Ip Man 2, stupid question? *spoiler alert*

**Mr. Machette** · Posted On: 7/11/2012 7:26pm

So I just watched both the Ip Man movies and I did find them to be enjoyable pieces of Kung Fu fluff. I would even say the first movie was a darn good martial arts film. The second one was also a quality flick, with Samo Hung turning in yet another bench mark performance so good it made me feel a little nostalgic. (Samo was the sheeit when I was a kid and ninjas were like, totally real dude!) Donny Yen, as always, is paragon of martial performance art. On the screen he looks like he'd been doing Wing Chun exclusively for a lifetime. (He has been doing MA since he was a todler, but trained only 6-8 months of Wing Chun for this role.)

Here's my question though:

Ip Man 2 concludes with ol' Ip defeating a western boxing champion. The set up is this Champ can knock the silly out of any Kung Fu guy he can actually make contact with. THe Kung Fu dudes land a lot of blows and duck and weave, but the boxers toughness and stamina eventually win out when he has the chance to land his "big right". This blow devastates the smaller chinese oponents who for some reason always throw their oldest dudes into the fight.

Of course Ip Man "reluctantly" steps up and after a truly Rocky Balboa style back and forth, our eponymous underdog finally comes through against all odds for the big win. Chain punching prevails, Chinese pride is saved and the Opium wars are retro-actively won, blah blah blah...

What I gotta know is, did that **** really happen? Cause I can't find any evidence that it happened. Ip Man was a real guy and I'm sure he had to handle some real bizz-nasty in his life. A lot of the good teachers from his generation did. But how close to reality are the movies?

Anybody have some genuine historical insight on this guy fighting for sport?

**WoodyCorpus** · Posted On: 7/12/2012 12:36am

I asked myself the same question, but could find no online confirmation. My guess is that it's just a bout of Chinese propaganda.

**wetware** · Posted On: 7/12/2012 1:15am

I did some homework on this a while back. Pretty sure the first Ip Man movie is pretty well bullshit. Dunno about the second. Be back in a few with links.

http://www.wslwingchun.my/ip-man-the...t-from-fiction

http://www.kwokwingchun.co.uk/ip-man-biography

Not exactly peer-reviewed articles, but hey, it's 2 AM.

**fudoshin_ryu** · Posted On: 9/24/2012 5:01pm

Yeah the history on ole' Ip Man is a bit of a blur...since one of my major styles if Wing chun...I do see that his style was a bit cloudy from what my sifu tells me. Especially that someone in his family...I think it was his father had a brother...and some how they got into a heated verbal battle about whose 'fist' was more authentic...causing for the family to grow apart...but some history states that Wing Chun was not really made from his Ip Man...but his brother...whose name I don't completely remember...but this is probably all here-say anyways. I guess since people didn't think about documenting everything...it's all unfortunately word of mouth.

**Mr. Machette** · Posted On: 9/24/2012 6:08pm

Originally Posted by fudoshin_ryu

I guess since people didn't think about documenting everything...it's all unfortunately word of mouth.

This seems to be a comon problem with trying to verify the legends.

The best I've been able to find is that the movies were basically dramatizations "loosely" based upon some of his exploits. So they are much more legend than fact.

However, the guy was the toughest cop in Hong Kong in is day. That says something, though the actual details are as buried in his folk hero status as the movie retellings.

While the matches in the movies didn't really happen as told, his reputation as an exemplary gentleman and dominating scrapper are generally considered fact by those who knew him.

Despite the movies being almost complete fiction, his impact on martial arts cannot be understated. (Even if some of it is all FOOM)

**chainpunch** · Posted On: 9/24/2012 7:15pm

These are movies for entertainment not biographies. There is a small fraction of the movie that uses history/ legend as inspiration but it is a fictional movie indeed.

**fudoshin_ryu** · Posted On: 9/25/2012 12:35pm

I liked the third Ip Man the best, the story of his coming of age. That was probably the most watched one (in my own movie library) because I really wanted to see how they would protray a teen/young adult Ip Man, and I think they did a pretty good job of showing that hew as indeed a gentleman as well in his younger days as the stories that are passed down through the Wing Chun schools...but still whose to say :(

I wish they would have at least decided to get a memoir from him ><