hung gar master fights mma

Discussion in 'Kung Fu' started by icefield, Dec 22, 2014.

  1. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    heres the guy doing a form demo, he is a known instructor in a well known hung gar lineage he has been studying hung gar since 1989
    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZlDe1Lnwuc"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZlDe1Lnwuc[/ame]

    and the fight
    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY1jWVN7OIU"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY1jWVN7OIU[/ame]

    props to the guy for getting in there but, well I didnt see any hung gar as typically shown or how he demoed it and it didnt look like the guy had ever actually done any contact work, chin u wide open stance, slapping his way in, honestly people wonder why kung fu has a bad rep?
     
  2. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    What was he thinking?
     
  3. FunnyBadger

    FunnyBadger I love food :)

    I beleive your making an assumption there, Im not sure he was thinking at all
     
  4. Kave

    Kave Lunatic

    He was thinking that after dedicating a significant portion of his life to learning a martial art, he would know how to fight. He was wrong. If you check out his comments on the youtube video it appears he is still in denial, which isn't a huge surprise given the amount of time and effort he has invested in the art.
     
  5. Mushroom

    Mushroom De-powered to come back better than before.

    Oh dear.
     
  6. bodyshot

    bodyshot Brown Belt Zanshin Karate

    We had a guy come into our school about a year ago, he was a bona fied third dan in some form of Karate I cant remember now, but he brought his certs in with him when he came in to sign up.

    He lasted about six classes before we never heard from him again. How on earth people think they can fight when they never actually fight is beyond me. We use kumite rules and we go pretty hard sometimes, its actually alot of fun but you gotta leave your ego at the door.
     
  7. The Iron Fist

    The Iron Fist Banned Banned

    Really none of you ever knocked out/down before? I only spent a short while in Hung Gar but I got hit in the face a couple times :)

    I think Sifu Bey has spent way more time at least recently instructing, than training on the contact side himself (at least according to his other videos). I doubt the same can be said of the MMA guy who likely is at least at amateur level. By the way, the guy who posted this video is making really nasty comments about Bey on Youtube. Bey seems well respected for his instruction, not his dedication to the competition side of Hung gar (which I know exists and plenty of MMA guys fight against Hung gar guys at tournaments and wins go both ways, but this video is edited to troll him and is going to get the poster hated really quickly. I am no martial arts guru by any means but he seems to show some bad habits here like standing up without protecting your face which MMA guys will put right to bed. Sifu Bey got taught a lesson, but Hung gar history is famous for guys not scared to take fists in their face...
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2014
  8. bodyshot

    bodyshot Brown Belt Zanshin Karate

    You know its kinda like this, the old dude stepped up to a younger fighter, the old dude didnt control the exact instant he came into strikeing range the younger dude did, result...KO.
    Its not personal, Im sure Sifu Bey is a hell of a Hunggar teacher, but he caant fight young men who are trained to box, big deal I guess. I mean send the MMA guy to my school, we can have a laugh about ole Masrer Bey then Ill knock that dudes block off like he did the old guys, call it karma call it hes a punk whatever. Yes I get hit in the face, mostly by fourteen year olds with those horrible mid puberty mustaches that have something to prove to there friends at the school.
     
  9. Kave

    Kave Lunatic

    Firstly, respect to Mr Bey for putting his abilities to the test, he is a courageous man who took a step that very few people in martial arts take. However, I can respect his courage and still be critical of what is shown in the video.

    The opponent looked more like a boxer than an MMAer to me. Either way he didn't look particularly experienced. Sifu Bey has been training for a long time (over 20 years), and is considered to have attained a high-level of ability in hung gar. My first question would be: would you consider his skill level satisfactory for someone who has dedicated such a significant amount of his time to his art. My second question would be: if this guy is a coach, what sort of skills relevant to fighting can he impart to his students?

    Than you really have to ask yourself what has gone wrong for Sifu Bey, is his training methodology flawed. Is this an issue with the art, just this particular school, or just the individual? If I trained in an art for over 20 years I would expect to be able to use those skills against a martial artist from another discipline, and I would be most disappointed if I could be beaten by someone who trained as a boxer for two or three years.
     
  10. The Iron Fist

    The Iron Fist Banned Banned

    What about a boxer who trained 20 years and were no longer in their prime but were praised for their coaching? For all we know Bey has fighting students in competition circuits...this is a common thread I found in Hung gar is many folks do indeed take the fight training so seriously. But It's difficult for me to gauge "skill" because I am no Hung gar expert but I know the history of Hung gar is that of bloody, bare knuckle fights often to the death, often against the local authorities no less.... One good punch can KO anybody, and if this video made during the Ching dynasty Bey would likely have fallen to his death from a raised platform a dozen feet high. Obviously Bey does not train this way, so the nasty reputation of Hung gar is not really something he can attain, but one look at the guy's arms will tell you if he gets the first punch in you will feel it.

