Adam Mizner?

Discussion in 'Tai chi' started by EmptyHandGuy, Apr 20, 2020.

  1. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    A fair question, to be sure.
     
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  2. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Oh I don’t have any illusions about qi.

    my point is, if it is ok to call out one individual for being a charlatan, then we need to be ok with calling out everyone who helps that charlatan to pull off his fraud. Celebrities should not get a pass. They are guilty as and it should tarnish their reputations just as much.
     
  3. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    One time, back in the day, I was lucky enough to roll with Chris Haueter.
    If he so chose he could easily describe his dominance over me is esoteric, mystical terms. Invoke "sinking chi" or using his chi to flow around me. I couldn't get any purchase on him when I tried to create space and yet was massively controlling on top of me.
    Like a sentient bag of water. Heavy and smothering but when you push on it it moves away and round.
    But all it was was that he was really good at BJJ and understood weight, pressure, alignment and structure better than me. Whatever I tried he'd seen a million times.
     
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  4. Grond

    Grond Valued Member

    It depends, did they even know they would be in Mizner's video production? Was all this video taken at some event somewhere that wasn't Mizner's? And if so, are they even endorsing it? I don't think we should assume that just because they're all in the video, they're all onboard.


    Machida doesn't look convinced to me. That's a rock hard karate skeptic stare if I ever saw one. Even later in the video, it's not clear what he's talking about. Something something...might be useful, or something. Cut to next scene.

    upload_2022-5-18_11-48-34.png

    I looked again at the video. It's actually a sales promo done by a small shop in NYC. They chop up video and clips to make short commercials for things like movie DVDs. This is a slickly edited video, by a company with less than 20 employees.

    https://giaronomo.com/

    upload_2022-5-18_11-43-12.png
     

    Attached Files:

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  5. Grond

    Grond Valued Member

    I think the whole video is a very slick chop job that incorporates fake Morgan Freeman, real MMA stars, fake Qi nonsense.

    And Mizner's concept of Qi is totally out of whack with not only science, but Tai Chi principles. I wasn't going to talk about Tai Chi anymore but I have to point this out since plenty of people here are well versed.

    Did ANYONE catch Mizner's claim that everything has Qi, even inanimate objects? Wow, that conflicts with everything I've ever read about Qi. Maybe, just maybe he's trying to sell some New Age Force nonsense, while carelessly wrapping it in ancient Chinese wisdom.

    Any time I see a kung fu "master" prancing on top of a mountain in a video, I know I'm watching someone's fantasy.
     
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  6. Smitfire

    Smitfire Cactus Schlong

    Everyone knows midichlorians only exist in living things. Durr.
     
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  7. Grond

    Grond Valued Member

    Right?

    How about the part where 3000 years ago the Chinese figured this all out, accordingly to fake Morgan Freeman.
     
  8. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    I thought General Grevious had a high midichlorian count despite being a cyborg?

    Or was that mitochondria, It was a long time ago and somewhere far far away
     
  9. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Ok fair points. It did occur to me that there might be a claim that Mizner or someone did a slick editing job and cherry-picked bits and pieces and put them together out of context to suggest a message that was not presented. That would be a pretty blatant fraud and If that was done then I would expect these fellows to say something about it. In the end, some additional information about the process of creating the video would be useful.

    In the event that these guys did in fact willingly take part in making the video and accepted payment in exchange for helping Mizner look good, if Mizner’s program is in fact fraudulent and they knew it, then I hold to my position that they deserve the tarring and feathering just as much.

    Fraud is fraud, even when the previously respected do it, especially when they lean on their good reputation to perpetuate the fraud.
     
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  10. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    It's only fraudulent if they knowing lie about something on camera, if they take part in some tai chi tricks (what ever the tai chi version of aikido's unbendable arm is, maybe that dead weight trick from the trailer) and honestly say, oh yes your arm was very hard to bend etc then that's not fraudulent.

    A good example of this is "Combat Ki (a juko Kai offshoot) and genki sudo the well known and skilled MMA fighter. He seems baffled by the set up tricks, and I can see why.

    But they are just tricks.

     
  11. axelb

    axelb Master of Office Chair Fu

    Editing goes a long way, I'm sure everyone has seen the cassette boy videos, an extreme example, but it shows how things can be cut to make a different story.
     
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  12. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    Well yes, and at the same time, perhaps no.

