What do you think about MMA?

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Sadly I think you just told me everything I need to know here. If I knew that my inital remarks were going to start a lengthy 'purists' debate (which usually tends to be a thing not far off from a religious debate), I wouldn't have written anything to begin with. Regarding Valencia he's had great seminars, the thing you described we'd never do in our lives; but, congratulations - you win!

If you say that MMA is inferior to traditional martial arts for real life self-defense scenarios, of course someone might call you on it. The term 'MMA' is somewhat of a misnomer anyway, as the integration of different martial arts has created a new art in itself with moves you won't learn in any other martial art. For example, learning how to pass the guard without getting punched or elbowed in the face isn't even taught in most BJJ schools, and most definitely not in wing chun or silat or whatever.

You're right in that it is somewhat like a religious debate; one side argues with the same mantras over and over again which have been debunked a long time ago by the other side.



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ib39NkH48[/youtube]

At 0:10.

Are you familiar with Wing Chun, Kuntao, or Kali at all? Albeit - I know that for every style out there, all of them, you'll find loads of McDojo instructors who are teaching stuff that would make you cringe, I'm getting more at what can be boiled from them.

I'll run through a specific scenario. Someone throws a right jab or cross; the other person passes the elbow and spits the other hand around, palm upward to the chin, leads that to a bilsao forearm through the side of the neck (hope I'm explaining that right) in the backward direction, hooks the hand on the neck on the return, circles the head, knees the inside of the knee of their foreward leg, you can do another bill sao across the back of their head after its passed across and they're bent over in 90 degree (again, you hooked the back of their head while they were stunned and circled by manipulating the head and neck). You won't see forearms into the neck in tournament for a good reason - its a direct shot to the neck and spine, damage to the caratids can cause embolisms later as well. That brings the question: in standup, in the 'ring' game, are you really allowed to get behind them and do much? With the whole back of the head and neck manipulation likely ruled out, what are you really left with aside from rear-naked choke or stranglehold? By the time you're able to shift someone's center line, pass the elbow, and get behind them they're as alive as you let them be. Clearly no one 'lets' you get behind them, they'd be insane, so its a matter of what kind of thought-stoppers you give them on your way around.

I also get the argument that the first thing I described has a 1 in 40 or less chance of working - as in it only works if you took their energy where they were trying to go and took advantage of it; try to force that kind of thing and it just won't work. The solution; learn a reaction for every reaction to where there's nothing they can do that you can't either give some extra to in order to further destabilize them or if they're trying to pull you in that you don't gladly give them what they wanted and more with a good elbow stab or something along those lines.

Also a completely different approach to being in ground guard - why try to just muscle it when you can elbow the heck out the iside of the femorals, or sink a punch two inches below the belly-button. I won't pretend that you guys don't train in or don't even think about ground n' pound but that's how we're getting taught. Even before your down - if you're far away enough from the person not to follow them with the takedown and finish it with striking, why not drop knees right into their leg and go on with breaking? I know that delivering elbows is one thing, or knees standup, but not too many people are really trained perhaps in dropping knees into opponents while their down or specifically making a walk of it. Again, I know for that last part very few if any people will just 'sit still' while you're doing that kind of walk - its knowing how to do it, knowing how to land it, and knowing how to get a few of those in before they have any idea what's happening (best way to assure that, make sure they've got a lot of pain already preoccupying their thoughts).

I guess that's why I'm a bit surprised with what you're saying about there being no such thing as techniques or weapons that are illegal in the ring that would have any added practicality. If you do have a good instructor who's really trying to round out your game I can't imagine him not teaching you one set of things to do in the ring and then another set of what to do if you're accosted late at night at the ATM.


