# Opinion of Sergio Iadarola (aka 'Sifu Sergio')?



## Marnetmar (Sep 6, 2014)

I personally appreciate his researching of WC's history, but I'm pretty sure that the motive behind it is marketing for his own "Wing Tjun" system.

What about you guys?


----------



## Kwan Sau (Sep 6, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> I personally appreciate his researching of WC's history, but I'm pretty sure that the motive behind it is marketing for his own "Wing Tjun" system.
> 
> What about you guys?



I'm of the mindset that, most likely, WC's shadowy past is non-recoverable at this point. But, one can "research" if it floats their boat!   I do however completely agree with you that it is most likely for his own elevation and self-promotion. Everyone likes to be king of their particular hill eh?  haha. 
IMHO, Sergio (aka the wing chun encyclopedia) is nothing special. Granted he has DVD's and Youtubes up the wahzooo but that means little when it comes to actual skill. Just my humble opinion.


----------



## KPM (Sep 6, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> I personally appreciate his researching of WC's history, but I'm pretty sure that the motive behind it is marketing for his own "Wing Tjun" system.
> 
> What about you guys?



Sergio has a large organization.  He makes a living by teaching Wing Chun.  That's not  easy to do!  He would be crazy NOT to market or promote his system!  I have never met him, but I get the impression that he is a sincere guy that is truly looking to develop Wing Chun.  He has been sucked in by a couple of frauds in his enthusiasm for Wing Chun, but he appears to have distanced himself from them when it became clear there was something wrong with their stories.  In his videos he appears to have some real skill, and has made some interesting changes to his Wing Chun based upon his research.  He has traveled and met a lot of diverse Wing Chun people.  That kind of exposure alone gives him a valuable viewpoint.  I'd be interested in meeting him someday and seeing his version of Wing Chun in person.


----------



## zuti car (Sep 6, 2014)

There is no need for "researchers " of his kind . There are a lot of people like him , who possess "true" and "original" knowledge based on "research" . From what I could see He is doing Leung Ting's WT system , slightly modified . About his personalty ,a lot of people in Europe have pretty bad opinion about him .


----------



## Kung Fu Wang (Sep 6, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> I personally appreciate his researching of WC's history, but I'm pretty sure that the motive behind it is marketing for his own "Wing Tjun" system.
> 
> What about you guys?



I don't care about the history and research. I only care about result. If you 

- can produce good fighters, anything that you have done is correct.
- can't produce good fighters, anything that you have done is wrong.

TCMA is for doing and not for talking.


----------



## futsaowingchun (Sep 6, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> I personally appreciate his researching of WC's history, but I'm pretty sure that the motive behind it is marketing for his own "Wing Tjun" system.
> 
> What about you guys?


Of course he is a business man. I have nothing against that per se.


----------



## geezer (Sep 6, 2014)

Well, his foundation was LT's "WT", and from what I've seen he had that down. So he decided to start his own "WT" organization and make some bucks. The trouble is that there are a lot of great "WT" guys in Europe, and some can really back it up. So my guess is that he turned to this so-called "research" into some of the more obscure and esoteric WC as a way to stand out. 

Some of the stuff he's gotten into seems pretty flakey to me. But he's got the dough to travel and train privately with a lot of hard to reach people. And some are really good. In addition to training under my old sifu, LT, a few years back he also trained privately under my old Escrima coach, _Rene Latosa_. That guy's the real deal. And Sergio has put out some interesting Youtube clips profiling people I'll never get to meet in person. Don't know about you guys, but I enjoy watching them.


----------



## futsaowingchun (Sep 7, 2014)

geezer said:


> Well, his foundation was LT's "WT", and from what I've seen he had that down. So he decided to start his own "WT" organization and make some bucks. The trouble is that there are a lot of great "WT" guys in Europe, and some can really back it up. So my guess is that he turned to this so-called "research" into some of the more obscure and esoteric WC as a way to stand out.
> 
> Some of the stuff he's gotten into seems pretty flakey to me. But he's got the dough to travel and train privately with a lot of hard to reach people. And some are really good. In addition to training under my old sifu, LT, a few years back he also trained privately under my old Escrima coach, _Rene Latosa_. That guy's the real deal. And Sergio has put out some interesting Youtube clips profiling people I'll never get to meet in person. Don't know about you guys, but I enjoy watching them.



I like a lot of what L.T does except his footwork. They always keeps all the weight on the back leg. IMO this is no good. You have no root and no power.


----------



## geezer (Sep 7, 2014)

futsaowingchun said:


> I like a lot of what L.T does except his footwork. They always keeps all the weight on the back leg. IMO this is no good. *You have no root and no power.*



_No root and no power?_ Sorry, but remarks like that just sound, er ... _uninformed _(I'm trying to be gentle in my choice of words here). You've never worked with LT, that's for sure. Of course he's getting up in years now. So, perhaps you need to meet some of the present or former WT guys like Emin Boztepe, Victor Gutierrez, Norbert Maday, "Fighterman" Fernandez... there are many others. When it comes to power I think you'd be impressed. 

