Why are most styles developed in a way to resemble a dance? How could this dance dance revolution shit possibly be the result of centuries of bloody wars and conquest?
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That's how you defeat the darkness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuUGrtmjQfY
I am mostly talking out of my ass here, but my speculation is it developed that way due to hand to hand fighting arts being seen as more of a supplement to "real" fighting with weapons. So first the focus was on using it to improve athleticism and physical condition, then as a way of showing off such things, then daoist influences brought the whole cultivation internal alchemy chi stuff aspect to it.
So the tl;dr to my asspull answer is that unarmed training in china was mostly for physical (and later spiritual) development and showing off. Weapons were for real fighting and taken a bit more seriously culturally speaking.
Though China does have a long history of getting it's shit wrecked by outsiders so maybe they sucked at weapons too, which is why they preferred crossbows so much.
The common answer is that the CCP defanged Kung Fu during the cultural revolution and turned it into a dance competition. Later, they decided to resurrect Sanda and turn it into a combat sport. The dancing doesn't have anything to do with the fighting. Whether or not the CCP actually ruined the pure, original Kung Fu seems up for debate. I haven't found a good English language source on the matter and I doubt I'll ever learn Mandarin. So who knows.
problem is Taiwanese kung fu which survived are still similar in uselessness to mainland systems.
Might be the true fighting arts of the Qing empire were practised only in the Five Banner Armies, the majority Han populace were forbidden so...
the Boxers themselves seem to have fought really badly, not just the Coalition armies that massacred hundreds of thousands, but Hui army coming it from Gansu too killed tens of thousands of Boxers without issue
>The common answer is
Wrong
Modern Wushu is mostly an athletic demo. Chinese arts have always emphasized solo conditioning and drills but they were not usually so flashy.
As far as I can tell, many different groups and families developed and maintained their own styles, which were either tried to be kept hidden (see the Taijiquan origin story about the gardener spying on the Chen family to steal their art) or were widely traded throughout their regions (like Shandong peninsula styles used by the armed caravan agencies - biaoju - that became quite popular, like Tanglangquan). The military always adopted what was considered fast-n-easy to learn and fit in with the weapon drills (like Yue family boxing, Longfist boxing, nowadays "military" Sanda/JJ), but the cultural revolution made a big cut and disregarded everything with history to replace it with what (often clueless) officials deemed good standard for the people. It was when people found out that Westerners pay like mad for mythological and ancient stories, so a lot of flowery and shady styles emerged out of nothing. The fact that you always could say "the master I inherited this old style from died in the revolution" or "the ancient scripts were burned, but only I still remember" made things easy. As add-on: VRC rewrites history as it pleases, making lucrative styles into brands ("Shaolin", "Wudang", "Emei", "Laoshan", Taichi" are such brands) that are to be standardized and formed as VRC wants. Arts with religious side-notes ("buddhist", "muslim", "monk") are being replaced by academic martial sports (Wushu, Sanda), and martial melting pots like Dengfeng are losing school after school until only the state-supported Ta Gou is left.
Either find one of the last old men in their villages before they died out, or you look for a reputable school at immigration hotspots like California, Singapore, Taiwan or wherever you find chinese communities outside of China.
Also, the Boxer movement wasn't full of martial artists - it was mainly ordinary people who wanted to believe in shady rituals ("become bulletproof with charms & prayers"). Other armed conflicts without guns were more successful, like the red spear revolution in Shandong which cut the whole peninsula from the Empire because the latter would only collect taxes but never did anything against the bandits. The "red spear" movement denied complete access to Shandong, hunted down the bandits on its own, and finally disbanded as different warlords fought for power.
I think Kung-Fu did work historically, as people actually fought each other in battle, in the streets etc. So you had pressure testing via actual combat and people who's Kung-Fu didn't work fricking died.
The problem is with China becoming a relatively stable modern nation, people no longer fight in the streets, have periodic regional battles, etc.