Two things on this. I remember going to an Inosanto seminar recently; he's one of the foremost experts on Kali, pretty knowledgable on Silat, and of course he's Bruce Lee's best friend who's taken the torch for JKD. He actually had us doing long extended padwork in the JKD section, something like nine to eleven combinations, and included crescent kicks. We couldn't get our heads around why the high crescent kicks were in there or why we'd want to do a combination of any longer than three or four things. The best we could come up with; there are politics in these things and if you're supposed to be carrying someone else's system and it has distinctive metrics, you're kind of stuck with them. As it is, in my class, we simply don't kick above the waste and if we were going to use any type of crescent it would be something like hooking the inside of a lead leg when your foot's just a few inches off the ground. Additionally; Dan's versitile in something like twenty forms of Kali/Escrima/Arnis just from growing up in Stockton, CA and being from a well respected family in the community. To say that I'd ignore anything he says on FMA because he threw a few crescent kicks or did one or two things in a seminar on pads that didn't seem practicle would be absurd.

With Valencia, when I watch the video, there is the hit and miss possibility like I mentioned above (seems like almost no one out there making videos doesn't have that), there's also the possibility that its a technique you'd use only if the person overpowered you or you fell (hence that great Van Dam ground sweep). If the videos themselves have that hokey Hollywood stalemate stuff in em its there for a reason - a) body mechanics, b) If in the odd event that you end up there or even end up in anything anywhere close its good to have a theory of how to defend. Its like looking at sensitivity drills from Wing Chun or siniwalis from Kali or Arnis and realizing that its not a fighting technique so much as a training tool for reflexes or getting your head around certain aspects of positioning as well as engraining certain habits. There was also a Valencia seminar here a couple years ago and people I knew and who's martial arts common sense I could trust love it. If he did something weird on a video - it confuses me but then again, like most NT behavior anywhere I look whether in martial arts or in politics, I don't get it but whatever - if there's great stuff to be taken and then a few big mistakes to be ignored you ignore the big mistakes and take what you can use.

I'm very familiar with Wing Chun and Silat (not Kuntao Silat). I don't know much about Kali, which is mostly knife fighting if I remember correctly.

Regarding Wing Chun, I'm not going to mince any words here: it's one of the most laughable striking arts I've ever come across, right up there with Taekwondo. The whole philosophy of the style is wrong; an opponent isn't going to stand at arms length and play patty-cake. I've seen several low level MMA fights where Wing Chun practitioners are beaten in stand up exchanges against wrestlers and other grapplers who had no formal stand up training at all, they just beat them because they were tougher. No Pak Sao, Lop Sao, trapping, or anything else from the Wing Chun curriculum was seen. An unco-operative opponent blasts straight through it, it just doesn't work.

To their credit, I've seen some Wing Chun guys incorporate full-contact sparring into their training regime. Too bad that as soon as you start training Wing Chun with a modicum of realism, it looks like sloppy kickboxing.

I saw a documentary on Malaysian Silat once, and it was pretty much what I expected. Lots of drills with the impossible grabbing-fists-out-of-the-air manoeuvres followed by strikes and locks while the opponent is frozen in place. Then they broke out the deadly techniques. I don't remember much of it, but one of the 'secret' techniques was a strike that was supposed to send the opponent into convulsions, possibly killing him. It was nothing more than a solar plexus punch with the front two knuckles. I have had the wind knocked out of me by a solar plexus strike before, but I never went into convulsions, and I haven't died yet either. These were the top Silat guys in Malaysia, by the way, no McDojo artists.

That's not the only exposure I've had to Silat, but the stuff above is a reoccuring trend.

The program ended with a Silat tournament that was so emasculated it would make even Taekwondo guys cringe. They were wearing full body protectors and gloves, and you STILL couldn't follow through with any strikes. Punches and kicks to the head were forbidden altogether. It was embarassing.



When you're behind someone, why would you go for a low percentage strike that you only assume works? Have you ever hit somebody with a forearm to the neck? If so, were they immediately incapacitated? If not, why are you sure they would be? The RNC is tried and tested, it works every time when it's sunk in. Seems like the better option to me.



This gives me the impression you've never been in the guard of a capable BJJ/MMA practitioner. The guard is very much an alive position. It is not just about wrapping your legs around your opponent and looking for a submission or a reversal. Being in a good guard is like being entangled in a spider's web, the person applying the guard is constantly shifting his legs, moving his hips and grasping with his arms to unbalance you and break your posture. If you start elbowing, you only have one hand left to support your posture inside the guard. Your opponent now has two hands to grab the arm you're leaning on to break your posture and pull you forward for an arm bar or slipping on to your back, among many other options. Also, a person with a good guard will keep it tight enough so you can't elbow a target that low. If you're leaning on him, he'll raise his legs to bring your weight over him; if you regain posture and sit up, he'll follow you up. Same thing goes for the punch below the belly button.