Now regarding the rear weighting, I personally take that with a grain of salt, and shift my weight a bit more flexibly rather than  keeping with the WT 100% back strategy. Often I put more weight forward to unbalance an opponent, but that's my personal approach. You will see this among other former WT guys too. But LT never needed to do that and his power was ...considerable, and his rooting was really something to see.


----------



## Marnetmar (Sep 7, 2014)

The 0-100 weight distribution reminds me of the cat stance in some northern styles. In my school which also goes back to Leung Sheung (albeit not through Leung Ting), it's about 40-60.

I wonder where the 0-100 weight distribution came from...Pak Cheung maybe? (Supposedly Leung Ting trained with him fairly extensively)


----------



## kung fu fighter (Sep 7, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> The 0-100 weight distribution reminds me of the cat stance in some northern styles. In my school which also goes back to Leung Sheung (albeit not through Leung Ting), it's about 40-60.
> 
> I wonder where the 0-100 weight distribution came from...Pak Cheung maybe? (Supposedly Leung Ting trained with him fairly extensively)


 or perhaps Sum Nung/Yuen Kay San


----------



## Vajramusti (Sep 7, 2014)

kung fu fighter said:


> or perhaps Sum Nung/Yuen Kay San


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't think so. He already was accomplished in choi li fut before he met Ip Man- old habits don't go away easily imo


----------



## Vajramusti (Sep 7, 2014)

Vajramusti said:


> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I don't think so. He already was accomplished in choi li fut before he met Ip Man- old habits don't go away easily imo




PS. Just to be sure I was referring to Leung Shun- not Sergio-
no comment on the latter at this time.


----------



## Marnetmar (Sep 7, 2014)

I'm talking about Leung Ting. Leung Sheung didn't use the 0-100 weight distribution.


----------



## Vajramusti (Sep 7, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> I'm talking about Leung Ting. Leung Sheung didn't use the 0-100 weight distribution.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leung Ting began with one of Leung Shun' students. You might want to watch Leung Shun's key students including Kenneth Chung.


----------



## zuti car (Sep 7, 2014)

geezer said:


> _No root and no power?_ Sorry, but remarks like that just sound, er ... _uninformed _(I'm trying to be gentle in my choice of words here). You've never worked with LT, that's for sure. Of course he's getting up in years now. So, perhaps you need to meet some of the present or former WT guys like Emin Boztepe, Victor Gutierrez, Norbert Maday, "Fighterman" Fernandez... there are many others. When it comes to power I think you'd be impressed.
> 
> Now regarding the rear weighting, I personally take that with a grain of salt, and shift my weight a bit more flexibly rather than  keeping with the WT 100% back strategy. Often I put more weight forward to unbalance an opponent, but that's my personal approach. You will see this among other former WT guys too. But LT never needed to do that and his power was ...considerable, and his rooting was really something to see.


I had met Emin in one seminar , he is really big guy ans physically strong and he is using that a lot, no real power from the structure just raw physical power, same thing goes for Norbert . On the other hand I know some direct students of Slavko Truntic , that is completely different story , they are doing excellent  WT.


----------



## Hong Kong Pooey (Sep 8, 2014)

zuti car said:


> I had met Emin in one seminar , he is really big guy ans physically strong and he is using that a lot, no real power from the structure just raw physical power, same thing goes for Norbert . On the other hand I know some direct students of Slavko Truntic , that is completely different story , they are doing excellent  WT.



I'm surprised to hear that, how many times have you met Maday Norbert and what you are you basing that statement on?

The reason I ask is that he's my Si-Gung and one of my Sifu's mantra's is 'if your using physical strength then you're doing it wrong'.

I'm not saying you're wrong - I've never met him and wouldn't be in a position to judge yet even if I did - but it is the antithesis of what is taught by his student, my Sifu.


----------



## zuti car (Sep 9, 2014)

Hong Kong Pooey said:


> I'm surprised to hear that, how many times have you met Maday Norbert and what you are you basing that statement on?
> 
> The reason I ask is that he's my Si-Gung and one of my Sifu's mantra's is 'if your using physical strength then you're doing it wrong'.
> 
> I'm not saying you're wrong - I've never met him and wouldn't be in a position to judge yet even if I did - but it is the antithesis of what is taught by his student, my Sifu.



I have never met Norbert in person, a friend of mine and his students went to couple of his seminars and they told me their impressions ,there is no reason to doubt them . About Emin, I have seen what he is doing and that is just the opposite of what he is talking .Interesting thing , Emin spent half of the seminar talking how much he hates William Cheung but everything he said regarding Wing Chun ,principles , approaches , techniques ...were quotations or paraphrases from William's book "My life with Wing Chun" .


----------



## Marnetmar (Sep 10, 2014)

Vajramusti said:


> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Leung Ting began with one of Leung Shun' students. You might want to watch Leung Shun's key students including Kenneth Chung.



