herself and entered the big annual competition and won. The tradition of exposing the chest supposedly originated to prevent that sort of thing from happening ever again.

Interesting. The Greek athletes wouldn't have had that problem.

I allude to certain issues apart from simply connected tradition to purported forms (formats rather) of wrestling/combat in this first episode, I hope you guys caught those. There is a huge problem with us today connecting China today as we understand it to the past. There are some huge politics that resulted in Shuai Jiao being framed the way it is which overlooked the people and the culture from which Qing dynasty Shuai Jiao came from. Ill present this in upcoming episodes.

A key point to remember is that conditions, culture, environment and the realities of life are far more connected to what developed in any martial practice than anything else. Differing cultures excelled at differing things and there are some very concrete reasons for that too.

Steve James wrote:The Greek athletes wouldn't have had that problem.

Indeed not. The Greek athletes would have had much bigger problems-- like freezing to death on the tundra and being eaten by wolves....

All the Shuai Jiao people who write books about Shuai Jiao either state explicitly or (I would say deliberately) allude to the fact that it's thousands of years old. Byron makes a good point of saying that this is dishonest, or misleading at best. It's the Confucian thing again of 'things have to be old to be good'.

Well, yeah, it's clear. The distinction here is between the origins of wrestling (which are arguably pre-human) and "shuai jiao," the Chinese ma/sport. And, because it's wrestling, some people can claim that it's ancient or precedes all other martial arts. But, that's not really different from saying boxing is the oldest martial art.

I find the Byron's presentation fascinating because I've never thought about the issue or read any books on shuai jiao. I think all claims of ancient origins are folklore, and the best we can do is try to determine the origin of the story, not the activity. It's interesting that there are many books/writers who state or imply that sj is ancient. I'd be interested to know if there are points on which they disagree.

Most cmas claim progenitors, no? Is there someone considered the first sj practitioner? Or, do scholars argue that sj is so ancient that the name of the progenitor is lost? Was there a defining competition whose first winner became famous? I know. I know. I'm waiting for the next episode.

Steve James wrote: And, because it's wrestling, some people can claim that it's ancient or precedes all other martial arts. But, that's not really different from saying boxing is the oldest martial art.

If we don't call wrestling "Martial art". Then by this logic you can say that MMA is the oldest martial art preserved today as there was pankration earlier and because people have always mixed techniques and methods from different martial arts.

So, MMA is the oldest martial art. Do you believe that most people today who know the modern history of the modern MMA would agree?

Would people agree that MMA means mixed fighting in general through world history, or is it a modern term on a modern sport?

We are very lucky that the cameras happened to be rolling at the exact moment the world's first martial art was created:

C'mon, that's way too basic... Here's a pro:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgg_fukbvU