The two things you mentioned are legal in every MMA competition I can think of, except those that don't allow strikes on the ground. It would probably work against clueless people, I don't know. But if it worked in any kind of serious competition, people competing for thousands of dollars would use it.



There may be some added value to techniques that you can't practice full force, but how can you trust them in a life threatening situation if you never get to practice them full speed?



If I paid more than $100 for a seminar, the least I would expect is not to be fed any worthless techniques. You may be able to seperate the chaff from the wheat, but what about the guy who's only been training for a year?



Again, how is the beginning practitioner supposed to distinguish between the good techniques and the stuff that would never work in real-life? At best, the instructor is just showboating. At worst, he's putting someone's life in danger because he markets it as legit self-defence against a knife attack.

Let's break down the move: he drops a level AND turns his back, completely immobilizing himself AND losing sight of his ARMED opponent! That is an extremely risky thing to do against any attacker, let alone a knife wielding one who's obviously trying to kill you if he lunges in like that.

If this is what I find 10 seconds after looking the guy up, God knows what else I'll find.

When people say 'Kali' here think of it as Kali/Arnis/Eskrima/Panantukan - ie. whole FMA. That's really how the American terminology has come to classify.


Ok, point noted: I'm seeing that you look at anything done as a fighting technique and, if I understand you right, don't believe there's really such a 'valid' thing as reflex drills. When people do sensitivity/hobat, that's what it is. When people do siniwali or sumbrata drills in FMA with the sticks, stick and knife, espada y daga, etc., that's what it is. A separate note on Kuntao - it exists and always has as separate from Silat. Think of Silat as Indonesian Kung Fu, Kuntao as being something of it as old southern Chinese Gung Fu that was chased out by the communists, is somewhat taught in Hong Kong but you'll mostly find it in Borneo. The Kuntao-Silat thing is more specifically a De Thouars concotion.

I will gladly give you one thing - in a real fight, anyone who has any sense of how to fight, enough to be an aggressor, doesn't stem a jab to your chin. That we can agree on. The rest of what you're training to do is to have the know how, once you get past a decent boxer or street fighter's guard, how to implement something good if they give you even the semblence of an opportunity. You train, it becomes available, and as I mentioned earlier - the whole point is not to think.

On your note earlier about BJJ being the rawest realest thing because its tested on the hard streets of Sao Paulo and other places - I don't doubt it but I had to laugh for a minute in the sense that, nothing else really got brewed up in America or by a bunch of cushy arm-chair sports buffs as well (unless you want to consider the AD&D fantasy foam swords in the park thing a martial art). With Kuntao the Hakka people were originally from the northern region of China, they were a military group, fought their way south both into Southern China and Malaysia, and as they got into closer quarters their fighting style became less punches and more in the way of knees, elbows, forearms, etc.. It is tested on the killing fields as that's essentially where it came from.

Kali/Eskrima/Arnis/Panantukan - the Filipinos for thousands of years were essentially brought up killing each other for their islands. If you were a boy of the right age you were given a weapon, shown a few basic things, thrown out there to defend your island, and if you came back they'd teach you a little bit more. You also had other influence - the Morrow, of the Southern Phillipines, were Muslims who'd invaded around the 10th and 11th century who brought Islamic sword and machette technique. The Spanish had a heck of a time taking the Phillipines and there were islands where, against the Morrow, they literally couldn't. Albeit they fought a bit like a cross between the Moguls and Japanese Kamakazi's so there's a bit more to it than strictly their fighting arts. However you notice as well that with FMA there are is also Spanish sword and knife technique; some are adaptions, some are Spanish/Filipino amalgamations of technique. The point is, like evolution, things got thrown against the wall constantly to see if they stuck - when they did stuck those administering them were burying those who didn't have the same luck.

