Is Wing Chun even viable.

[Hanzou]

The open mat and BJJ tourism is responsible for BJJs success.

A vehicle for people to walk in off the street and challenge the room is necessary for development.

And the concept that super coach might just get flogged. And that isn't the worst outcome.

That and Bjj's complete embrace of grappling nerds who roll around all day thinking up new ways to strangle people.

 

[Hanzou]

The exact same thing can be said for any martial art, any MMA school or camp. You get out based on what you put in. Just because someone trains in BJJ or MMA over Wing Chun does not make them competent as a fighter or able to apply any of it in the real world. You need realistic training or it doesn't matter what system you study. The fight is going to come down to the physicality and conditioning of the fighters first, with technique/training being the deciding factor if both are close to equal. For example, a sufficiently motivated Westerner with enough size and reach can do very well in Muay Thai against the often much smaller Thai fighters who just don't have the strength, reach or ability to hurt the larger Westerner, that doesn't make the Westerner better at Muay Thai, its just a huge physical advantage. We have weight classes in most fighting sports to prevent this and to promote technique over sheer physicality. Put a 5 foot seven BJJ guy in with a six foot four WC boxer and watch the BJJ not work all day long. Taken out of context, you would then mistake WC for a great system and BJJ as worthless because you had seen a slanted competition. Qi La La proves that an equal level of physicality and training in WC can produce similar results to his competitors in Muay Thai and Kickboxing. This vindicates the original argument that WC is ineffective.

I'd just like to point out that Bjj got its name for participating and winning competitions where weight classes and size differences weren't part of the rules. The first UFCs were a descendent of those types of competitions. I think Dan Severn for example had about 50lbs on Royce Gracie, and the latter still won the match.

 

[geezer]

That and Bjj's complete embrace of grappling nerds who roll around all day thinking up new ways to strangle people.

This ^^^^. That high level people are encouraged to experiment and tweak things to make them work better ...as well as accepting that a great coach can be beat just like anybody else. And still be a great coach. That's how arts improve.


...And it explains why traditional arts often decline. It's not just whether or not folks engage in hard sparring. If you are in a TMA cult, even the hard sparring is rigged. You typically only spar only within your system, often segregated by rank and working within the confines of the style's expectations. Forget experimentation. Authoritarianism, rigid thinking and sifu-ism (the belief that only sifu has all the answers) will cause any system to degenerate.

Anyway, this is what I hate about the TMA I've trained, and why I support those within the art who don't train that way.

 

[BrendanF]

So 35 years. Samurai learned judo? Just doesnt sound right.

Jikishin ryu Judo existed over 250 years before Kano's Kodokan Judo. Yes, 'samurai' learned Judo. The whole do/jutsu thing has been heavily misunderstood thanks to Donn Draeger's important early works. Suffice to say, there were plenty of 'do' arts in existence before the Meiji period.

Origins of KODOKAN JUDO | Judo Info

A word may be added about the legend that jujitsu was originally introduced to japan by a chinese named Chen Yuan-ping, approximately in 1644-48, or in 1627 according to the ‘Kokushoji’ document.

• Ming Dynasty (1277 ~ 1643)
  
  The Ming Dynasty was the re-establishment of Chinese Sovereignty, following the Mongol conquest. During this time, some of China's martial arts began to flourish abroad, and Shuai-Chiao also made its presence felt overseas.
  
  
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  Chen Yuan-Ping is credited for bringing Shuai-Chiao to Japan. His intimate knowledge of Shuai-Chiao's joint locks, controls, takedowns, and throws formed the basis of what became Jiu-Jitsu, which later evolved into Judo and Aikido.

You've mentioned this before Wang Laoshi - and I've pointed out that it is a discredited theory.

For one thing, jujutsu arts such as Takenouchi ryu and Tsutsumi Hozan Ryu (and dozens of others) had existed for at least two centuries before Chin Gempin's time. There is absolutely no credence to that notion, other than that Chin had an influence on Yoshin ryu.