    First, they would need to have a good sense that this guy is fraudulent, and then choose to go along with it to help him put a good face on what he does. Again, I don’t know enough about this fellow to judge if I think he is a fraud or not, but I acknowledge the general consensus on this thread, that he is not good. And there is a difference between being not very good, and being a deliberate fraudster. A guy who simply isn’t very good, could honestly believe that he is, and could believe in magic, and he tries to teach it, but that doesn’t automatically make him a fraudster.

    but these other fellows in his video, they could avoid saying something directly that endorses him or puts his skills on a pedestal, while still lending him credibility by taking part in a series of demonstrations and agreeing to be in the video, and composing themselves in a manner that appears to be accepting and impressed by what he is doing and comes across as an endorsement even if not blatantly stated.

    the thing I just can’t get past is that if the general census among the folks here is that Mizner is fraudulent, and it is so obvious that you can all see it in his videos without having ever trained with the guy, then I would expect at the very least, Machado would have also been able to spot this before he even got there. I would guess that someone of his stature and experience in the martial arts world would have done some research on Mizner before agreeing to appear in his video. And there he is.

    If Mizner did in fact do some kind of video con job on them, I think that would be a very dangerous game to play. It would become obvious to the fellows who were conned immediately, and I would think there would be repercussions in terms of the word getting out and Mizner’s reputation getting a very public thrashing at the very least. So I’m having a hard time believing that is what happened.

    If these guys simply said yes to a payment of money to endorse Mizner in a way that is inconsistent with their true feelings about their experience with him, well then their integrity is in the trash as well.

    so I dunno. Some further context would be helpful.
     
  13. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    I think there is some sympathy for retired athletes taking money for occasional dubious marketing vs. people who make a career out of conning people.

    All they had to do was get flown out to somewhere nice and be polite. The editors take care of the rest.
     
  14. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    No sympathy from me, for that. IF Mizner is actually fraudulent, then This isn’t just dubious marketing or endorsing a soda that they don’t actually drink. This is partnering in a fraud.
     
  15. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    Except they aren't actively defrauding anyone, they're just getting paid to be polite to some wellness industry weirdo for a couple of hours.

    When he says "stand like this" they stand like that. When he pushes them with his fingers they humour him. When the producers ask them leading questions they answer politely and they sign papers allowing it all to be edited to seem like a big deal.

    I can appreciate your moral absolutism, but I personally think there are degrees of blame. For instance, I don't feel that the camera crew or editors are fraudsters, or the people who encode and distribute the film, or the people who designed the cover/thumbnail art and titles. I think of the athletes involved as only being slightly more culpable than the technical crew. They are hired to do a job and nothing more.
     
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  16. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    I'm not so sure it's that out of whack with Chinese metaphysics:

    https://www.buqiinstitute.com/qi-chi-ki-part-1/
     
  17. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    I’m actually not trying to be a moral absolutist. As Ive said, I have no position on whether or not Mizner is actually a fraud.

    What I am actually trying to point out is that when people come onto a forum like this and start talking about how this or that fellow is peddling snake oil, the subtext of the discussion, whether or not it is stated explicitly, is that “this fellow ought to be shut down!!” But there are other fellows connected to him, some of whom may be fan favorites, and others who are actually legitimate. It is actually a very easy jump to go from saying that Mizner ought to be shut down, to including Machado and the other two fellows also ought to be publicly humiliated and have their careers ruined as well. I doubt that is what people actually want, but it’s all connected and people should think a little bit about what they are saying. Maybe none of us really ought to be the martial arts police.
     
  18. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    The flip side of that is a moral obligation to call out obvious shenanigans when you see it.

    I don't recall anyone in this thread calling for Mizner to be shut down, people have just been giving honest opinions on material he has chosen to put into the public sphere. I don't see what's wrong with that.

    I think the best example in this thread was the Systema guy video a couple of pages back. This was someone who had a history in Tai Chi demonstrating how these tricks work, because he already knew them. I consider that educational, not impolite.
     
  19. Flying Crane

    Flying Crane Well-Known Member

    There is often a subtext, whether or not it is stated explicitly.

    And if we are gonna call out shenanigans (which I generally do agree with) then we gotta call shenanigans on those who cooperated with them. So that includes Machida and the others.
     
  20. windwalker

    windwalker Member

    Interesting comments,
    is this also "shenanigans "





    "
    Heaven Man Earth Instructor Ramzi Nabulsi playing push hands in Malaysia - with JK Yeo, Victor Yen, Tiger Tan, Pang Chan Ming and others.


    Ramzi Nabulsi is a senior disciple of Sifu Adam Mizner, he is a Silver in blue belt openweight division in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts Federation of Jordan tournament, as well as a Gold in the MMA heavyweight championship at the FIOGA world mixed martial arts competition."
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2022

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