    Bey is clearly a very strong and capable guy and not a spring chicken, so I don't think anything went wrong other than a) he fell and b) got up without protecting his face, and since I've seen MMA guys get clobbered for letting their guard down too. Much ado about nothing really, and arguments about "effectiveness" I will kind of stay out of. Maybe he had just worked out, I don't know any context for the video that was posted (except to say the poster is a jerk). Clearly HE was not as effective THAT day as he'd have liked. Neither is my favorite pro football team and those guys all train harder than any martial artist I can think of. All Sifu Bey has posted on this video is "he had a good right". So, Bey is pretty smart and figured out what he did wrong pretty fast. I am not gonna use this one video to pick on Hung gar, its reputation is kind of unassailable. With that said, the guy trolling him is a total jerk and will probably make 100 guys want to kick his butt, even guys that do MMA. MMA guys don't want that reputation as kung fu haters...I know because all the MMA guys I know love kung fu
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2014
  11. FunnyBadger

    FunnyBadger I love food :)

    I maintained wasn't thinking about what he was doing. You cannot walk into a full contact fight without training for a full contact fight. He clearly was not used to full contact, the poor guard and lack of head movement show he was expecting to be able to just take the shots and that proved to be a bad idea.

    I'm not knocking him or hung gar here but a weightlifting coach can have been a good competitor and may now train good competitors but unless he himself is lifting regularly he will not do well in competition. Sifu bey may well have some serious skills but he has not honed them for that style of combat and the result was fairly inevitable. Given a bit of heavy sparring and a bit of a game plan it might have been very different but I still think walking into a full contact fight without doing those things is pretty nieve bordering on stupid.

    As was said above though fair play to him for stepping up and also I agree the other guy is a tool.
     
  12. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    Im sorry but this is rubbish
    A boxer who trained for 20 years and is past his prime will still look like how he trains when he spars and fights, IE like a boxer, Bey looked nothing like the demos in his other clips when he actually fought, there was such a huge dichotomy between form and function I have a hard time believing he has ever really sparred hard let alone trained guys who have fought full contact. In all honestly looking at that clip, if I didn’t know he had 20 years plus in hung gar I would have thought he was an untrained guy

    Hung gars history means squat, the fact is what is the art looking like now, not 100 years ago when the most likely outcome of a fight was getting cut with a knife, stabbed by a sword or clobbered with a pole in a mass brawl, not in a 1 on 1 unarmed duel.
    The art can’t live on past glories and what a few exceptional men managed to do, hung gar doesn’t have a nasty rep these days, (actually in hong kong in the 60s it was laughed at by the CLF and wing chun guys because it wouldn’t take part in the roof top fights)
    heck there are more example of wing chun fighting full contact than there are hung gar out there, search hung gar on you tube and you will find hundreds of clips of form practise, dozens of technique demos and only a few actual sparring clips, and ironically those that do spar tend to use the long bridge high stance part of the art (which WFH brought in) not the close range low stance original hung and tend to look like long range boxers or CLF guys
    MMA guys getting clobbered for using low hands is a tactic used to draw guys into their range, Anderson used it very well up until getting knocked out, but they still have good head movement and good foot work to aid that tactic, Bey had neither, he also had no power in any of his shots.
    I say this as someone with hung gar training, who still trains hung gar, and who likes kung fu, but if that is an example of what your average hung gar sifu can do in a fight then is there any wonder kung fu us seen the way it is by most people?
    And clearly a capable guy, really you think that after watching that clip?
     
  13. Please reality

    Please reality Back to basics

    Well, obviously the sifu was going easy on the young guy. He didn't use the no shadow kick. It was an opportunity to teach his students humility so he took one for the team.

    His front hand was kind of up for some of the fight but his rear hand wasn't protecting anything, I'm surprised it lasted that long. Perhaps the first couple of kicks made it hard for the other guy to enter in on him but once he did, sayonara. In retrospect though, it was edited so we don't know what happened in between but the hand strikes the sifu showed were more like patty cake than punches.
     
  14. Bozza Bostik

    Bozza Bostik Antichrist on Button Moon

    Icefield - if you don't mind me asking, bit off topic, but when you spar at HG do you use traditonal HG punching and blocking or do you use more kickboxing / boxing type stuff. What about the footwork, stances etc?

    Just curious to how it works out if you use "pure" HG techniques.
     
  15. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    As I understand it HG is one KF style that has quite a few techniques that are very similar to boxing type techniques.
    Especially with san shou being in there too.
    So not as easy to make an either/or comparison.
     