I'm aware of that. Also, my lineage goes through Ken, so unless Eddie Chong changed something I'm 99% sure Ken doesn't use that weight distribution.


----------



## geezer (Sep 10, 2014)

Vajramusti said:


> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Leung Ting began with one of Leung Shun' students. You might want to watch Leung Shun's key students including Kenneth Chung.



Joy and Marnetmar, here's my take on the Leung Ting stance:

The training Joy mentions would have been pretty early on when LT was still a kid. His first _Sifu_, and first _serious_ training was with Leung Sheung, but that's not the source of the 100% weight shift that is his "WT" branch trademark. Inferring from remarks he made when I first began training with him in 1980, I believe that this is his own personal interpretation based on the very soft and yielding WC he learned personally from the then very elderly Grandmaster Yip Man.

Ip man impressed upon LT that the highest level of WC should be totally yielding and never crashing force. LT said this went beyond the relative level softness he learned from his first sifu and others he had worked with along the way. One way LT himself has used to achieve this yielding is by extreme rear-weighting and the increased weight shift that allows him to slip out or the way of a forceful attack "like the "Spanish bullfighter slipping out of the way of the charging bull" --to use LT's own language.

Of course, everything is a trade-off. If you weight the rear leg 100%, and do a 100% lateral weight shift turning, you may sacrifice balance and rooting as Fut Sao stated. Leung Ting has an incredible "root" and can really pull this stance off --as can a few of his top people. But others, including me, are not so gifted, so I have to put a bit more weight on the front leg.

Interestingly, if you look carefully at old videos of LT, you can see that even he weights the front leg more when it suits him. But that's not really so strange, considering that even in his "WT" system, the front leg carries some weight in the Bart Cham Dao footwork. In summary, I take the 100% rear weighting dogma as _teaching by overstatement_. You know, something you stress at the beginning to counteract our normal human tendency to put too much weight on the front foot. At the higher levels, the rules made for novice students become more flexible and the stance more adaptable.


----------



## BPWT (Sep 11, 2014)

geezer said:


> Inferring from remarks he made when I first began training with him in 1980, I believe that this is his own personal interpretation based on the very soft and yielding WC he learned personally from the then very elderly Grandmaster Yip Man.



This could well be the case. However, a while back there was a post on a German forum from a Scandinavian guy who spent extended time learning Wing Tsun in Hong Kong, and who now lives in mainland China (studying Mai Gai Wong's Wing Chun). This Scandinavian mentioned the name of someone (I can't for the life of me remember the name... urghh) from the mainland who had a very similar stepping/shifting method to Leung Ting. Their footwork wasn't secret, but it was only taught to people training the system - so not something, typically, that they showed at demos, etc. (ah, the Chinese  )

Anyways, he said that he thought Leung Ting had had contact with this line of Wing Chun during his travels to write a book on Wing Chun. He also implied, if I remember correctly, that it was entirely possible that Yip Man himself would have had contact with this line (in much the same way as YM had contact with Yuen Kay San). 

This topic came up from a discussion on LT's footwork, and the question was whether LT learned the method he teaches today from Yip Man or from another source. Given how different people in Hong Kong picked up on different things from their time with Yip Man, it _is_ possible that LT's method came from Yip Man. But as Geezer says, perhaps LT ran with the idea he got from Yip Man, and placed greater emphasis on this aspect. 




geezer said:


> Interestingly, if you look carefully at old videos of LT, you can see that even he weights the front leg more when it suits him. But that's not really so strange, considering that even in his "WT" system, the front leg carries some weight in the Bart Cham Dao footwork. In summary, I take the 100% rear weighting dogma as _teaching by overstatement_. You know, something you stress at the beginning to counteract our normal human tendency to put too much weight on the front foot. At the higher levels, the rules made for novice students become more flexible and the stance more adaptable.



This is a perfect description of the 'how' regarding LT WT weighting, IMO. The "100%" is an ideal that you strive for _at certain times_ during an exchange. If you watch all of the top WT guys (LT included, of course  ), you see that the weighting varies as you step and turn/pivot. These people are never 100% rear weighted at all times. Which makes sense... you wouldn't be able to move if you didn't transfer weight. 

So for me, the key is understanding how you _change_ the weighting upon receiving pressure, turning, stepping, etc. All the lessons are in the forms, IMO.

What's harder to achieve, I think, is Kim Sut. This is really hard "to see", but IMO it is the key to handling momentum and 'charging up' via the legs in order to return force.


----------



## Vajramusti (Sep 11, 2014)

geezer said:


> Joy and Marnetmar, here's my take on the Leung Ting stance:
> 
> The training Joy mentions would have been pretty early on when LT was still a kid. His first _Sifu_, and first _serious_ training was with Leung Sheung, but that's not the source of the 100% weight shift that is his "WT" branch trademark. Inferring from remarks he made when I first began training with him in 1980, I believe that this is his own personal interpretation based on the very soft and yielding WC he learned personally from the then very elderly Grandmaster Yip Man.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ...


----------

