Go watch the video len_c posted above. tsath’s comment is a good summary, too. Xu Xiaodong is doing this even in the face of government retribution. No bribe is going to offset that. And he has kept on taking these fights after being ruined, because he believes in taking down charlatans.
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Tai Chi. Helpful Advice: Hydrate before being rendered unconscious.
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As beautiful as Aikido is, it’s practitioners have been defeated over and over in MMA bouts. It’s not really useful in a fight, mostly because getting the wrist grabs and throws to work when sparring is extremely difficult. This YouTuber spent a lot of time trying: https://www.youtube.com/user/AikidoSiauliai
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The only thing about the video that surprised me was the number of people not wearing masks.
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For sure, my instructor in Aikido said as much that it shouldn’t be used for self-defense but that learning the martial art is definitely useful as a way to understand motion and mechanics of the body. That knowledge is complementary if someone is also practicing other martial arts.
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exactly. I’ve done Aikido for years, and it’s great to learn how to move, better at teaching you how to fall, and pretty crap in and of itself for fighting. If you combined what you learned about fluid movement and particularly rotational movement as well as using the other person’s weight and momentum to manipulate their movement, with other more effective fighting forms, then there’s a use for Aikido. Otherwise, it’s a nice way to learn about how your body works, and physics.
I see too many “martial arts woo” people pushing magical chi powers etc… And people believe it.
Just look at all the fun “Bullshido” videos on youtube for examples…
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Yet at the same time Zhang Weili is the darling of the Chinese government. The difference is that she pays lip service to Chinese martial arts. She actually did train in Sanda and Shuai Jiao before transitioning to MMA, but both of those are styles that do fully resistant sparring, unlike almost all of kung fu and tai chi, etc. that’s out there. She knows just as well as Zhang that most of that is complete BS, but she doesn’t speak against them like Zhang does, hence the huge difference in how the government has treated them.
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Two tai chi masters fighting sounds very relaxing.
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Finish him!
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Can’t we start a GoFundMe for him? Like all the conservative assholes do for their friends who won’t bake a gay cake?
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I’m now thinking about the logistics of that. Xu Xiaodong threatened to move to Australia last year, but sending money internationally is always tricky. He does have a friend in the US who uploads to his YouTube channel. That might be the place to start. It also looks like there was a GoFundMe, but the link 404s now even though it is still in Google’s results.
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It’s a bit more complicated than that.
He was sued for slander by a Tai Chi practitioner that he denounced, and lost the case. He was ordered by the court to apologise and pay damages, but refused to do so. So, as is standard practice in China, his social credit score was lowered until he complied with the court orders, then restored once he paid his debt.
Later, he spoke publicly in favour of the protesters in Hong Kong, which resulted in his social media accounts being censored.
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“Hey, no fair! Nobody told me we were allowed to PUNCH!”
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Aikido is one martial art that can cross into bullshido, but doesn’t necessarily have to. And while certain styles coughtenshincough are a little more prone to that than others, it seems like it’s really a per dojo sort of thing.
I personally stopped practicing because I moved away and the new local dojo wasn’t to my taste.
But it wasn’t really a martial art first and foremost, to me, just kinda like a sort of exercise and meditation session that also trained me to be aware enough to step out of the way of a drunk person’s sucker punch.
It probably saved me some broken bones when I got rear ended on my moped, by a tailgating SUV driver angry about me physically not being able to drive faster than the speed limit, and I instinctively rolled on the ground towards the shoulder of the road, suffering nothing more than some nasty road rash on my right arm that looked gnarly at the time but has since become barely noticeable.
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Yeah, there’s a nice balance point somewhere between mystical magical “energy” manipulating BS and “We’ve tried so hard to turn this into a combat form that we’ve really entirely missed the point”.
This^ Our instructor instructed us to think about it like attending dance class, and was very realistic about not sticking to form, and doing whatever we needed to do if a fight was absolutely unavoidable.
I feel like a lot of martial arts folks have stories like this. Mine was (back in high school) breaking a truck when f-ing around on a friend’s pretty big street ramp. We were trying to 360 off of it, and the bolt on my truck snapped, which made le skateboard abruptly stop on the pavement. Considering inertia and all, I did not exactly stop. I shoulder rolled out of the bail, to standing position, and my friend was like WTF just happened, and how are you Ok?
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That is basically an encapsulation of the long term benefit of practicing Aikido, Judo, classical JuJitsu - one’s falling game is really good compared to everyone else. As a “fighting” art… well, as you and Narwalt said - that’s school by school. Some are OK, a few are great, most suck.
Good fighters are QUICK. Quick to punch or kick, wily with their body movements, and quick to dodge. Probably the best “fighters” are Boxers or MMA people who emphasize the boxing and less of the grappling. Second to them: karate, kung fu, people who spar but don’t necessarily fight.
There are countless vids of Aikido vs. MMA, Aikido vs. Boxing, Aikido vs. Kung Fu, etc. Any Aikido person (Aikidoka) will tell you that rule number 1 is to get the fuck outta there asap unless you have absolutely no choice or someone else is being harmed and you need to intervene. To stage a fight, stand there, take the beating, attempt to throw and control… all of that is completely opposite the way Aikido is taught and positioned as a martial art. It was never meant to be a contest.
Aikido is BEST when it’s unexpected. Person throws punch, ends up suddenly in a pretzel… AMAZING! Person throws punch, Aikido douche stands there dodging punches, eventually oops gets hit, has nothing to back it up, goes down, OOF… STUUUUUUPID. So cringey. That’s not even Aikido.
Real Aikido is your shoulder roll while skating, or when I slipped on the ice, curled over onto my side, tumbled under my car and then slid myself out, completely unharmed. Or seeing something from 20 feet away and just going, “Oh no way.” And then avoiding that whole mess. That’s Aikido. Fighting matches? Showmanship or ego or something, but not Aikido.
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I always get a kick out of the Ki Society types who claim that if you throw a strike or grapple you have "already lost’ because you’re unbalanced. The taste of Kool-Aid is strong in much of Aikido.
I have met Aiki practitioners who could fight, but I can’t think of one who could who didn’t have experience in something else.
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Yep. In real life it doesn’t pay to tell everyone the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
That was a good one. I saw that a couple of months back.
When he shuffled over in his slippers to take a sip of water before the fight, I knew he was doomed. I think they live in this little fantasy bubble where nothing real can happen to them and there are contribed rules protecting them for so long that they forget the real world exists. When they try to apply the fake reality concepts in the wild they often get a crashing wave of education, often in the form of an ass whoopin. I imagine its simmilar to people who believe internet chat rules apply in real life and mouth off without civility and common courtesy and assume things will go the same as they do on social media.
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