No internal martial artists in ufc?

Discussion in 'Internal Martial Arts' started by AAAhmed46, Aug 17, 2004.

  1. daftyman

    daftyman A 4oz can of whoop-ass!

    Ok, first I was not saying that skill does not play a major part in MMA tournaments. What I was saying is:
    If you have two fighters with equal skill squaring off, the one with the most 'spirit' is more likely to win. Taken a step further, this would lead us to think that if a skilled fighter with not a lot of 'spirit' went up against a fighter with not quite so much skill (but nearly the same, the underdog) but this guy has a ton of guts and 'spirit' then is it not true that he could win?
    Clearly without skill, you have no chance of winning. But if you have both skill and 'spirit' then I think you can really succeed.
    I also do not claim to know a lot/anything about MMA, but I believe that the above couple of paragraphs would hold true in almost any arena.

    Secondly, I do not believe that I was saying that the 'internal' martial arts hold a monopoly on religious/philosophical ties. But I believe that these doctrines would tend to lead us away from these tournaments and not towards them.
     
  2. notquitedead

    notquitedead used to be Pankration90

    I've never seen anything in taoism about not fighting...yet many branches of Buddhism are against it. Wouldn't it make more sense if the Buddhist martial arts were more against competing than the taoist ones? ;)

    The history of an art doesn't necessarily change a person's personality, so the style shouldn't determine whether they compete or not.
     
  3. AAAhmed46

    AAAhmed46 Valued Member

    But the question is still barely answered, WHY arnt there any Internal(Im talking the 'big' three, hsing-i, Pau kua, tai chi) in MMA tournaments? I know many of these styles adopt the softer 'push hands' exersizes, but in china, and in ANY country were you cant sue randomly(the third world) there is alot of contact when they fight.

    Is it because full contact Internal styles are rare in north america? I mean, most UFC fighters seem very north american.
     
  4. notquitedead

    notquitedead used to be Pankration90

    Not sure, but look at Pride FC. People from Japan, Korea, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, etc all compete there. If a good Chinese fighter wanted to get in, he probably could.

    The reason a lot of the UFC fighters are from the US is because we have lots of smaller shows all over the country, so when they need 'filler' people (people aside from the main events) they can look around and see who has been fighting well and ask them to fight.
     
  5. Knight_Errant

    Knight_Errant Banned Banned

    From that point forward, this thread ceased to be about positive contribution. Therefore:
    [​IMG]
     
  6. daftyman

    daftyman A 4oz can of whoop-ass!

    What!?! I am assuming that you did not read the follow-up post?
    In the entirety of this thread, this has got to be the most negative statement.
    The quote is also taken out of context. You could get a job in the tabloids.

    Do you have anything positive to add? Or are you just here to throw insults? Tell us your views on the matter.
     
  7. Knight_Errant

    Knight_Errant Banned Banned

    I think you have great difficulty accepting that real fighting looks like that- boring, brutal and ugly. Applying 'good' technique is very difficult when you're under the pressure of fighting an opponent who is actually resisting you. Furthermore, this thread is about trolling, i.e. Bashing either IMA or UFC. There is no way in hell this topic can produce anything positive. Furthermore, I think you could probably find some UFC people who do a bit of internal martial arts on the side.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2004
  8. daftyman

    daftyman A 4oz can of whoop-ass!

    No, I quite agree that real fights look rubbish compared to the movies. :)
    True it does seem to have descended a bit too far into trollish regions. :(
    Thank you for your more reasoned response. :)

    The following is as a reply to an earlier post regarding Taoism and competition:

    The Good Life. The Taoist ideal, the good life, is a community living a natural, harmonious, simple life without the pressures of war and competition. "Being" not "having" becomes the enlightened style of life. Contented individuals, simple, whole and alert possess the necessary leisure to engage in a life of harmony with others and with nature. The result is a sense of personal spontaneity ('tzu-jan' [dzuh-rahm], spontaneity, nature, naturalness) which comes from within, in concert with the ebb and flow of nature itself.

    Other personal traits within the tradition include reverent humility, and an avoidance of strident, aggressive behavior with others and nature. Selflessness, cleanliness and emotional calm characterize the fulfilled individual.
    (taken from http://wrc.lingnet.org/taoism.htm)

    I would also add that a fervent buddhist would, I feel, avoid UFC because of the compassionate nature of the religion.

    Anyway I've now said my £0.34 so I will drag myself away from this thread. Ta-ta! :D
     
  9. Matt_Bernius

    Matt_Bernius a student and a teacher

    Geez folks, please read complete posts. My citing of Tank Abbott and my attack on his "skills" was simply to assert that simply being in the UFC or K1 or ETC doesn't necessarily make one skilled (especially on the level of many of the other competitors). I did state that by and large the folks in these competitions are very skilled. There's no question about it. The proof is on the tape. However, Mr Abbott doesn't place into that elite group. Can he brawl? Yes. Is he on an equal skill level? No. In fact if you go through the early UFC records there were a lot of dubiously skilled fighters in there. Not so much the case any more. Again (once more for the people in the back row and feel free to quote me for what it's worth) There are a lot of skilled folk in the UFC, Pride, K1, etc! To state otherwise is just ignorant.

    BTW Pankration90 can you get me a reference on that bit you posted about the internal martial arts earlier on the thread.