With no full-contact real combat, and no full-contact sport (ala Muay Thai) to make up for that, all pressure testing was lost, and so Kung-Fu devolves into dancing. You see the same with every style that has no full-contact pressure testing, say TKD turning into shitty foot fencing for points.
This.
There are no more warrior castes that need to defend their honor in battles and ritualized duels; there are no more armed escorts without guns, no bouncers without batons/spray, and knifers in the streets are no legitimation to carry swords, spears, sabres or exotic weapons. Not using a blade makes it blunt, not fighting "for real" (even bar fights) takes the pressure of survival away, pulling out the greatest tiger's teeth.
Hell, look at olympic MA - even the Judo ruleset has been reworked until every competitor only uses 1 to 3 techniques all the time and tries to stay inactive but only to such a degree that the opponent gets more inactivity penalty points. The rules make fighting worthless. Hitting someone in the streets can have drastic law consequences for both parties, so there's only football matches and family violence left to test one's capability to dominate others by force.
1. people still fight n da streetz in china, that isn't a factor in if a art is useful or not.
2. china has for it's entire military history favored range weapons above all else, and were very early developers of the crossbow. Kung fu fighting was never all that important on the battlefield
3. there is no hard historical evidence that kung fu did indeed work
4. from the beginning it seemed more associated with health and religious beliefs then as a effective and practical means of fighting
1. People fight in the streetz everywhere possible, but most never saw a gym/dojo/training hall. Also, there's no official "punched 100 dudes in the streets withoit losing" advertisement anywhere, and bouncer legends aren't famous for passing down their art to bouncer students.
2. Every sane army favors ranged weapons as soon as they're available. Melee fighting is always less important, and strategy with formations beat individual skill, no matter how hard you train - it is not important which MA is being used. Or did you hear of boxers, wrestlers, TMArtists swinging the tide in the WWI trench warfare?
3. There's the various regional governments' records (born when, died when, did what, fought where and whom) which are dependant on their writers' diligence but can be cross-checked (we historians actually do that a lot), there's the leitai records (when, who fought whom, who won, which style), and there's war records (like chinese Dadao units ambushing japanese soldiers).
4. Like in Japan, the "health and religion" aspect came when the fighting part lost most of its relevance. The japanese -Dô arts evolved after the -Jutsu battle skills because you didn't need them to fight anymore but you needed to put a new purpose into them. Same goes roughly for CMA as well.
Boxing was very popular for trench fighting in allied armies.
The Japanese in the case of Judo (until the Olympics wrecked it) at least replaced pressure testing from battles with full contact competitions. No CMA did this until Samda in like the 80s so they all became shit.
Complete bullshit, sir.
There were leitai tournaments that were documented in quite detailed reports, be it by chinese themselves, by dutchmen, brits, germans (although they call it a "barbarische Opferfest von Wilden", disgusted by the killing of fighters who had been too wasted to live a normal life again) or jesuit fathers. There's even cringy B/W video material to be found, though I cannot say when this had been recorded (by Europeans or Americans, I guess). The idea died in the early 1920's, and later Lei Tai tournaments like Yokohama went flashy-fancy like WWF/WWE wrestling events.
I think leitai/no-holds-barred/big-brawl-fights died with the hunt on reputable (grand) masters during the cultural revolution - you could either be deported to be a rice farmer until you died of exhaustion, have your own public trial and execution, flee the country somehow or bury your past and be a good comrade without CMA. Everything after that is a construct without historical significance, without pressure test and without the rich knowledge of the laws and flaws of the old styles that had a long time to develop.
Do you have any good sources for the suppression of CMA during the cultural revolution? This a topic I've heard a lot about third-hand but can find basically nothing on in English. I'm particularly interested in the red guards' motivation in targeting kung fu masters. I understand a lot of the would be attached to the "4 olds," but it's not like martial arts and revolutionary parties are incompatible either.
>I'm particularly interested in the red guards' motivation in targeting kung fu masters
Are you moronic? Do you also wonder why the Allies banned martial arts in post-WW2 Germany?