That and when you mention Karate or Tae Kwon Do - you have to look at it this way; I've met a lot of Tae Kwon Do people and learned one thing about it; it works great for tall/skinny/lanky people because they have the speed and can surprise the heck out of people. At the same time anyone else; without the atributes your better off avoiding it. The problems with things like Karate and Aikido is that they're accentric based on the conditions that they were created in. With Karate they had to divise ways of defeating amoured samurai with no weapons of their own; so, everything was focused on penetration and, understandably, the samurai were slowed down by their armor. Fighting an unarmoured opponent - it's not the most practical tool, however if you see yourself dealing with psycho-hilbillies in homemade welded armour like in the beginning of Devils Rejects, karate might be a great thing to take. Kendo similarly - the very restricted vertical overhead with the sword and the way the jumps are done: it makes sense if you're fighting in 10 foot tall grass where you're sword will get caught from anything other than vertical motion. In open space - its almost worse than nothing if that's all you've been taught or know.


My instructor showed me Chi Sao a few times (the inflatable tube man thing where you wave your hands around trying to get inside/outside positioning; we've done that all of three or four times that I've been there in the last three years. The reason why we don't spar, per my instructor, it builds bad spacing habits, you punch to the surface rather than throuth, and he'd rather essentially have us do it slowly, get the technique and spacing, and


Apparently there are guys out there who are doing horrible disservice to tradition by making it quite effective. Hope the two never meet I suppose. :/


It sounds like in this hypothetical you're giving me some odd body posture where I can't follow through without falling flat on my face.


My instructor has illustrated it, like a lot of things, light contact. Even light contact - it *sucks* (again, I'm not sure what you're envisioning, I'm inside their line, like if they trough some wide hooks and I was sort of stuck there, my meaning is to drive an arm upward and through on a sixty-degree angle back - the way a guillotine contacts a person's neck is the way this is driving through; trust me, you *do* feel it).


It's telling that you ascribe anything not RNC as being invented in some California laboratory in the mid 90's or 2000's.


With this and everything above I'm just getting the impression that you're every bit the dogmatic blowhard that you're claiming me to be. Maybe we both are but, I can't remember making the case that BJJ is garbage, on the other hand I'm still confused that you're so adamant that anything non-UFC is crap. This is a bit like arguing economics with Orwell. :S



http://www.ufc.com/discover/sport/rules-and-regulations

I've taken care to highlight several things that, if you were being accosted in a serious, not sporting manner, would be *objectives*, not fouls:



Can you see why I'm confused on your stubborness with this? You can say all day long till your blue in the face that BJJ is superior, that's not my problem with your argument and - for the way things typically are - I wouldn't get into a 'Muhammad vs. Jesus' debate with you either. However, I do get confused when you give me absolute certitude that what's exempted from the ring means nothing on the street to how technique is followed through or how fighting styles prioritize. Karate's a shining example of what a style adapted to accentric circumstances essentially programs in to a person who doesn't at least have a 'with and without' version. Similarly, while I can easily imagine - and have known BJJ people who have instructors who teach this - an in ring and out of ring difference in coaching; I still can't get my head around someone continuing to state that ring rules support the most efficient and effective fighting possible. Just like I supposedly owe you an illustration of non-hand blows to the neck working maybe you at least owe me this: ponder how many street fights or bar brawls that last longer than 10 or 15 seconds, let alone one where they tap gloves and approach each other with their fists up and then start shooting for legs. I'm not trying to claim that BJJ has zero coverage for that, I'm making the point that its *different*.



You do, you just don't practice them with force on a person. We follow through takedowns with people, we do striking on free-standing bags.


I'm really a bit surprised when I mention Dan Inosanto that there isn't any recognition. Trust me, he's definitely not some schill that my instructor and a few other people are propping up.


The best I can really offer - I'm not NT so I don't get it either. I've kinda learned the hard way that I can't really expect things to make 'full' sense, but I can tell the difference between who knows their stuff, who doesn't, it saddens and irks me when those who do know their stuff mix and match but - thankfully - I still haven't, to date, learned something hokey or trashy from my current instructor and I can't think of anyone who has.


