“Wing Chun remains the punchline of many jokes in the mixed martial arts community. In fact, I often receive tweets and emails asking me to come down on one side or the other in an argument between friends—one will say that Wing Chun is useless in a modern combat sports context, the other will argue that it is simply because no true Wing Chun masters feel moved to compete.
What if I were to tell you that both were wrong? Obviously, the man who thinks a true Wing Chun master could mop up in mixed martial arts is more laughably erroneous, but the idea that Wing Chun can hold no value is short sighted and arrogant.”
For the rest of the article, go to: Wing Chun and the MMA: Controlling the Center by Jack Slack at Fightland
Awesomeman says
April 23, 2015 at 10:11 pmI read the article, and that guy is very knowledgeable, and I wasn’t aware anderson silva uses wing chun, after reading the article, I did research on the silva dude, he admitted that he trains in wing chun, other than that I always thought chain punches are the most used techniques in mma guess trapping hands work
Steven Moody says
April 24, 2015 at 10:58 amI’ve seen video of Silva using a Wooden dummy (but in a sloppy and non-Wing Chun manner). But Silva being the canny operator he is, he may even be really good at it and just presenting a little Op-Sec propaganda. You never know with him.
Awesomeman says
April 24, 2015 at 2:35 pmI’m curious, how come the detractors of wing chun who are using MMA as an argument never realized that wing chun actually has been in MMA and ufc, I mean it’s been under their nose this whole time, why do I have a feeling they’re just throwing conjecture around
Kafka says
May 12, 2015 at 5:53 amI like the article too, and would like to add that even when you are in guard position, chi sao can help in transitioning…by default it is trapping range!!!
Steven Moody says
May 12, 2015 at 11:19 amYes – I’ve been experimenting with using the wedge of my guard to slip to the outside when caught on the inside. You can use a Lan or Jaam to “pop” the opponent’s arms one way or the other or even back a little or pull off a mini-lap to bring them forward, all while staying pretty covered up — its all a continuum.