You don't want pockets of trained assassins or melee-oriented groups of dissidents in your country after a coup. It's that easy.
Did they? I thought the German Ju Jutsu style (i.e. Judo with karate and faux Japanese connections/terms) arose after WW2?
German here. Sports clubs have always been a meeting point and melting pot for revolutionary/anti-state ideas, at least since "Turnvater Jahn" founded gymnastics clubs and followed the idea of an athletic, resilient and battle-ready german society to overthrow the government. That continued with different actors throughout different epochs, and even now we have radical left dojos preparing to fight against the Nazi scum from the radical right/national right dojos (hell, there's even a stupid Nazi party advertising a Gleichschaltung by sports, the so-called "Neue Stärke - Partei" whose abbreviation NSP is the same as a gay newspaper from Bavaria, the "Nürnberger Schwulenpost").
Also, the german JJ can be split into two branches. One is the Jiu Jitsu (which is a completely stupid way to write the japanese original, but had been a trademark back then for the so-called amateur JJ) which was brought to Germany by Erich Rahn in the early 20th century and taught to the German Kriegsmarine of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It is more a Goshinjutsu than a JJ, though the differences are blurring more and more.
The Ju Jutsu of Germany is a situational combat system adopted by and for police, government and Bundeswehr in the 1950's. It is reduced to be basic and fast to learn, but it has become too static to be up to date so now many different other styles are taught and trained, depending on the instructors (actual JJ, Krav Maga, ATK, etc).
Ah thank you. We have the German "Jiu-Jitsu" style here in Britain via German teachers at a college/university level and someone told me it was "German Ju-Jutsu". Makes sense it's actually 2 different branches. What do you think of the German "Jiu-Jitsu" style?
I like it much more (went up to green belt in it) as it is not "do technique 2 against this attack" but "react to this attack out of your 467 learned possibilities" - no matter how weak, fat, unflexible you are, there's always a way that works for you. Depending on the teacher, it is combined a lot with other styles (CMA, Filipino stuff, BJJ) to give it an extra edge in open mats/tournaments and is fun to watch (never boring). Sometimes, especially in the northern city of Kiel where Erich Rahn introduced JJ, you can find some old guys teaching the ancient kata like the short-and-cringy-but-historically-interesting Ju-no-Kata, nowadays gold among all that modern shit.
Armed militias don't have anything to fear from a boxing club man, get the frick out of here. They were obviously persecuted for political reasons. You'd have to be a real gullible dipshit to think that burgeoning revolutionary governments are worried about martial artists using crane kicks to overturn them. They're worried about reactionaries and loyalists, the kind with guns.
I think it's also because they were against any sort of traditional organization or clubs they couldn't control. Not just the kung fu itself, but the fact they were organizations with their own views and culture.
>Do you also wonder why the Allies banned martial arts in post-WW2 Germany?
They didn't ban matial arts clubs because of martial arts.
They banned them because they were secret gatherings where people could conspire to do nazi shit.
Same reason why they banned most fraternal orders and other such clubs during that time that didn't have their people inside to make sure everything was on the up and up.
I mean for frick sake, the first few attempts by the socialist to grab power were organized in beer halls by the modern equivalent to a radical book club.
Ok modern CMA post the cultural revolution and as practiced in the West has no pressure testing via full contact competition or real fighting then. But it did have it as Lei Tei before then and in actual violence on the streets and in society. Same result either way. CMA practioners can't cope with the chaos of real fighting?
What do you mean? Try to fight in China today without being a state favourite person - you are faster caught, robbed of your organs and cremated than you can say "Winnie Poo". And/or have your social credit score lowered below the level of the fried frog you ate. Hell, one guy of our juvenile traveller group kicked a traffic sign and had to be bought out of prison for thousands of dollars - a fricking TRAFFIC SIGN, no person harmed. The "street violence" is either groups of manbeaters to close opposing businesses and ideas, guys running amuck to be either suicided by police or to disappear forever, fictional movies or Guangdong/Hongkong democracy attempts (which also get punished, see above). If Xu Xiaodong reveals that "venerable gyms" cannot fight anymore (because noone trains fighting anymore), he is taken away his freedom to travel, eat, speak, sleep freely within a blink of an eye. China isn't Kimbo Slice's backyard, in China you can die (physically and/or socially) for "misbehaving". Don't think you can hit anything without severe consequences.