I wouldn't do it. I know that I'm suppose to drop right now, twist my own arm and say "Mercy - you win", that any valid art would have absolutely none of that. I can't do that with any degree of honesty - it pisses me off that its more complicated than you're indicating but, I can't lie to you and tell you that it isn't.


Are you indirectly asking me to give BJJ the same examination and rip up anyting I find hokey, odd, or dangerous?

And once they kick anything but air they fall down, completely unprepared for solid contact. High kicks are generally a bad idea in a fight. Taekwondo is all about high kicks.

A top Korean Taekwondo guy against an MMA fighter known for his submissions, and who has only sub-par striking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH0dCP4nDzU

I guess the MMA fighter was lucky the Taekwondo guy couldn't eye gouge with the gloves on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r26Wg_Y4 ... re=related

A Taekwondo guy losing to a Muay Thai guy in what essentially is a kicking match(!) Count how many times the Taekwondo guy falls down, even without clinching and takedowns being allowed. In all fairness, the Muay Thai guy (can't remember his name) is a world class guy while I don't know how good the Taekwondo guy is (supposed to be). But still, it's telling.



I've read literally a hundred different stories on what the origins of Karate, Taekwondo, Aikido etc. are. From being celebratory war dances (Karate) to being rip-offs from existing styles to fuel national pride (Taekwondo). I don't know what to believe, really. I don't concern myself with the history of an art. I judge them primarily on how effective they are in a fight with as few rules as possible (so not the UFC) and if I find they are lacking, I discard them.





Just get extra padded MMA gloves and go about 60-70%. That's how MMA gyms do it, no bad spacing habits developing whatsoever.





So if the top Malaysian grandmasters can't be trusted with the inheritence of an art, who can?



I didn't, but by all means, go ahead. Sadly, the commercialization is watering down BJJ. I once met a blue belt whose training was so geared towards competition that he couldn't even escape a simple headlock. I don't doubt that you could find something useless for street fighting. However, I will say this: you will not find any qualified MMA teacher teaching something that would be completely useless in an actual fight. There's the exotic stuff like flying triangles, etc. that most MMA practitioners wouldn't try on the street (but most likely would get anyway) but you won't find anything near as downright useless and dangerous like that back sweep. You will not find a technique without merit. Not one.

I'd really say were at an impass. I get that you can't believe in anything you haven't seen, however I'm stuck trying to prove a negative with means (on the internet) that I literally don't have. Working with my instructor I can verify that our trapping, our limb destruction, takedowns, and destabilizations are violent and overbearing enough in the mechanics of delivery that they're feasible. I've taken other arts before and I've never learned how to mow down someone's standing guard and render their hands useless but then trying to show this with videos that reflect what we're doing in maybe one out of three moves, have something kind of flowery in another third, and have something that doesn't work at all in another third - is pretty much damnation to my case.

I think where I may be lucky: my instructor didn't grow up in the US, he grew up somewhere (not in the far east however) that you had to fight, particularly if you were a religious minority. Some people are just naturally very aggressive and are natural fighters; he was that but he decided that he wanted to learn a proper art or several proper arts and make the most of them. I think that's why I can attest a lot more to what I'm doing than I can to these videos. You can say "Yeah right - prove it"; I can't, if that's your metric you win - I sincerely can't. If we were in the same area of the world and decided to get together for lunch, BS a bit and spar afterward what I'm saying might translate off paper but; it clearly doesn't and can't here.

I can also verify, as I talk around, that it seems like every major city as well has people who will only teach out of their garage because they want right of refusal but because of what they're teaching (ie. they're serious entusiasts), my instructor could have been in that category and indeed learned from some people who were but does prefer to have a school. I've also come to understand that there are still plenty of practicitioners, even in this day and age, who will literally not teach white people or anyone generally outside their race, they're also similarly private. I won't get into the implications that I see that having on available and Americanized martial arts in general - I think if people want to only teach the real stuff to an elect few and student who they choose rather than who choose them; that works in their favor. Commercialization and dumbing down just keeps people's opinion of things low and, if people don't believe any validity exists they stop looking. Mind you - there's absolutely no magic, no hoodoo in it, I'm an atheist and that kind of thing doesn't phase me anyway but I do believe what I can see.