  16. icefield

    icefield Valued Member

    I have 10 years Thai style MMA striking and grappling (anmothe decade of Lau gar and kick boxing before that) , my kung fu sifus main style is a family style combining of hung gar and clf and othe trbits of southern arts the village was shown by passing teachers, alongside hakka arts he also knows and his original wing chun, can you imagine how hard it is to tell what either of us are doing ?

    Im not pure anything, I like the longer range shots of hunggar, the close range off balancing and hitting from the clinch and the sideways movements and stance work, but its only a part of what he does, and only a part of what I do and I honestly don’t think I could make any of it work without the previous training I have had, and without the other stuff he teaches
    His master came from mainland china to hong kong in the 60s, he once told me his master said the hong kong guys were way to worried about how they looked, he just worried about how hard he hit people (but then his teacher was the guy responsible for protecting their village and surrounding areas from bandits so it was a case of what worked not what look pretty)
    When I spar I find myself using the long arm techniques much more than you close range stuff (I get close I clinch hit and throw, but im a grappler at heart) , more like the CLF and Dutch Thai I know, I use some of the foot work and stances (stepping out to the right from a left stance to change angles for my hooks and overhands, feet side by side not staggered shifting weight left to right to generate power) when sparring as it means I don’t have a leg forward for my sifu to hit a single off (he wrestled in college) but stances and foot movement are not fixed, I shift between what I know when I need it.

    To be honest the stances and footwork make a lot more sense when you add weapons, not standing with one leg forward, trying to keep both legs and body as far away as possible from your opponent and moving sideways and backwards shifting your weight makes much more sense when they are swinging a 6ft pole with a big sword on the end at your legs or trying to spear you, likewise a lot of the twisting stances and retreating footwork make sense when someones coming at you with a long range weapon, and the idea it’s a close range art with a lot of grappling makes sense if your opponent is trying to stab you or cut you with a big knife, controlling his arm with two of yours, trying to dominate his hands on top, pinning them etc doesn’t make that much sense unarmed when the hands will in reality be closer than bridge range, moving allot and he can just hit you with his other hand, but with a butchers knife in one of his hands, controlling that hand and allot of the close rage work makes more sense

    Not speaking for my teacher but I see his take on hun gar as its more a clinch range style originally, with aggressive forward movement and close range hitting and grabbing with the longer range stuff added later, we spend a lot of time in the clinch, but like I said he wrestled in college and I did MMA and grappling for a decade so maybe we both just like that range
     
  17. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Everybody is being quite nice about the HG master, but I just thought it looked terrible. The "MMA guy" wasnt much better.

    A few have said "but he's old and stopped sparring years ago probably". Well yes and no. I have once or twice met students who used to come to the gym and spar back before it was big. They come back now after years of now practice and still lay it on thick against me. This HG master didn't look like he'd ever fought under any rules save perhaps HG ones maybe. I've never seen HG competition so I wouldn't know.

    MMA guy is a douche if he's making comments about it.
     
  18. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    I thought the HG guy looked like he was all "I got this, no problem"...hands down, not giving his opponent any respect, too relaxed and not taking it seriously.
    Probably because he wasn't used to what can happen when someone's really going to lay it on you.
    Hubris basically.
    I don't think him getting KO'd is any bad thing just like I don't think an MMA fighter getting KO'd is a bad thing. These things happen when fists are flying. :)
     
  19. Tom bayley

    Tom bayley Valued Member

    The only thing we can say for sure from what can be seen in the clip is that the Hung Gar man shows very poor technique. He drops his guard. His counter to being grappled ended up with him on the floor. He gets hit in the head because he did not guard his head when he was down.

    Other than this, given that a section of the sparing has been removed it its not possible to say anything else.

    It could be that he shows poor technique because he does not know any better. It could also be that his technique is poor because he is trying not to injure the other guy. The fight is not in a ring. There do not appear to be clearly agreed rules. It is not clear that both fighters have the same intent. The floor is clearly not designed for hard take-downs or throws.

    This could be an example of the dangers of cross training without clearly establishing rules of conduct.

    Speaking from personal experience In the past I have found myself crossing hands in what I think is going to be a low intensity exercise and discovering that the other guy is trying to take my head off. In a fight with one sided intent it is possible to fend of or smother the aggressor for a while without causing injury. But ultimately if they do not realize that they are outclassed the only way you can stop them is by putting them on their backside.

    From what we can see the Hung gar man lost because his technique was poor. With the available evidence it is not possible to tell why his technique was poor.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2014
  20. The Iron Fist

    The Iron Fist Banned Banned

    Maybe this is part of the reason? I honestly don't know, maybe he's spent more time on fight choreography than crossing hands?

    [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHDWiidHu40"]Fight choreography with pro scores- Syracuse Kung FU Sharif Bey and Joel Miscione - YouTube[/ame]
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2014

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