CMA practioners outside VRC are as good as they train. If they follow a delusional fairy tale story, they're toast for every amateur boxer. If they can train to fight properly (under an appropriate trainer, not under Jake Mace), then their CMA works as intended. Where you can find a good and credible teacher is another story.
Yeah my point is within China no one actually fights except in Sanda and outside no one doing CMA actually fights (there's no full contact competition for CMA to knock out). So either way it's shit. It doesn't matter how it's trained. If there is no pressure testing from actual fighting either via regular street violence or full contact competition then the art doesn't work.
Pro tip: do shit in Budapest (Hungary in Europe) - the SWAT equivalent of the Készenléti Rendörség (some kind of gendarmerie/armed police) there uses Tanglang techniques for deterring troublemakers if they cannot shoot them without being witnessed, and they REALLY LIKE violence (look for mugshots of criminals, you cannot expect them to run around like this in bright sunlight). As part of their training, they spray their eyes with capsicum (either to somehow miraculously become immune - lol - or to become used to it so it doesn't stop them to crush their prey's bones), poke their thumbs into each other's eye sockets (same reason) and do the 125's (125 full-force low kicks on each quadriceps as hardening exercise; the nerve damage causes numb areas below that point - but in the street, they normally only need ONE kick to the leg to end resistance, although they repeat that to prone criminals just to make sure they don't get up and flee). They trained under Zhang Wan Fu before he died of old age, there must be lots of photo footage on the net.
You say that yet crime and street violence is rampent because the crime gangs directly just pay off party officials and the police.
Yeah, outsiders might not be able to get away with shit, but the open and apparent crime in china is Africa levels in most cities.
Like open blatant drug trading, human trafficking, sex slavery, mass stabbings, and yes lots and lots of street violence.
Though it isn't street fights and kung fu movies.
It's gangs beating the shit out of poor people while the cops do nothing and the people who they beat on just sit there and take it because if they fight back they are the one's who go to jail since they can't pay off the police like the gangs can.
God China is so fricking corrupt it makes me sick.
Yes, it is like that, and as you said - the gangs that pay the police get away with it, even if everybody witnessed everything openly. The "gang wars" (and the paid problem solvers) mostly use everyday weapons like clubs, iron bars and knives against barely defending victims, so there's no need to "pressure test" any quanfa. There will be enough chance to fight back, but it it wouldn't be beneficial to just disappear forever afterwards.
I have seen some of those videos and it looked like especially uncoordinated street slap fighting between people who moved like they were drunk old men.
Only instead of dumb urban schoolboys it is all overly stiff men.
Shit was indeed cringe to watch.
Was part of the reason I doubted that even in the old times that CMA were actually a effective form of fighting.
It really does seem like the hand to hand portion of CMA for the vast majority of history was just a physical and spiritual exercise program and method of demonstrating physical ability.
>It really does seem like the hand to hand portion of CMA for the vast majority of history was just a physical and spiritual exercise program and method of demonstrating physical ability.
Its worth pointing out that while those videos are old to us, in the grand scheme of things most of them are quite new. I think your theory is suspect because of the history, CMA were undoubtedly involved in fighting, and so were their derivative forms like Karate. Though for most of Chinese history the focus tended to be on the sword and spear, while today the emphasis the empty handed stuff.
This debate isn't new, fwiw. People like Draeger and Smith, people who studied and wrote about martial arts for a living, were arguing about this since the seventies, long before the advent of MMA and widely available videos. The difference between them being that while Draeger had a degree of skepticism about many Chinese arts, indeed his opinion on Tai Chi initially wasn't much different from yours, he also got into the field, meeting and sometimes trying his Judo against a number of people, and some teachers and arts he fully recommended.
