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View Full Version : Boxing, Wrestling & Judo for Streetfighting: Plus Wing Chun


MikeNY
03-08-2011, 06:46 PM
THE SPORTING LIFE: BOXING, WRESTLING, AND JUDO FOR STREETFIGHTING article http://www.loompanics.com/Articles/SportingLife.html

I have read a few times about the influence of Western Boxing on Wing Chun Kung fu and the theory that Wing Chun is an offshot of Western Boxing. Here is a blog "Western Boxing Influence In Asian Martial Arts " with interesting information on the topic http://dojorat.blogspot.com/2010/05/western-boxing-influence-in-asian.html Here is an interesting aside from that blog " In our recent review of the book "Chin Na Fa", we read that author Liu Jinsheng held Western boxing in great regard:

"Those who have practiced these (edit-Chinese martial) arts twenty or thirty years have never defeated anyone who has practiced Western boxing or Judo. Why is this? It is because the practitioners of Shaolin and Wudang styles only pay attention to the beauty of their forms - they lack practical methods and spirit and have lost the true transmissions of their ancestors. Hence, our martial arts are viewed by outsiders merely as rigorous dancing. "

And a second very interesting quote As it happens, I just started reading "Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals - A Historical Survey" by Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo In a short chapter on Western boxing, the authors write: "Noted Chinese martial arts researcher and teacher Tim Cartmell wrote, "When the Chinese army was researching and developing their hand-to-hand combat, (which later evolved into the modern San Shou/San Da tournament fighting popular today) they researched all the popular forms of martial arts, including their own. The conclusion was that Western boxing hand techniques, when it came to developing practical striking and defensive abilities in a reasonable amount of time, were superior to all others, including their own".

Many have noticed that Bruce Lee's fighting art resembled Western Boxing and Savate (by Savate here I mean all the various European Boxing-Kicking Arts, Savate appears to be a modern version of Pankration) and Bruce Lee appears to have took the best of Boxing and Savate into his art. To bad Savate is more or less dead now in the USA, it included Lalutte wrestling.

MikeNY
03-09-2011, 01:38 PM
Wing Chun is a form of Shaolin Boxing. Now Bodhidharma the Buddist Patriarch took Yoga and Shaolin Boxing to China from India. Long before that even the Armies of Alexander the Great took Pankration into India, Alexander withdrew and died. But Demetrius the Bactiran Greek General conquered India and return bring Pankartion, Greek Boxing and Wrestling back into India and established a Greek Dynasty there.

The point is Wing Chun can be explained by the history, and might be a wholly Chinese development of Shaolin Boxing, the elements are all there from the Greeks and then the Indians that brought it to China.