why is wing chun seen as wishy washy crap?

From what I have read Alan Orr's style of wing chun views it as attached fighting different but similar to dirty boxing. They do train grappling as well and use their skills in MMA matches.

The funniest part is that you have someone working to make WC work in a realistic manner and he gets blasted in the Wing Chun forums for not doing the "real" wing chun.

Darned if you do and darned if you don't.

 

I just find it amusing that the few who can apparently use wing chun effectively have always trained in a bunch of other martial arts which are commonly known to be effective. Makes me wonder....

 

Just curious, are you someone who believes that Lyoto Machida isn't doing Shotokan in his MMA because he also does Sumo and BJJ?

 

No I can easily see the shotokan influences in lyoto machida. Just as I can easily see where, without his cross training in boxing, it wouldn't have been half as effective. What has this to do with the ineffectiveness of wing chun and the fact that everyone who claims to be able to "make it work" uses a lot of things that AREN'T wing chun in order to do just this very thing?

 

Just curious.
If you can say that karate can be effective when you combine it with other arts, whats wrong with saying the same thing for Wing Chun.

 

IMO wing chun certainly has some useful concepts, and learning these principles, recieving some wing chun training, and incorporating it into your game can most certainly be helpful. HOWEVER...if you go into it with the mindset that wing chun is the be all and end all of martial arts, its word as absolute, and its system is flawless (and believe me, a lot of chunners think that way) then you're in for a rude awakening. Also, many of the stances and techniques in wing chun just don't make sense to me. And I think people who've done wing chun for years and years have probably developed bad habits from this, and that would be detrimental to them being able to do well in, say, MMA.

 

The problem is a number people on this site are saying that you should incorporate other arts to help with your training and have pointed out some people who have effectively. Then Master Betty says/implies that it is down to the other arts not the wing chun that has allowed them to be successful. This is what I was questioning.

 

Hi all well many years ago i trained under grand master william and his brother david chun here in melbourne australia did so for nearly 2 years until a couple of things changed my thoughts on traditional martial arts the first and most concerning was when william him self got me to do a technique with him as i was one of his best up and coming students at the time.

So he asked me to throw a round punch and with my boxing back ground before wing chun my round punch is like hook only a larger ark not a sloppy hay maker like a brawler lol, so being the orthodox stance i throw a left round punch and william wanted to tan sao block it and i nearly hit him flush lol... on the right side of his chin which if i was realy trying it would of been lights out.

william then gave me that cold gaze he is known for and then said thats not a round punch he then showed me that i needed to swing my left arm straight without the kink in the elbow and with my inner elbow facing the ground this allows the tan sao to work with out fail

i then bowed in submission threw the punch the tan sao worked the way he wanted it to and he then followed up with several straight fast punches it was at this time that i realized a more free style like JKD was the way for me and is still to this day.

the other time was when i was helping a higher level student prepare for a tournament and i was sweeping his front leg with a padded pole to mimic a kick he would raise his leg to check which is the right thing to do, but i warned him that he cant rely on the pole to be the same as a real opponent as speed angle ect.. would be different, he told me i don't know what i was talking about and to keep swinging the pole

well he had his fight and got his front shin snapped clean in half with the bone just protruding through the skin and the most ironic thing was that i was the time keeper for his fight and we stared at each other in amazement as they stretcher him of screaming.

cheers

 

William Cheung is also full of crap.

 

Probably because wing chun is known to produce more or less useless fighters except when trained alongside other arts generally known to produce dangerous fighters.

Shotokan has a much better reputation, as does Kyokushin and western boxing. This does not mean one wouldn't become a more well-rounded, better prepared fighter by learning to grapple or learning striking concepts that are not generally known or respected in his native style.

To play off your analogy, Lyoto's fighting ability is almost surely improved, especially for MMA, with his crosstraining.
This does not mean that Lyoto is being carried entirely by his crosstraining, as people are asserting about chunners, because without that crosstraining, Lyoto is still extremely dangerous and would likely murder just about any pure wing chun guy you threw at him.

 

Because it doesnt need to be "combined" it needs to be changed and altered altogether. The shotokan influences are there but lyoto machida doesnt even claim to be using pure shotokan. Machida's striking game is a mix of shotokan, thai boxing and orthodox boxing. Do I think shotokan is effective on it's own? Not really.

Do I think that every single guy who claims to be able to make Wing Chun work is using solely wing chun in order to do that? Hell no! As a pure striking form, kickboxing works, boxing works, thai boxing works, savate works, san shou works, sanda works, kyokushin works etc. All of these things can BENEFIT from cross training in other striking styles, some more than others, but none of them REQUIRE knowledge of another striking style to make the current striking style work. A style that is based solely around striking and needs to be heavily modified and added to by OTHER striking styles in order to make it work is, in my opinion, broken.

 

Thanks for the response. I don't actually like wing chun and was just interested to hear your reasons.

 

I find that true with all styles in general. I practice zhaquan, bagua zhang, and fought in mma, san shou, etc. 99% of ppl never fight, and give stupit opinions or just buy into what everyone else says, and we rarely have much that they'll agree with on.

I see everyone else practice the most simple zhaquan moves different from mine(they are all modern wushu). So I can see that it's a similar situation here. Most ppl just agree on things if they are the norm, even if most things aren't really that effective and watered down.

I do like the way he uses an elbow to create angle, offensive, defensive, control, etc on the arms. I do some similar things but have different stance/footwork.

 

I have trained in both Kyukoshinkai karate (10 years) and another style of karate which I wont mention out of respect for my previous instructor

Both styles were fantastic but could not stand on their own. There was no ground game, there was no clinch game, and close quarter striking was minimal. Yet both had great value to my overall game

In wing chun I have found exactly the same problems - there are many schools which are very traditional how they teach and how they use wing chun. Yet wing chun has some very great techniques and concepts which have helped me improve my martial arts as a whole. I would go as far as to say that wing chun has been the most influential art to me and continues to be so

Having trained in Kamon for many many years, I have seen a great progression of using wing chun in a realistic manner. Although Kevin Chan is a black belt in BJJ and a proficient boxer, he usually keeps the wing chun a very separate entity. He has introduced sparring to merely pressure test the students that walk through the door (ie they dont have to become fantastic boxers, but just learn to deal with heavy strikes coming in)

I think chun gets a bad rap solely because there are many poor instructors who are stuck in the mud with what works and what doesnt. Silly claims that chun is too deadly etc only heightens peoples dislike of the art.
I always used to ridicule TKD as the schools I visited were terrible. Yet I went to one school, and the students were actually doing some okay stuff and it made me cautious of judging an entire art based on one school

Wing chun, as with many arts, is an evolving style.