Thank God for Lyoto Machida.
The name of this article may be a little deceptive in as much as originally I was going to write something about the amiable Brazilian Lyoto Machida bringing some life back into what is becoming an almost accepted style of “MMA” fighting with his Shotokan Karate striking system but someone just beat me to it with an excellent article on that very subject on Sherdog.com. Instead I’ll explore a little of what is happening in the evolution of martial arts through MMA competition and how it is effecting perceptions in our own martial art of Wing Chun. I won’t refer too heavily to previous articles such as “Striking into MMA” which are far more orientated towards the general concept of Trad versus modern martial arts or the often used “Street” versus “Sport”.
So why do I say thank god for Lyoto Machida? Cyclone Wing Chun has been going now for just under four years at the time of writing this article, one of our goals was to start to get our system of Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun seen as a viable and effective striking system no matter what the circumstances, in conjunction with our wider group headed by Alan Orr I think we are beginning to achieve this but in some ways this will never be truly done until somebody goes and wins a major MMA tournament using our system. However at long last at least someone has come along doing showing a “traditional” non sport based system if trained in the right way can be hugely effective in MMA competition and this system turned out to be Shotokan Karate. Sure Chuck Liddell was originally a Kenpo Karate Fighter but his style was far too generic in many ways, Machida has done it with style, or more to the point in his style.
What does this all mean? It’s interesting to see the changes in how students are coming into our club, so many guys come saying “I want to learn MMA”; the truth is they don’t even really know what it is, or much about it just they saw it on TV and thought they’d like to give it a go. In the last few years the band wagon has just got to the point of ugly as it always would, more and more “MMA” clubs are appearing from out of the woodwork with many of them teaching several disciplines very poorly as opposed to one well. In a kind of poetic justice way could we see the re emergence of traditional systems who like Cyclone have taken the MMA competition lessons on board but maintained their strong roots and evolved into something to challenge the accepted practice of BJJ + Wrestling + Muay Thai?? In truth If the three systems above are learned well then a good practitioner will give anyone a hard time but more and more we are seeing a watering down here that will not lead to overall high skill levels in any of the above, could Lyoto Machida be the first of many Traditional Martial Artist MMA converts making a challenge for the MMA crown. Cung Le certainly made some waves with his Chinese Boxing and once his ground game comes up to scratch could certainly make a challenge on the UFC middle weight ranks (assuming he starts fighting again?)
It’s been tough for the last few years almost being embarrassed to use the Wing Chun tag for our system but where traditional pretenders would berate us for not doing what they saw as true “traditional” kung fu we are now seeing MMA practitioners come and join us from other gyms keen to learn more about our system and how our differences can improve their game. Joe Rogan (UFC Commentator) joked about every Karate school in America rubbing their hands as Machida strapped the Light heavyweight belt around his waist but sadly many will use the success of this man as an endorsement of their system which is unlikely to bare much resemblance in its training or application to what the Brazilian actually employs however the spicing up of MMA to include a true mixture of martial art styles again must be welcomed.
For Cyclone we have utilised more and more of the skill sets available to us and now Judo/Jitsu style throws are becoming a common occurrence in sparring thanks to the effort of our Jitsu champ Dave Charlton. Many of the guys are becoming competent grapplers studying both with me and my teacher Dave Harewood and lastly the arrival of guys from kickboxing, Muay Thai , San Shou, Boxing and Karate has had the effect of strengthening our groups sparring skills and adding confidence to many of our guys belief that Wing Chun striking employed properly is maybe different in places but second to no one, no matter where the comparison takes place.
