
Originally Posted by
unshackled-chi
Bruce Lee said " I hope that my fellow martial artist are not so concerned with the many flower branches, but that they are more concerned with the root." I use Bruces quote because the concept of being well rounded in all ranges of combat and practising in an "alive" manner is not a new idea, not something that was born in an octogon or held secret to those who love redbull. That concept was made famous by Bruce in his art of JKD, but to quote Bruce again " I have not created a new style of fighting." he was being very transparent and honest, Bruces concepts are found throughout many martial styles because he searched for the truth in combat , he looked into all styles and drew from them what HE felt was useful and he rejected what HE felt was useless for HIM.
my point in all this is there are no styles of fighting, its like what makes a good basketball, or football player / its not his style, there is no soft style of basketball, or a hardstyle of basketball, its the attributes. concepts and principles, strategies ect are what a "system" can give you , it is your athletic ability that will make you stand out..not your style , your attributes. If you take the economy of motion of wing chun and apply it to a thai boxer, you will have a better thai boxer, if you take the hardcore everything mentality and training of a thai boxer and apply it to a wing chun man, you will have a better wing chun man and on and on it goes.
To put an art that was created for defence of yourself against an art that is now trained for sport is apples and oranges, not because we have all the foul tactics, there are many MMA fighter who are capable of defending themselves, for christ sake they are PROFESSIONAL FIGHTERS! ..i can cook, but if i was pitted against chef Ramsey id look like a study in slow motion, the important point is , if someone attacks you on the"street" in a manner that is legally justafiable to use force and not end up in prison, i doubt they will be trying for a double leg takedown so they can implement thier grappling game. If we find ourselves in situations where we are doing the whole dance on our toes a bit..a little jab..a little this a little that, we in my opinon have found ourselves in a situation where lossing the ego could have ended that situation by walking away, fighting is not self defence, and if you look at the many martial arts systems out there that are for self defence..i think most of them will give you skills to use to defend yourself so that you can get your shots in and ESCAPE!!!, its not about victory but survival..two totally different animals, and by defining our goals and checking our egos mixed with training, really hard REALLY HARD, putting in the flight time..doing the work we come to know ourselves and develop our attributes..getting good and hopefully really good lol.
Was it Mr Parker himself who said something to the effect, "when pure knuckles meet pure flesh..THAT! is pure Karate". to me thats it..not styles..but making it work, if we can know who we are and resolve to defend our lives with clear intentions and develop the attributes to carry that out , and understand what Mr Parkers quote is all about, we can put any art in the world in and it would work in a self defence situation.