Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/19/amateur-fighter-knocks-the-lig.html
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I wonder what he thought was going to happen?
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Who thought this pairing was a good idea?
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And Xu has paid a heavy price for beating every “kung fu master” he has fought. His social credit score has been reduced to that of a pedophile with bad breath. He can’t travel by plane or high-speed train. His gym has been forced to toss him out. He lost his home. Sometimes the government has required him to fight in clown makeup. And all because he embarrassed the government’s kung fu superiority campaign.
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While it’s clear the tai chi practitioner has never been in an actual fight in his life, it also appears to be the case that he’s never seen an actual fight in his life.
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Maybe they were Tai Chi fights at 1/10th normal speed?
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the last 10 minutes are about Xu Xiaodong
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a 49-year-old who knows how to fight vs a 69yo who probably doesn’t fight anyone other than his own tai-chi students. welp.
tai-chi is great but it basically just teaches you how to use your body in harmony with itself, coordinating muscle and joint movement with your fluid movements, chiefly air via the diaphragm. Master William C.C. Chen has interesting things to say about this in his text Body Mechanics of Tai Chi Chuan, particularly that e.g. Western boxers do the exact same thing: plant their feet and breathe in to throw a blow. That Chen left China to teach in the US basically says all you need to know about the tai chi “master” in the video.
the way you get good at fighting is by fighting.
I never mastered Chen’s form during the one semester I studied in college, but I use what I learned all the time. it really helps as I get older with simple things like using the basic horse stance when there are no chairs and I have to stand for a long time, doing heavy lifting of e.g. furniture, and stance and breathing for body elimination. now there’s something more important to me day-to-day than fighting.
there are schools that stress fighting more, and yes technically the forms’ movements include continuous strikes and blocks with the arm and leg movements, but (all together now!) the way you get good at fighting is fighting. I’ve seen some videos of earnest students of fighting-style taichi who wanted to spar with an MMA acquaintance not expecting to do well, but to help expose the flaws in their form.
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It’s bad enough to get beat, but extra embarassing to get hit by that slow motion roundhouse punch at the end of the fight. The younger fighter surely wasn’t showing us his best stuff.
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I wonder how many of these bouts start out with a hefty bribe to the amateur fighter, but wind up as a “Fuck it, I’m gonna knock him out AND keep the money”, armed with the threat of exposing the bribe?
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Sometimes you tell lies so often and so long that you start to believe them yourself.
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It’s obvious the Tai Chi master’s never done real free sparring or any other unscripted fighting practice. He’s very tense, keeps his feet close together and doesn’t have any understanding of footwork, dodging or anything else related to real martial arts or unarmed combatives.
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He was expecting to fight another tai chi practitioner:
Ma was supposed to fight fellow tai chi practitioner Li Xianchun but Li failed a medical exam and was replaced by 70kg welterweight Wang.
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What do you expect? Yo-yo Ma is primarily a cellist.
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Well, he fell gracefully. Sorta.
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I know nothing about martial arts, but I’m going to assume from this video that Tai Chi is more like Yoga than a fighting style.
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I’ve practiced Wado-kai Karate for many years (though i haven’t practiced in quite a long time too) and then in college i took Aikido. I found Aikido to be wonderful because it really teaches you to be more in tune and self-aware of your body, how to move and redirect motion, etc. I would see Tai Chi as something similar, it has value but as a form of self defense it is inadequate unless a given person is a gifted fighter. Though most gifted fighters are also familiar with other schools and styles.
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Umm - Zhang “Magnum” Weili would DESTROY both of these gents at the same time.
She’s incredible.
I’m not defending this guy in any way (I have no dog of any martial arts speciality in this fight) but whatever people were mad at him for, getting knocked unconscious at age 69 is punishment enough.
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This is essentially the same as the last “tai chi master” knock out vid from a year or so ago. The so-called “tai chi master’s” footwork in this one shows right away that he knows nothing of actual tai chi. The fighting, of course, speaks for itself. He’s deficient in both, apparently.
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