I was just mentioning on another thread that it would be nice to finally have a local fighter get into the UFC or Pride. Then it suddenly struck me - hey YEAH, why has there not been a single Chinese fighter of note (or at all, to my knowledge) in any big MMA competition?
As sure of their own cultural superiority as some of the Japanese can be, I must say that they have whole-heartedly embraced MMA fighting (and all the changes in martial arts training methods that have come with it). Meanwhile, most of the Chinese seem totally oblivious - and continue to shake their heads in that condescending way: ‘You foreignors just don’t understand real kungfu’ and so on.
Now I realize that Japan’s a whole lot bigger (and hipper on foreign stuff) than Taiwan; then again, China’s a WHOLE lot bigger than Japan too - and nada from there either.
This seems like a trivial point; still, it seems to mirror the two quite different paths the two cultures took in the 19th century – in spite of their seemingly identical ethnocentric and xenophobic tendencies.
At that time, although the Japanese continued to consider themselves superior, they quite proactively studied what they felt the West had to offer in technology and information that they obviously lacked. Meanwhile, although there were half-hearted efforts, the Chinese for the most part just consoled themselves in their ‘moral superiority’ and let themselves get further and further behind technologically.
Now I’m sorry if this is making some rather sweeping historical and cultural generalizations, but what do you think? Historically, the Japanese do seem to have an ability to appreciate, study and imitate what they deem to be good, regardless of its origin. The object of such imitation often then gets absorbed into their culture - baseball or their first-millenium mass importation of everything Chinese are pertinent examples.
In contrast, the Chinese, while having originated a lot of good stuff, seem FAR less capable of such adaptation - and in my opinion, their total absence in MMA competition is another demonstration of this.
I think most of the Chinese find the full contact grappling stuff boring. Incidentally there are also not many Chinese in boxing either. There are just a few in boxing but far more Thais Koreans and Japanese. I just don’t think the Chinese are particularly into full contact sports. Perhaps in the olympics we will see some chinese western boxers etc.
I don’t think it is a problem of adaption as the Chinese martial arts created san do (wrong spelling i guess) in reaction to them getting beaten up by the Thai boxers in the 1980’s challenge matches.
Perhaps you will get one or two Chinese fighters but i don’t think it will hit the main stream (they even took it off Asashi recently). May be it will change if the UFC becomes an olympic sport (pigs might fly). Anyway i think they are happy with their kung fu and enjoy stand up fighting more, so each to their own! After all most people in Taiwan don’t use chokes and arm bars to fight but rather pick up the nearest piece of metal or call five friends! Anyway i hope to be proven wrong but nah i don’t think it will take off, in fact i think it has passed its peak!
Full contact martial arts competitions are enormously popular all over Asia. Major San Da competitions can attract vast audiences in the mainland. As everyone knows, in SE, Asia Muay Thai is very popular. Even in Taiwan, MMA competition from Japan and the USA appear regularly on TV.
MMA is a martial arts product. It is only popular in a limited range of countries outside Taiwan and has only been around for a very short time.
MMA, Muay Thai, and San Da are all martial arts products, but they have traditional fan bases and large amounts of money backing them - not to mention their association with gambling.
MMA remains relatively underdeveloped in the Asia market because it does not have the money or the international presence to attract fans from more traditional, local full contact events[/img]
While I have to agree with Scott that money plays a major roll in just about everthing but I’d like to go a step further. IMHO, I believe that Kung-Fu is regarded as a highly respected and traditional art form. As most followers of MA know, KF has many different facets. In this lays my point: Mental Kung-Fu. Hard to grasp by some but there are many different philosophies. Ground and pound/senseless violence might be novel to some but I’d figure the Chinese see it as senseless and loss of control. Traditionalists. Control is also the foundation of Kung-Fu. Kung-Fu is health of mind first, form and finally defence.
I’m not taking anything away from MMA. In fact I believe that if you study more than one art, preferably three, you’d probably out perform and destroy most, if not all Kung-Fu artists. Artists hmmmm.
MMA was composed for fighters. Self defence was NOT in mind when developing the sport. It was developed as a “The best offence is the best defence”. Destruction and fast. Get your opponent out of the picture as swiftly as possible.
Sure money plays a roll. Of course it does but ask some old timers who have practiced the art long before you were your father’s wet dream. My ‘bet’ is on the tradition, fitness and carrying on the ART form. Self defence lays somewhere in there but I truly believe Kung-Fu is much more to the Chinese than meets the eye.
I’d love to hear Taiwan Foot’s opinion on this. And Foot if you would be so kind as to give me all of the details of when, where and how much your gym happens to cost. We’ve spoken before but I didn’t follow up. I think I’m ready.
Yes good reply. better than mine lol. I think you are right in that it doesn’t really have the traditional fan base. San da (i spelt san do) has the advantage of coming from kung fu which is very popular in China and Taiwan, so as Scott points out it already has a large fan base. MMA mainly came from the ju jitsu and grappling fan bases and these arts are comparatively not that popular in Taiwan. For example there are some good judo people in Taiwan but there are far far more people doing Tai kwon do. K1 is far more popular as is San da and especially tai kwon do. Anyway i think Scott has more or less hit the nail on the head with his reply.
p.s.
