a stupid hypothesis on a stupid BTDT topic
Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:00 pm
every once in a while someone will say how taijiquan or other ima is better than this or that, etc., etc. and then someone will say obviously it's proven in mma. But semi-seriously. suppose in history, the Chens thought they had a better style, training method, etc. They thought that conclusion in proving things out to themselves and some limited set of other people in whatever format they had, sporting, whatever. That isn't really unusual. Many people thought that about various styles. For example, judo was proven at the metropolitan police tournament. A method of training with fewer techniques was better than styles with endless non-resistant practice of endless techniques. Different military forces have had different preferred styles or mixes (xingyiquan, judo, jiu jitsu, sambo, krav maga, whatever) such that they think their mix must be "better" "combatives". The UFC was created by the Gracies to show that BJJ was superior and they proved it for a long time until the (re) emergence of ground and pound, wrestling, sambo, judo, etc. So it's possible from a historical view to say that tjq, judo, bjj, sambo, whatever, was for some time "better" in its day and in some specific context without getting into stupid internet arguments that one of these styles is eternally above all, lol. In recent history we could say bjj was definitely "better" in some context around 1992 for a few years. The Gracies had that brief period. The Chens maybe think they had some similar brief period in a specific location with some specific tests. That has little to do with whatever conclusions we draw about these arts today in some other broader context. Yet people argue as if there is some single "truth" we can get to on an internet board.