Mario Napoli is the CMC player, that went to the Chen village and won them at their tourney. I don't think the silk pyjamas would suit him do you..? I read on another forum that he was doing CMC for about a year before he went to Chen village and prior he had some sort of wrestling experience - maybe the us high school / college thing.. but all that is a bit sketchy. What we do know is he didn't have to go to China to "eat bitter".. or even study the mighty Chen style uber form. Hoorah! the website http://www.laspeziataijiclub.it/index.html the tourney footage: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNXnxCpjUNM"]Tai chi Push Hands (Chen Village) - YouTube[/ame] "tifang" p/h drills [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpGmPErQsg4"]Basic Push hands drills for beginners. - YouTube[/ame] tai chi body conditioning [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUIft2mWXKg"]tai chi chuan, body conditioning - YouTube[/ame] hindu strength training [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0NLilpx1l4"]Hindu strength training... (as taught by Swami Buaji). - YouTube[/ame]
Heck yeah! Rock on mr. Napoli! That's good stuff all around. Nice post Cloudhandz. I would love to see this guy get on the platform with that guy who recently showed the throws against that wrestler in the other thread.
Hmmm.... then we need to start e-mailing them both, pretending to each to be the other, winding them up.... your Chen taiji is naff and I'd easily beat youlike I beat the others... Hey, fatso, why don't you try fighting a real Chen expert.... We could do this.
Does anyone remember the animated film "Animal Olympics"? When the hippo done her? thing another animal quipped "not bad for a fatso!" man that still makes me smile... But don't mind me, sounds like a plan! :vanish:
Some words are just funnier than others, lol. I wonder... I'd like to see judo guys, who specialise in that kind of stand up grappling and throwing, versus senior Chen players... I knowa lot of techniques are similar - for me it's about training methods - two arts, similar techniques. If judo guys can achieve even the same level, never mind better, without doing taiji forms and postures, what should I infer from that? Is what happened in these videos that a wrestler went to Chen village? Was his year of taiji 5% of what was succesful there - and his wrestling training the other 95%? What worries me is that if that's the case, the kudos should be apportioned like that too - 5% to taiji, 95% to wrestling training. (Well I guess the man himself had a bit to do with it too, but you know what I mean.)
Mario beat Wang Xian's sons at their own game, under their own rules, on their own turf, in 2001. Sure, I could suggest conjectural things like, had he gone some other year, or against one of the older players, that things may have gone differently. But that would be as ignorant as saying what happened is end-all, be-all proof of Mario's superiority. Wang's sons had it coming. They did not train correctly to deal with Mario's weight and strength. One of them attempted to use dirty moves to defeat Mario. But no go. I'm not sure about the extent of Mario's background in taiji previous to the event (I've heard all kinds of things), but it is evident from his performance that his tactics and methods have more in common with wrestling and Sumo, than Taiji. It's also evident that Mario's size and weight played into his victory. But I do know that Mario himself credits wrestling methods more so than whatever level of familiarity he has with Taiji. I would link to those comments but the old EF forum archive has long been turned over since this footage was first posted years ago. Does this mean wrestling is superior? No, it means Mario Napoli was superior to his particular opponents, under the given ruleset, at that particular event. Mario is alot older, and likely more experienced time-wise than his opponents at that particular event. All in all, Mario was better at what he does, than the Wang sons (whom Mario defeated) were at what they do. As TCMA will undoubtedly start making more appearances in the western fight circuits, we will see a lot of back-and-forth of wins and losses. Just more proof that the man means more than his "style".