From what I've seen, Robert W. Smith seemed like sort of a silly guy. I have his Martial Musings book from 1999, and it's full of dumb opinions like him shitting on the UFC and its fighters. Saying stuff like no UFC guy "could stand before a middling sumotori." Then he goes on praising Akebono who went on to get his ass kicked in MMA. I'd be more inclined to trust Draeger over him if they disagreed.
*Not to be totally dismissive of him or his work, just saying I've seen some goofy ideas from him. Thought it was funny and figured I'd share.
I am personally closer to Draeger's camp myself, though my understanding is that Smith was very flowery with his language, and perhaps very flattering to teachers he took a liking to. Amdur who knew Draeger did a good breakdown on Smiths account of Tohei taking on multiple Judoka in Hawaii. (Per people who were actually there the matches happened, and Tohei won but they were not the freeforall Smith described)
Draeger never panned CMA as a whole however, he studied some Bagua himself and recommended Wang Shu jin, who also lived in Japan at the time, very highly. even his opinion of Tai Chi softened somewhat after meeting a few practitioners whose practice was more martial than what he had previously seen.
Its worth considering that for most of their history, many Kung fu styles actually focused on weapons and unarmed techniques were secondary. Second unarmed techniques have actually evolved quite a bit in the last hundred or so years, due to an exchange between east and west. What cut it back then does not cut it now, not against competitive fighters at least.
China did, and to a lesser extent still does have various levels of sparring and limited rules fighting. There were various forms of grappling that were very common throughout China, challenge matches of various level of intensity between practitioners, and yes, there were martial artists within the Chinese military, and there are plenty of accounts of them working in the past.
But this is Fhite, everything posted here is considered fictional, and noone here has any credibility 😉
You're probably ten times more likely to benefit from kung fu by getting a job as a martial arts assistant or stuntman than you are from learning how to fight efficiently.
This. It's performance not fighting. Actual fighting is messy and chaotic looking nothing like Kung-Fu. Sadly people still fall for CCP propaganda and believe it's real. Especially the stupid Ip Man movies.
Even in the late 19th and early 20th century, many kung fu masters were either in traditional operas or were akin to street performers. One theory is that modern kung fu is derived from those guys. The opera/street performers guys were just the entertainment, so they were left alone and not sent to the gulag like the real fighters.
This theory sounds like nonsense to me. For one thing, the systems preserved in China are not much different in form to ones in expat communities, in fact during the mid 20th century mainland China was pretty closed off so westerners practicing and researching had to go to places like Hong Kong, Taiwan or Malaysia, and at least at the time there was still a reputation among some of these people for getting into fights and taking challengers though it was hardly universal, many if not more did not do those sorts of things.
I don't doubt that the wars and social upheaval of the late 19th century and beyond took a big toll on CMA, who knows how many old teachers or promising young students died, and we also know that several teachers who did survive relocated outside of mainland China, but I think its far more likely that rather than the forms being corrupted, quality of both teaching and prospective students just dropped over time.
>Why are most styles developed in a way to resemble a dance? How could this dance dance revolution shit possibly be the result of centuries of bloody wars and conquest?
It's what the commies left over after killing everyone. They like that shit.
>Why are most styles developed in a way to resemble a dance?
Subterfuge. In times of warfare, it's important to not let your enemies know the techniques you're studying. The forms were created to codify these techniques in a way that didn't make them immediately obvious and would be useless unless you were also taught the applications behind said moves.
Even when Kung-fu started to drift away from the battlefield and more into civillian violence and self-defense, Martial arts schools were pretty much all cults for violent weirdoes and constantly at each other's throats, so keeping the information edge stayed relevant.
>How could this dance dance revolution shit possibly be the result of centuries of bloody wars and conquest?
