Many people out there practicing martial art emphasizes on street fighting. Some of them is extremely unrealistic and the techniques and moves they try to teach and learn are totally useless to real persons. On the other hand some groups totally focus on realistic fighting and focus on how to make the largest harm to a person. But I want to say that this is nothing but pure violence.
I am a Christian but I enjoy practicing martial arts. I live in Hong Kong and it is extremely easy to access information about Kung Fu and all kinds of martial arts. At one point I am hesitated to continue practicing martial arts due to my faith in Jesus. Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek if someone slap you in the face. And it feels like doing any kind of martial art totally contradict His teachings. But what I am addressing is not whether one should hurt another person to defend oneself but whether it is OK to practice martial arts as a hobby or a sport. Finally I figured it out and believe that God is happy to let me continue this as an exercise. I will continue until the Lord says stop or I naturally lose all the interest towards fighting sports.
Therefore, I have decided that the reason I like fighting sports is that the skills and technique involved are interesting. The way they teach to efficiently utilize your body is fascinating. And I think that the process of attacking and defending is a lot of fun. The above being said, I also think that martial art should be base on this attack and defense process under a set situations, rules and conditions. As I mentioned, fighting without rules is nothing but pure violence, which is not enjoyable at all.
On the other hand, if a discipline of martial art is reduced and limited to the study and memorization of some preset moves. It is worse than dancing. Many Chinese Kung Fu or Wushu has gone this path which I think is sad. Some of the forms they do involve attacking and defensing of two or more persons. But if it is only repetition out of memorization, it is boring to me. So the fun of martial art has to come from the realistic element by which I mean the attacks and defenses out of realistic human reaction under certain rules.
Like Judo, it has totally become a sport in the modern form. It is not realistic to be use in real combat. But it is very interesting to play. The fact that it prohibited punches or other strikes actually allow the participants to fully express their skills with full power. That’s why it is so enjoyable. In contrary, taking Karate as an example, if you learned how to do a powerful round house kick, it is not possible for you to do it with full power on the head of your fellow classmate. But in Judo, if I learned Uchimata, I am able to execute it on my dojo classmates with all my strength, without hurting him/her, of course.
Enough said, back on street fighting. There is no rule on the street. People do not want to fight you fairly. If someone fight you on the street, the only goal he has is to hurt you or to displace his rage on you. This violence is so dangerous. They would try to get any achievable weapons. So if you try to practice street fighting but limit it to hand to hand combat. You are being unrealistic and don’t really know what yourself want to do. Even if you try to simulate what happens if the opponent takes a chair, a knife or even a gun, it is not street fighting because you cannot possibly anticipate what would happen on the street. Of course you can form imaginative situations think about what imaginative response you can give to dominate they. But don’t think that is street fighting and don’t even think about really doing it on street. It’s up to you to call it street fighting ‘do’, in fact, you can call it ‘Tomado’ if you want. But you are deceiving yourself.
In conclusion, on the street, be a nice guy and keep yourself out of troubles. In case of emergencies, make escaping your number one objective. I know it is fun to imagine you are Jacky Chan and fight off bad guys bare hands. But remind yourself it is not true. It is quite interesting to study some more effective techniques. I embedded this video, just for fun. This guy’s techiques are mostly from Wing Chun.
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