FQ It's an interesting line of inquiry you pose. I would love to hear what he might say about it. But there he is teaching taiji and the cirriculum begins with form - 2 stages. the other stuff is if you want it which is fair enough and not a bad way to do it. If he had a good teacher(I think he did) and a good base(he did) and trained a lot(probably), a year can be a long time in taiji.. Which applies to other things too, it can be a ling time in judo or boxing etc a long time in meditation (yikes). It could certainly change what you have significantly. Taiji can be an interesting refinement process maybe on more than one level. An inch can be as good as a mile eh? If you end up being 5% better from taiji and you are 5% better than the other guy on the proverbial day then the taiji was all important - hey, 100% so. About the forms and postures. I think they can and do help, in the right balance. Anyone competing always trains more intensely and focuses their training. Things like form do go on the back burner. thats not really what they're for ( I think). In those times maybe you might use it as a warm up or warm down. Instead of taking 25 minutes take 6 minutes. Anyway for me the form is versatile and its utility is one of the attractions for me. I can't think of anything more multi functional. it should contains standing postures and neigong for instance. It's like a box that can be packed with training. I'm not going to argue for anything necessary about hand form on the "fighting" front and nothing on the empirical front sort of thing, because that's not the case. for me the value of it is subjective. On a personal level I still like to keep some linked form going. And probably more importantly i'm glad i learnt it, because i got a lot from it. Going forward on balance i'm still positive about my form practice and evolving it in what i see as interesting and constructive ways. And bringing those into my training and application. If ultimately we train ourselves as in guide, make the choices, than maybe we can say our art is there. We can be creative with that as much as we want and enjoy it, if we want to indulge in concepts and ideas and so what? My ends and my means, the justifications are all my business. that's just how i've come to see it. Whatever we choose say "taiji" we have to make it our own thing, something we have, something I can show you. I see it as an umbrella term more than "my style". Within that I practice the thirteen postures, taoism, boxing, wrestling, sparring, form, zz etc..etc..etc.. But you know, what the heck am I on about, I do have a style already - fuzzy fist for short. And if any bright spark interweb wannabe steals that name, i'll sue his ass off! Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......................it
You just did suggest those conjectural things - as part of the same sentence. Saying I could is just a way of saying it as if you didn't really say it. There you go again. People can only beat the people who are put in front of them. Check youtube, any martial artist that gets defeated has people saying yeah, but he wasn't the real taiji, wing chun, kickboxing... you name it... I could be a valid excuse, if wasn't used every time a martial artist loses. Well, that matters in terms of whether we're saying his taiji training won out, or his wrestling training - but, he did win. God - any more excuses? You know what, that should never be used as an excuse, because it's unfair on Mario - it means even if he wins he loses. If people step up to fight him, then we should assume that they believe Chen taiji is capable of letting them beat bigger opponents - isn't that supposed to be the case anyway? He won - get over it. Well, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater - this might actually tell us something about the merits of relative training methods. What we'll need to see now, is a senior Chen stylist achieve the same level of victory over wrestlers. We did have Chen Bing -and you did attempt to make us believe that it was equivalent. So far, Mario's achievement isn't matched by any reciprocal victories from the Chen guys, is it? So far.
Cloudz.... that may be true. That's one of those posts where I think, hmm.. who is he trying to convince, me, or himself, lol. Sure - a year can be a long time. And sure, maybe a year of serious taiji can refine your wrestling. I genuinely believe that - I can't prove it, but I believe it. It can't be answered Cloudz - except by the man himself. Fair enough - he teaches taichi, so, his vote of confidence is cast and it is well respected - it weighs heavily in the debate, no doubt about it. I think, maybe it's another thing - as with a lot of CMA - maybe his wrestling training was always supposed to be a part of taiji training anyway; he just added the missing basic back in. Top kudos to the man anyway - I loved that. If only some of the top taiji people in the UK from China were open to that, instead of it being supressed by a sense that you're a trouble causer if you want to try them out a bit. See, for me, the taiji form, I think, is intended to be the same kind of thing that Yiquan has in its shi li - like, a specific, isometric body conditioning exercise. Like, I don't see the taiji form as a dictionary of exercises, or a warm up - I think it's intended to be shi li style isometric training - as are all the individual silk reeling postures. So, I'm caught because I think it might be an "evil twin" or, a kind of half right way from my perspective - like, the individual moves and postures are worth training in to develop hunyuan li, but the form itself is not necessarily useful. On the other hand, being a forms guy, I quite like messing and doing forms - for their own sake, lol. But yeah - there's merit in what you say, not least because you are the product of it, and you have a respectable level to show from it. I'd still like to see judo versus taiji! Real judo, versus real taiji, lol. Fair enough. I still find ideas in forms - and think, oh, wait, that's probably for that... could it be? Is a butterfly twist really for avoiding the double leg shoot??? How cool would that be? Ha ha. But, if you could do it, and you were really that fast - hell, why not? Cool. About that....
I personally think that this kid of supports one of my previous ideas - that most CMA is pretty advanced, and is meant to be taught to people who have a basic grasp of boxing and wrestling.