Do keep in mind that a lot of modern Kung-fu has been lost or dilluted with fake bullshit as well. Part of the fun of training, at least for me, is exploring those forms and figuring out what works and how, and what - if anything - may be bullshit. It's like assembling a fun puzzle.
You can't do that just with forms though. At some point you gotta drill those techniques against a partner that is trying to resist, or try to apply them in a sparring environment (those that can be adapted for combat sports, that is - which isn't all of them).
Oh yeah, also as some pointed out in the thread, if you turn in to watch a Wushu competition nowdays, you're either watching a combat-sports that heavily focus on the kickboxing portion of the Kung-fu curriculum (Sanda), or you're watching what is essentially a martial-arts themed gymnastic routine (Wushu Taolu aka Modern Wushu).
Wushu Taolu has no direct fighting application; it's straight-up forms made to look pretty. I'm not saying this to put them down - I respect Wushu Taolu's athlethes, they're very good at what they do and fighting is not a nobler goal than performance or vice-versa. They know what they do is not fighting, and that is fine.
The forms in Traditional training will look way less flashy than what you see in Wushu Taolu.
I just don't buy it. The human form hasn't changed in hundreds of thousands of years. Therefore the biomechanics hasn't changed. It's why you see so many styles from different parts of the world which are the result of hard pressure testing evolution end up resembling each other i.e. Catch Wrestling and no-Gi BJJ, Greco-Roman Wrestling and Judo, Muay Thai and Kickboxing, Japanese Shooto and Vale Tudo, etc.
The only ones that resemble some wacky dancing style are arts that don't seem to work like Kung-Fu or Capoeria..
The forms are not 1:1 translated into fighting moves. As I said, they were for subterfuge and for artistry. In application, things will resemble kickboxing with join lock grappling and Shuai Jiao a lot more.
Kung-fu people also know how to throw a jab and a hook or a roundhouse kick.
Kung-Fu people absolutely do not know how to throw a jab, a hook correctly, or roundhouse kick properly. At best they might do some crap vertical punching and try some eye pokes or trapping.
The subterfuge thing is overblown. Its true there was a proprietary aspect to the way some Chinese martial arts were taught, you would be drilled in things without getting an explanation for quite some time,and there was often the desire not to let rivals understand your techniques or training methods, but this kind of teaching structure and gatekeeping was common in so many east Asian art forms; not just martial ones.
That said, I am skeptical of the claim that all effective arts do, or did you identical body mechanics. Even in the same arts you can sometimes see differences in stance, balance upper body usage, etc.
A lot of it is just a dance routine to show off athleticism. The more traditional moves are legit, but are taken out of context. They are supposed to be grappling or weapon based techniques. If you did a fireman's carry takedown or a wide sweeping strike for a polearm, all with your hands empty, it looks like inefficient bullshit. That sloppy uppercut is actually an underhook while clinch fighting. That extremely low stance is also at extremely close range so that the opponent doesn't just pick you up and slam you. Spreading the hands wide is actually a high guard with a staff or spear.
Does anyone here know much about the World Kuoshu Tournaments that they held in Taiwan? I've been reading about them recently, hard to get a ton of good info on it though. You can find some footage of the 1975 one and some others online. Can find it searching "USKSF 1975-world-kuoshu-tournament" (can't link it here unfortunately, not on Youtube and Fhite is calling the Facebook link spam). It had a full-contact fighting portion.
https://usksf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017_TournamentBook.pdf
>After the civil war in 1955, Taiwan reintroduced the traditional Kuo Shu Lei Tai full-contact fighting contests. In 1975, the Kuo Shu Federation of Taiwan, ROC sponsored the first World Kuo Shu Championship Tournament in Tainan City, Taiwan. In 1978, the World Organization of Chinese Kuo Shu Worldwide Promotion Association, of which Grandmaster Huang, Chien-Liang was one of the founding members, was formed. In 1986, the name was changed to the International Chinese Kuo Shu Federation (ICKF). In 1988, Grandmaster Huang sponsored his first Kuo Shu tournament including full-contact fighting in the United States. In 1991, he re-introduced the Lei Tai and created a standard 24 x 24-foot platform, raised 2-4 feet off the ground, without boxing style ropes.
