SF Bay Area, CA - More bullshido for your buck: Cheuk Fung's Yi Chuan kung fu

**Kokujin** · Posted On: 8/18/2005 5:55pm

Originally Posted by theraydiator

no to split hairs, but doesn't it seem like it would be just as easy to hustle your students and propogate BS etc. back in the day (lets say pre 20th century)?

With no internet (and communications in general severely limited), knowledge wasn't as democratized as it is now. You couldn't consult with experts and you couldn't verify someone's expertise as easily.

Without Bullshido.net I may have never gotten the reality check i needed - i think that the less information available to the student, the more easily they can be taken advantage of.

That being said - if you can see with your own eyes that your master is getting his ass handed to him by a challenger, well.... then it should be obvious.

So, anyone know how common were challenge matches back in the day?

Maybe you're right...bullshido is a ageless trend in martial arts and in pretty much everything. So I guess it was plausable to pull a fast one on a bunch of unsuspecting students. But I have this feeling that could only go on so far before someone pull out your number. Specially if you spend a lot of time bragging about your fighting skills and deadly technique. Even if you went to teach in some god forgotten town with no instructor, sooner or later you would have to put your money where your mouth was. It could happen in the form of another martial artist, a bandid or a thug, even a wealthy patron who could simply set you up against anyone he choosed(he pays your ass). At least thats the image and the stories in which several chinese systems base their effectiveness. Stories about the old days where master x was challenged by master x and mayhem followed.

About the challenge matches...well, I've read some stories in several sites and if you search about the most famous chinese styles, yoyu're bound to find some story about challenge matches. Many of them happened because of the reasons I wrote above(thugs, rivals, etc), some were really styled, with the rival walking inside the school with a couple of his good old boys and crossing his hands, screaming gong sau or simply putting down the rival style, thus trying to have a "test of skills"...some supposedlly happened while everyone was trashed or hot headed and the list goes on and on. You pick the style and there's a ton of stories like that! It's just one of the things that give CMA that special flavour. Well, to me at least. :glasses2:

**kbrukt** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 12:20am

I Admit that back in my younger days, when I used to watch syndicated "Kung-Fu:The Legend Continues" I thought chi could really be used to win a fight and also that there was such thing as a Vulcan Death Touch, but when I tried to do that stuff my self, I thought that couldn't be real and it was all pretty silly.
I am sure that everyone on Bullshido.net who joined Kung-Fu or Karate joined so they could do all the amazing things the action stars could do. Isn't it odd that in almost every action movie, nobody wins a fight if they don't know a traditional martial art. Movies like "Romeo Must Die", "Exit Wounds". What those guys do there in that Yi Chuan school is crap on another level though, stuff that would even make Kaine from the "Kung-Fu" series proud. That guy is really cause someone to cath a seroius ass-whopping. :bsflag:

**TehDeadlyDimMak** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 12:27am

I joined Kung Fu to get tough because they did a lot of conditioning at the particular school I saw. I admit originally I thought that the Sifus would teach us more high flying techniques and flashy "vital point" strikes. Luckily my teachers did no such thing and endorsed push ups and punches. Now I know I got lucky I didn't walk into this Yi Chuan school. I probably wouldn't be on Bullshido if I did.

**Matt Stone** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 12:41am

In defense of CMA and internal training:

I've been doing Yiliquan since 1985. I've fought only in point sparring and forms tournaments (when I first started there just weren't any available harder contact tournaments in our area). I'd fight in a "real" match now if it weren't for a lower back injury and my wife's threats of divorce (she wouldn't, really, and she has faith that I'd do well - if not winning, at least holding my own - but she really doesn't want me to fight, so I don't).

In the point fighting I've done, our school has historically done very, very well compared to other CMAs. During the first few years of the AAU CMA division's national tournaments, our school came away with more wins than any other.

We have (not on video) reports of several members of our school, junior and senior alike, employing our training in real world self defense situations. It wasn't always pretty, and it wasn't always best case scenarios, but they managed to defend themselves and get away unscathed. We aren't "th3 d3adly," but what we do seems to work just fine.

I've also been doing qigong off and on since I first started training, and I can say that while I'm not too sure what is going on, there is a big difference between training results when doing qigong as opposed to not doing qigong. I could figure out a whole truckload of theories as to why, but I just don't care enough to over-analyze it. I don't teach our students that it is some Jedi trick, just that if you do A, you get B (in this case A = qigong, B = faster results and better awareness of what you are doing).

That having been said, the regrettable instance is that there are so very many people who want so badly to believe in something "special" or "extraordinary" that they buy into this kind of hype hook, line, sinker and half the pole! There are people I know of whose teacher lays claim to having developed his physical skill to a point where it simply cannot develop any further; he has achieved perfection in his skill. I know this isn't true, because I remember training with him only a few short years before this claim was made, and he hit like a 12 year old Girl Scout... But his students believe in him 100%, no matter what hokey claims he makes.

It's like weight loss and dieting... There are tons and tons of different diet plans to follow, with new ones being made up every day by some nutritionist with a "new" idea or a marketable gimmick. But the bottom line is burn more calories than you eat... In the case of martial arts, there are tons and tons of different schools and styles to choose from, with new ones springing to life daily by some wannabe "Mastah" who thinks he's come up with something that nobody in the last 5,000+ years ever thought of... But the bottom line is train aggressively, condition your body and mind, and make sure what you do really works before making claims of being "th3 d3adly."

**Upyu** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 2:14am

Heh you know it's funny that a lot of Kyokushin guys train in Yichuan over here(Sawai Kenichi was one of Mas Oyama's mentors, after he got his ass handed to him by the old man) and have bonnified sparring matches, pressure testing, sparring etc...

http://www.taikiken.org/ (English site of the Japanese version)

And the same thing shows up in california with granolas, fruits, flakes and Chi spraying all rolled into one...

Tho, I have to admit, even the real stuff looks like the gheyest **** ever..
Arm waving hippies...lol
Until u eat a punch by one of them :redface:

**Matt Stone** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 2:30am

Originally Posted by Upyu

Tho, I have to admit, even the real stuff looks like the gheyest **** ever..
Arm waving hippies...lol
Until u eat a punch by one of them :redface:

We have a little thing we refer to as the "Capitol Hill Bitch Slap." Bullshido members from the Seattle area will understand what the name implies... Anyway, it looks like the biggest, limpest slap you can find - to the person on the receiving end, though, it feels much more like a small Toyota pickup slamming into you.

Good stuff.

**Sam Browning** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 5:57am

Bunyip, you did it again, great report!

**Jonny** · Posted On: 8/19/2005 7:30am