Would BJJ work on the street? If your good at it sure. However we're also accounting for the awareness that the odds of you having reason to get into a fight with a serious, self-respecting martial artists, hopefully as a serious self-respecting BJJ person, are pretty low. Odds are if there was a fight you'd find yourselves on the pretty close to the same side. That however is a different topic. Swimming through transient/passing arm bars for breaks, very deliberate attacks to the neck and jaw either by palm manipulation or forearm - these are things you don't and can't do in tournamant. If your teacher will not touch on anything that's outside of the sphere of ring legality - to each their own - my whole point though is I still have every reason to believe that you're making a mistake in assuming you have the whole picture at this point.

Something else I noticed, I don't know that I ever clarified. We do have jiu jitsu rolled into our system, we do have 'MMA' format rolled in as well. It would probably be unfair for the sake of argument to mention that. I'm not talking about BJJ and MMA vs. some guy getting in a really weird low stance and the weird fighter winning; nothing of the like. Our Wing Chun really looks like boxing with more focus on trapping and we'll do palms to the face and jaw along with it. We do panantukan to cripple a person's stand up guard. If faced with someone diving for our legs we do respond in a jiu jitsu-like manner, just that its a jiu-jitsu with Gung Fu striking where the block and the strike are nearly indifferentiable. If I gave the impression that we refuse to use any Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, Judo, or boxing I may have perhaps have gotten ahead of the topic and assumed that more was being communicated about what I do at least than what actually came through.

I love it. It's exciting, highly technical, and the fighters are eccentric. Few things I watch can make me leap from my seat and shout at the TV like a maniac.

A lot of the fans are boors, though. I don't think I've ever met anyone with an Affliction t-shirt with class.

Daaamn holy you guys are writing paragraphs big enough to fill half the page. It's getting hard to follow lol. I've been watching hockey and basketball lately so what's new with the UFC?

Don't worry, it was a pretty lame conversation. You didn't miss much.

Icyclan your assessment of wing chun is not accurate. I don't know where you trained or to what so I can't comment on you. It is a difficult style to learn to a decent standard, but it provides useful skills that can be used in MMA. Even Calson Gracie said as much when held a joint lecture with Sam Kwok.

I have helped out at my club for some time we have trained boxers/muay thai/ other seasoned martial artist. Nearly everyone, with few exceptions has trouble coordinating the simultaneous control and attack, we have a strong emphasis on coordination training. The few that are natural it has nothing to do with their martial art experience. Everyone we have train their coordination has improved, and they are able to use their limbs at the same time rather than one after another. Also we promote training on both side, and training he weaker side, just as much. So it definitely has benefits to these people.

Simple fact if you just stand there you are going to get hit. it doesn't matter what style. The best way to not get hit is to move. Interception isn't usually enough in isolation.

Wing Chun deals with elbows pretty well, it is just as much about elbows an Muay Thai if not more so, and pretty similar. You were talking about breaking down the opponent guard. Not always necessary you can jam it into their body, the elbow is covered. If you are going to take down their guard, you can draw downwards, crossing and pinning. Elbow striking from that doesn't work although you can shoulder barge. The point is everything has a counter, you can go on like this ad infinity.

Main thing is you position yourself appropriately. Just like muay thai if you want to stop an elbow, you have to get something in the way, you can stop it before it is come out, but a good fighter is compact, and doesn't load short range strikes which make it obvious.

The only things you can do to fully stop an elbow strike at close range is get something the way immediately whilst getting out of range (if you can), OR to get under the elbow to lift clear. The is because getting something the way isn't enough, as the strike can still come round and hit you.

However the getting something in the way is still the most important part. it is the reaction that facilitates other reactions. The speed at which you can do this, will be the determining factor. You should practice getting your hand up accurately, from any position. Hands, by you side, in your pockets, out wide. Doesn't matter, you can't predict where your hands/arms are going to be. It need to the directs/shortest distance to get in front of the elbow.