I don't know much about the state of martial arts in Taiwan back then, so I've been trying to learn more about Kuoshu and Taiwanese martial arts in general.
Taiwan was (and maybe still is) a great melting pot of MArtists, many masters that fled the PRC on rather limited space. Same goes for Singapore, Malaysia and California.
If their martial arts are so good and actually effective why do we see none of them have any success if decades of mixed style competitions? Instead, we see Dutch & Thai boxers, Brazilian grapplers, American wrestlers, even a tiny hard to reach country like fricking Dagestan producing champs. If CMA worked as wasn't all totally fake bullshit Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore with huge Chinese communities historically away from the CCP would have produced more champs than fricking Dagestan ffs..
That's a misunderstanding of what traditional CMA was and is. These styles date to the 19th century and before. A lot of the curriculum were designed originally with weapons, with the empty handed stuff coming second. I might get pillared for saying this, but the skills needed for mixed style competition have changed radically in the past hundred years. No matter how hard they train, they would have to retool large parts of their curriculum to deal with the realities of modern MMA.
Now I understand there are some trad CMA guys who are into styles of standing grappling, and some in Sanshu, but I also know the scene is not as developed in the west and I can't read Chinese so I don't know a lot about it.
Part of their practice is from the formal challenge style beginning with the touch of hands.
Eventually, when the martial artists who practice pacifism wish to compete, since they cannot fight each other except in self defense they must show their superiority through flashy (but not battle tested) moves.
>>who practice pacifism
Really? Is CMA still associated with buddhism "don't hurt anyone" stuff? It wasn't pacifistic back then (why should they have been developed beforehand?), and they aren't now.
The "shaolin monk martial arts trope" is only a marketing move, same with "the peaceful daoists". Escorts needed to defend and kill, soldiers needed to kill, bodyguards needed to defend (and could maybe kill, who knows). Even to defend without killing, you need to be able to hurt, both mentally and physically. MA without fighting ability is just dancing (and maybe acrobatics). Competition rules already cross out a lot of mindsets and strategies. Being cornered by multiple attackers - what do? Lay down and wait for getting clubbed dead, or fight back and at least break through and survive? Fhite always thinks a competitive fighter is king among mortals but ignores how bouncers and robbers accumulate countless small victories every friday evening, creating either safe zones in clubs or hostile zones in shady city backyards. Yeah, Mike Tyson felled a bouncer with one punch, but broke his hand by doing so. Badr Hari seriously injured a bouncer but didn't win anything (but disrespect for sucker punching) from that. Heavyweight Soltan Kovacz was mugged, grappled back and got both knees kicked to hospital (and out of competition).
I went to a mantis fist gym for only half a year, and rule number one was "hit first, hit hard". The instructor also trained the police there and refused to use the standardized JJ stuff because it performed subpar if used in sparring against him.
I say: there are good and bad fighters, no matter the training. Old CMA have always accumulated new stuff that worked, which is why most systems are bloated beyond recognition. Fighters, police, LEOs don't have 10 to 15 years of time to train a full quanfa style, so everything small and effective must do. Competitions create situations where lots of techniques aren't needed, so they vanish.
Taolu are like an exercise that combines stretching and mobility, what's not to like?
Because modern martial arts are focused on practical fighting ability, I.e. pressure testing against other arts in the cage. Kung-Fu/CMA hasn't proved itself despite holding the public consciousness on what are martial arts for decades especially in movies. Meanwhile American scholastic wrestlers, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners, Thai Nak Muays, Dutch kickboxers, even a tiny country like Dagestan folkstyle wrestling have just come along and taken Kung-Fu's And CMA's lunch money.
So now people are asking questions like where are these arts like Kung-Fu which we were told was the epitome of martial arts to the point of being a synonym and borderline magic fighting ability, actually just not seem to work in actual fighting?..