“Precision beats power. Timing beats speed.”
Conner MacGregor, after knocking ex-UFC flyweight champ Aldo out with first punch of the fight.

I’m a fan of the new flyweight champ MacGregor. I think he is fun to watch (except this time, because it lasted about three seconds) and has an interesting mix of styles.  He is the best example I’ve seen of Tae Kwan Do working in a professional fighter (although, admittedly, I’ve mainly seen UFC fights and have only skimmed those).

Maybe I like him a little extra because I’m “Scottish” (really an Irish-Scotch mutt, but Moody is a Scottish name).  I like his cocky attitude.  Reminds me of Ali or Bruce Lee.  MacGregor is cocky in a funny way, sort of semi-serious — I think he understands he’s in showbiz.

Hopefully Aldo will last longer in the re-match and hopefully the UFC will drum up some good competition for MacGregor down the road (presuming he wins the re-match).

This is the higher level of fighting, this idea of timing.  This is what you really start trying to develop around year 3 – 5 or so, in Wing Chun (doing it part-time, like me).  The idea that you put a hand out there and leave it there, so its already in place for the next action.  Or you use a broken rhythm and hesitate or speed up at just the right time to slip through the hole or to create a moment.

This has to be developed working in slow combinations and then it appears unexpectedly in sparring (or fighting), when the hands find themselves in a familiar configuration and do their thing as they have been taught.

This is the real magic of martial arts, when your body does it itself, effortlessly.

You may have heard me say before that if I wasn’t doing Wing Chun (which basically takes a lifetime to “master,” especially if you start late, as I did), I would love to study Silat.

It has many similarities and shared techniques and ideas with Wing Chun and Kali (and Escrima).

I like how it flows and the smoothness of their transitions and how they are always moving and combining strikes with destruction techniques and taking position and uprooting.  A sequence can involve all of these, as the technician moves deeper and deeper into the opponent’s “territory” (from the third to the second to the first gates).

There is a lot of stuff in the later levels of Wing Chun that involves getting inside the stance of the opponent and uprooting, but I would enjoying learning some of these techniques for destabilizing the standing opponent when you are down.

I think you have to supplement Wing Chun (a striking and standing grappling and kicking art) with some skills to prevent takedown and to get back up if you are taken down and some basic ground game to stay alive if you find yourself tackled.  Saying “they can’t take me down” is silly.

I don’t feel the need to be a BJJ black belt for my purposes, but it makes sense to me to have a few skills for every range.

Its the same logic that has me practicing a little knife now and then, and some stick, and going to the gun range once in a blue moon.  They are not my specialty, but I’m competent.

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The Tang family were another Foshan-based Wing Chun lineage.

Tang Yik was renowned for his capabilities with the pole.

Those of us working with the 9 foot pole know what it means to see a guy handling it like this, in terms of his structural capabilities.  Holy crap!

That exercise where you are standing in the horse and are raising and lowering the pole along your centerline is very difficult and he is doing it no problem with a standard sized pole.  That is no joke.

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