I don't really want to get too much into all kinds of terminology, because it means little to most people. However I tend to use a fook and rising/rolling lan combination (you can't really generalize though). Fook can take a lot of punishment, is strong, it doesn't take hardly any space to get up, it doesn't hurt you. You still need to be fairly accurate, but you do get better at it with time. It is also very difficult for them to take your hand without them being elbowed.

Rising lan (if you are unable to get clear), can done instantly with practice. The important thing is you hold on their wrist while their elbow is being lifted, which stops that unraveling and hitting you. It is close to locking without locking a joint due how the arms a wrapped. Pinning is a whole other subject which is vast to go on about here. You should be stepping in a striking at the same time. this will lift their elbow higher, which is poor structure for them.

It will take practice for to be able to step in and rise fully, but that I not the point you are defending yourself against the strike. You are not going capitalize fully every time (I think that is where a lot WCers go wrong). The point is with practice you become a lot better at converting, or making new opportunities.

I think you are right about the lack of sparring experience some people have. Also faux traditionalists who stand there, with a low guard trying to look the part, that is really not a lot to with wing chun.

The fact of the matter anyone who says their style is for everyone either lying or delusional. Humans aren't actually built to fight. Would you like to take on a tiger? Their reactions are better than yours, their spacial awareness is beyond amazing, they are more powerful, and they have built in weapons. This is why we use tools, and train in martial arts. Because were are otherwise limited. but this comes at some cost, and is not perfect. With a lot metrologies it does rely on a high level of fitness, kind of beyond your average person. Injuries an nigles extremely common.

"What do you think about MMA?"

I just don't like fighting, planned or unplanned.

This is a little absurd. Humans, like it or not, are somewhat built for fighting. We may not have claws, but we have blunt instruments and males have a prominent brow. We have evolved to use tools, but this doesn't make us any less built for fighting.

Comparing us to tigers is like saying a stag beetle isn't built for fighting, or a male ram for that matter.

I love MMA, because it's as close to real fighting as you can get (while still trying to preserve safety to some extent).

A lot of combat sports are constrained by quite artificial rules. So for example, if I watch a judo match, it might be extremely exciting to watch, but I'm not actually watching two people try their hardest to defeat each other. I'm watching two people playing an artificial game called "judo".

But in MMA, there are only a few rules. So the floor is wide open. You can try whatever strategy you like! Finally, we can answer the question: "what is the best way to fight?" Well, the best way to fight is actually quite awkward-looking. It isn't elegant, it isn't fancy. It involves a lot of grappling, and fights don't last very long. But it's real.

EDIT: I should clarify, I don't love MMA because I am bloodthirsty. I love MMA for exactly the same reason that I love competitive video games, and chess, and soccer. I love the idea of people trying to figure out the optimum way to exploit a simple set of rules.

Physiologically we are not built for fighting, without tools. We were built for ambush hunting with tools and running around a bit. We are not individually specialized for hunting unarmed like tigers, which are solitary hunters, and a force to be reckoned with.

If you study martial art you would understand the dynamics involved, just how fragile and vulnerable we are in comparison.

It is fairly obvious what I am saying, is we lack an inherent self defense mechanism as good as other animals, like tigers, and on average not physiologically conditioned for unarmed combat.

I should also point out that top predators like polar bears, tigers and so on are amongst the most the most intelligent animals and they have excellent spacial awareness, better than ours in many respects, they need it for hunting with the full contact kill. That doesn't mean we aren't smart, we are very smart, we needed to be to avoid getting eaten, but also to find food.

The evidence of early human was they were actually majority scavengers, and occasional opportunist hunters. This was because it was far too dangerous to be out in the savanna during the day, with top predictor about, also a massive drain on our resources. We couldn't eat flesh as it was eaten, by predators, like lions, and scavenger like hyenas and vultures, and wasted away in the elements. Instead we broke open bones and skulls and ate bone marrow and brain matte (direct evidence of this exists). One of the possible explanations to the increase in our intellect was the challenging environment, but also the high protein diet due to necessity (marrow and brain matter).