(personally i love grappling
I don’t doubt that kung-fu continues to be practiced because there are people who view it as a traditional art form, but I think that’s somewhat different from fenlander’s original question. I understood his question to be referring to popularity. He was concerned with the question of why MMA is not a popular activity in Taiwan. In other words, he was asking why you don’t see MMA here in the way you do in Japan or the USA. My answer was that the money that supports full-contact martial arts is being invested in Sanda.
I suppose I’m also saying MMA is not in competition with traditional kung fu.
There would be 2 kinds of competition this refers to. One would be competition for students; the other would be competition for paying sponsors, either fans or commercial sponsors. While there may some people who study Sanda or MMA who started in traditional martial arts, I doubt there are many people studying traditional martial arts who view Sanda or MMA as a substitute. So in this sense, kung fu is not a competitor of full-contact fighting.
When it comes to commercial endorsement, traditional martial arts has a very small share of the market. The amount of money invested in Sanda would dwarf the amount invested in Choy Li Fut or Wing Chun. This kind of investment would include training facilities, government and private investment in tournaments, and the gambling that accompanies the sport. Only Tae Kwon Do and Judo would be able to compare with Sanda in this regard. In a sense, this has to be the case. Since there is no representation for Wing Chun in the Olympics or other international sporting bodies, the amount of money available may be enough for a couple of schools to operate profitably, but it is nothing compared to Tae Kwon Do. As a result, there is a Tae Kwon Do school on every corner, but kung fu schools are extremely hard to find.
Then again, Japan has a long history of going to the fights. They were big into wrestling for years before and especially after WWII. It is this tradition of having organized fighting federations as spectator sports that lead into MMA gaining a wider appeal.
Wrestling, especially in Japan, has always straddled the line between fiction and realism. There are also organizations and wrestlers who mixed martial arts and wrestling. It wasn’t that big of a leap to get the real fighters going at it.
There doesn’t seem to be that much of a history of spectator events in China. Blame it on the Communists if you want for the mainland, but even in Taiwan there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of organized fighting associations. They don’t have martial arts schools to put up competitors much less competitions for them to appear in.
While that may be true of Japan, it is just as true of China. Sanda competitions in China attract huge audiences. Most international sanda champions are from China. The proportion of the population of the population involved in combat sports is almost certainly not much higher in Japan. The lack of big-money MMA in Taiwan is not related to lack of participation. In fact, there are vast numbers of people studying martial arts in Taiwan. The difference between Taiwan and Japan is what combat sports they watch.
Take a look at the Martial Art’s lineage here in Taiwan…
Shuai Chiao ~ mostly throws, very little punching (Ba Gwa style punching, but limited and generally not taught)
Shaolin Temple based Martial Arts ~ Multiple animal based diciplines. Most don’t have any ground movements.
So grappling on the ground is not so big in asia. The reason is, and this may sound like an over generalization but it’s true; there are too many people in asia. What does that have to do with it? Well, if you are on the floor, you stand of chance of getting kicked in the head… and then it’s game over. So the floor is the LAST place you want to end up in most Chinese fights with a lot of crowds… Does that thinking still hold true? I’m not sure, but it sure makes sense. I’m going to the “annual sale” here at Sogo tonight; and I’m bracing myself for a lot of pushing and shoving. I can’t imagine trying to take a fight to the floor… You’d get your face stepped on.
The thing that isn’t helping is “vocabulary”. All my friends, relatives, and my wife’s family know what “wrestling” is. It’s WWF/WWE. So when I said “I wrestled most of high school” they look at me funny, and ask me questions like “how does it feel to jump off the top rope??”
I disagree. Like some above have noted, there have been lots of good wrestlers from Japan, but far fewer from China. For example in the 2004 olmypics in greco roman wrestling, Russia had the most medals at 10, Japan and US tied for second with 6 medals (2 golds for Japan), Korea had 2 medals and China had only one. sports.yahoo.com/olympics/athens … ing/medals
I think that’s typical. I wrestled in school and I remember a bunch of good Japanese wrestlers but I don’t recall any Chinese wrestlers. I think for some reason the Chinese aren’t into grappling.
On the other hand, those Chinese kung fu fighters on tv (with the corny show of girls carrying flags and people beating drums, etc.) are small but they look really tough. The loser always seems to get beat up very badly and I would imagine they get paid peanuts for it too.
The largest ethnic component of my BJJ team is overseas Chinese. A good number of them wrestled in high school.
In fact, tradition has little to do with excellence at sport. It would be easy to claim that Chinese have no tradition of swimming and are scared of water ghosts and that’s why they don’t have a strong swimming team - except they do. In fact, you could make a similar argument for any Chinese underperformance at sport in general - except that it doesn’t exist. Nations excel at sport when they are promoted in that nation. Explanations appealing to tradition come afterward. When China starts winning gold medals in wrestling, there will be the claim that it’s a traditional pastime, like this page from the Official Website of Chinese Olympic Committee en.olympic.cn/china_oly/ancient_ … 11139.html