    - Matt
     
  10. wuwei

    wuwei New Member

    I think this is a very valid question. The question I want to ask even more is how well a good internal partitioner will fare in a MMA competition?

    I don't believe there is any difference in approach to going into real fights, testing your skills against another partitioner and entering competitions between internal styles and external styles. If you take out real fighting from an art, then it is not martial art, as simple as that.

    Now a bit of historical anecdote. After the establishment of the Chinese Republic, wushu was finally being selected to be promoted as a national sports (after being banned for 3 hundred years during the Qing Dynasty). So to recruit capable martial artists to revitalise the art, a national no hold barred full contact competition was held in 1929 in Nanjing. This was the famous "First National Guoshu Exam in Nanjing". The competition was so fiece and injuries was so often that they had to stop the competition midway and announced the last 15 people still standing as winners. I don't have the full list of the 15 finalists here but I recall lots of internal stylists especially Xingyi and Baji people. So internal stylists did exceptionally well in those days although I don't know the exact rules of that competition either. Now fast forward to 70+ years later in a global arena, I would like to see internal stylists involve in modern competitions. And it is my big frustration to not see this happening.
     
  11. wutan

    wutan Valued Member

    Neil Rosiak from the Wudang style of tai chi Chuan in the UK has competed in a UFC type competition and it is recorded on video-Night of the samurai.
    Neil has set up a new website www.fightingtaichi.com where you can see his training methods.
    His students now compete in freestyle competitions.
    Neil is a student of Dan Docherty who himself competed in the Asian Full contact open in the 1980's and won the heavyweight division.

    Mark.
     
  12. notquitedead

    notquitedead used to be Pankration90

    Matt, I seriously doubt that there is any evidence to support my opinion on the meaning of 'internal'. I don't even know what form that evidence would need to be in. :p It just makes sense to me.

    All the martial arts have fighting techniques. Many of them have meditation and talk of 'ki', 'qi', or 'chi'. The only thing about tai chi, xing yi, and bagua (which seem to be the main three IMA) that is different is that they are based on taoism (Tao Te Ching, I Ching, the eight trigrams which I *think* are in the I Ching anyways, yin and yang, etc).

    Some say that aikido is internal, but there are styles of karate that talk about ki almost or as much as aikido, and still aren't considered 'internal'. I think what they are trying to do is confused "internal and external" with "hard and soft". I still don't like using hard and soft to classify martial arts, either. 'Hard' and 'soft' may be a good way to describe how a person fights (defensive and evasive or aggressive and direct for example), but there is a difference between a person and a style.
     
  13. ZillaBilla

    ZillaBilla Banned Banned

    Hey Wuwei,

    I know of a few people that were involved in that competition. Firstly there was B. K. Frantzis's master - Liu Hung Chieh , and my great grand master Wu Tu Nan.

    Here is a little bio in the former: www.energyarts.com/hires/library/masters/liuhung.html

    and a bit on the latter:
    www.namwahpai.com

    Cheers.

    ZB
     
  14. dustIn credible

    dustIn credible Valued Member

    The onlything close to a "meathead" ive seen in the UFC is Tank Abbott, only because he really had not style, he could, well, just hit hard.


    ps

    tank and genki sudo are my heros! I stive to look like tank and fight like genki :bang:
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2004
  15. wuwei

    wuwei New Member

    Hi ZillaBilla, I can't figure out the chinese name of Liu Hung Chieh so couldn't look up information of him but I usually feel very uncomfortable when someone attributes supernatural power to a IMA master. Sign of a charlatan. I do heard about Wu Tu Nan as a famous Taiqi master thou.
     
  16. Matt_Bernius

    Matt_Bernius a student and a teacher

    There is definitely a Taoist aspect in many of those arts. However, the aspect that seems far more important to the classification of Internal v. External is the arts implementation of the concept of "Fa Jing" and "Sung." Ki/Chi has nothing in my mind to do with whether an art is internal or external (though new age Guro's who have latched on to Tai Chi as a health art would disagree.... not that I give a hoot).

    I do agree that at high levels I think there is not an easily discernable line between internal and external in most art as those practioners achive a high level of relaxed power in thier implementation of the arts.

    - Matt
     
  17. alex_000

    alex_000 You talking to me?

    Yes most definitely. (who would say that being a meathead with determination is enough. There are thousands of meatheads with determination in my town , I don't see anyone fighting in the UFC). We just disagreed with Matt in whether Tank is a skilled fighter or not.

    I still believe that Tank has skill. There are kinds of skills other people don't classify as "skills" . Tank's biggest skill is his balls and his toughness (in hitting and receiving). Maybe those are skills that have little to do with training, but i still count them as important skills. Matt probably classifies skill as perfection in a sertaing technique or style that is purely achieved by training (witch is also correct off course ), ..

    Maybe we didn't quite disagree , we just disagree in the elements that make a skilled fighter , that classify as "skills".
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2004
  18. ZillaBilla

    ZillaBilla Banned Banned

    Hey Wuwei,

    I feel the same on that, but I don't see what gives you that impression from the article.

    Cheers.
     
  19. wuwei

    wuwei New Member

    "Liu was able, by having his mind nonphysically contact my body, to use the energy in my body for literally moving me around the room when I practiced Walking the Circle."

    Hey I would love to do that too! Sounds more like psychokinesis than MA to me.
     
  20. nzric

    nzric on lookout for bad guys

    Cool, walking the circle while you're floating 2ft off the ground!
     

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