that's kind of true..lol. i think that is one possible way to answer and only a possibility. I feel strongly about this too. underneath various techs etc. the foundations, the principles - it's all basically the same. Using different methods is all well and good, peoples levels of conditioning and current skill level is all well and good. Throwing someone, off balancing, using a trip etc. There's a ton of crossover whether it's sumo, judo, sambo, aikido, greco etc. the various arts use and apply the same principles. Sure tai chi specializes certain methods, a plan to deal with force, a way to nuetralize and issue - even to do tai chi well I think a certain amount of patience and sensitivity needs to be developed. against real pressure. that takes time and expreience. You need a foundation to build these on. When i look at the clip I don't see sumo for instance - I just see wrestling - i see wrestling in Chen bings clips. Tending now to use the terms boxing and wrestling generically. I see wrestling - some of what Mr. Napoli did i've seen in other p/h comps - . He used sound tai chi! Many times he was absorbing pressure into his root and took away the support - causing his opponent to fall into "the void". many people can see that and think wait that's force on force - it's not tai chi. But you may remember Nigel Sutton describing yielding as this. The other guy is pushing against the ground not against your force. You involve the groundpath in some neutralizing methods. I'm not really into defining arts through their techniques. if I can see something done by someone else, doesn't matter to me the labels - if it can fit into what i do, what i like, i'll take it. You can take a lot of inspiration from other styles and see how what they do is somewhere in yours - which helps develop and polish it that bit more - offer variations on a theme. give richness to a them. A recent example I can offer from my own training is the 2 on 1 position. This is a postion in wrestling where you use both you arms against one to control the guy. Lots of set ups from there. What i've seen demod by other styles fits great with various application elements/postures of taiji. i agree that that is one of it's primary functions - but with a bit of a twist. Not sure how up you are on training the body methods of taiji. peng, an, ji, liu, lie, kao, zhou, cai. one of the primary focuses i think should be these "forces" and their interplay/ change trough the form. Particularly the first four the second set of for are more in the way of tecniques to me. They stand on the basis of the first four in a way. It's one of the reasons (I was told) that it is "playing" the form. The various postures are various combinations of the 8 methods - so you kind of play various "notes"( internal body forces) in different postures. Those are where the isometric training element is. Not that i have a clear understanding of isometrics.. there great as a reference. what i found myself doing was say going through my form. And then after taking some moves. work them in isolation for a bit. Put some other kind of combos round them. say jab, jab cross, kao, slant fly. Then go over to the bag - work them there too. i think we have similar feeling on forms at the end of the day. i think back when a lot of martial artists where illiterate so maybe forms grew out of a necessity to pass things on. It is a lot like carrying a pocket book of notes kind of thing.. or training programme reference. One thing I've come to feel, is that I practice form because of that sense of utility and ease they offer. In the Yang form there are 37 postures - I hit them all breifly. That's like fast food dude, and I'm one of these typical people who can get irritated waiting an extra couple minutes for a Big Mac - I only have a certain amount of time and as we are well aware there's a lot more to training than just form or standing.. The old timers could maybe easily spend 3 hours just working through postures in both a shi li and zz way. I can hit everything briefly in various lengths of time. from 5 mins up.. And there's a lot to be said for convenience in todays world.
I thought he used solid CMA principles in every match shown in that video. Seems to me, he worked a basic strategy that was based around the principle of yielding. You can't tell absolutely because it doesn't show the matches in their entirety, but it seems like he would just push forward until his opponent was either out of the ring, or managed his forward pressure. At that point, he would sidestep and throw them.
As Mario's teacher, Stanley Israel died in 1999, I think it's safe to say Mario had more than a year or so of TC behind him in 2001.Think his name first started showing up in the early 90s, but I could be mistaken there.He certainly looks younger and thinner in the one picture I found online of him and Stanley together. Stanley Israel was considered one of the best Judo-ka in NYC when he went to meet Cheng.The abridged story is when he placed his hands upon Cheng's arm, he didn't try to push Cheng, and told Lou Kleinsmith "He's already got me." That's the tale.No video to verify it,tho'. Israel was quite possibly the most martially talented of Cheng's American seniors,(along w/Herman Kauz).To the best of my knowledge,he did not teach Judo to his TC students.And hadn't taught Judo for many years prior to his death. A note for further musings on TC and Judo - the Wu family,at least in Canada,practice Judo after TC class.A student of theirs told me this was because one of them,somewhere over the years,got bested by a Judo-ka.No video of that, either.
More than once he used a downward pressure to finish his moves off. That is An in tc. Imagine placing your hands on top of a big beach ball and rolling your hands down (any direction) - that is the downward pressure(feeling) of An, simply put.
Well here's a question - if you do judo and taiji, which do you say you do? And why? What if you used to do one, then did the other? And is there a bit of that same "the princples of taiji are so advanced you need a basic few years in judo before you learn them?" Which is the most beautifully succinct expose of a certain very clever, hard to spot thought-trick you often hear across all artial arts.
Personally, I could care less. I'll leave that question to pedants and traditionalists concerned with the purity of their practice. For my part, I don't do any specific style. I just do fight training and any training that helps my game is valid.
Anyone with training time in both? To my uneducated eye there is a lot of overlap: both about taking the opponents balance. Though perhaps Taiji won't sacrifice their own balance/position (e.g. sacrificial throws) to perform a technique? There must be aspects where one art has a more refined/practical answer to a problem.
