GrahamB wrote:Steve,
Your post reminded me about DD and his Practical TCC guys. They used to be quite a big deal and now I hardly ever hear about them at all. I think it’s because MMA has just blown up as a style and destroyed their ecological niche. And the rest of the TCC world has just carried on down the ‘internal’ tricks road of the Sergio and Misner seminar curcuit.
How things change.
That's fairly interesting of you to say.. I re started training with Neil Rossiak before Xmas, who was the trainer of Sami Berik - who apart from Nick 'Oz'. - has fought at the highest level of any other tai chi trained person that I've heard about. Nick trained quite a lot with the Oxford group for his last uk mma fight, (already with some background in the art) so that fight should probably count too, which is why I mention him. But anyone approaching higher levels simply has to expose themselves to cross training. The main reason is that the pool of people in KF that can get you up there is tiny and they have had to go outside too. Neil, for example trained with London Shootfighters back when he made his foray into the earliest mma in the UK - Vale tudo back then.
I only get to Neils park sessions when I can, as I lucked out with him training Sundays in a park opposite my house!
He always had some guys when I was around before that would compete full contact regularly, now I expect it's only push hands. But I am looking forward to meeting some of them to see if there's any decent fighters ..
I think what you say probably has some legs. What I've noticed from the periphery is that the full contact competition scene that DD really established here has slid downhill as of late. I would need to research it better to get up to speed but I think if you turned up this year at the British Open you wouldn't see a lot of full contact fights - if any, and I would wonder how many of those guys would be from DD groups. I don't think his groups are training fighters for the British Open as they once did, I'm pretty sure of that. The overall pool, not just from TCC, is getting even smaller. The Shaolin temple in London has a Sanda team (they did have anyway), which I imagine is not far off the best in the UK. The BCCMA still has comps, but it all seems a bit stagnant and their ruleset I think is supposed to be semi contact. They even put on Chinese wrestling, or did, but again I can only imagine the pool of people doing it in the UK is vanishingly small. The Kuoshou competition that was set up, I really don't know how that's fairing either.
After MT and MMA, and what with the rise of grappling too drawing people it's no wonder. Given, in general, the kind of people Kung Fu and TCC attract; "the fighters" were never a big percentage anyway, not really. More so for TCC perhaps. So there's a pretty low ceiling for KF competitors. Anyone young and half decent probably has way better avenues and choices of training, than just lucking out to find a half decent KF/ TC school they will get what they need to be competitive in combat sports.
I have to say, I really admire how Chen Zonghua supports/ encourages push hands/ taiji wrestling as well as Full contact stuff. All KF teachers really need to be more like that.