Why Wing Chun Gets Destroyed. 

Perhaps no other popular martial art that dares to step in the ring to test themselves gets dominated as much as Wing Chun. Bruce Lee came from Wing Chun and rejected traditional kung fu for many reasons. Some of the reasons as demonstrated in this video. Get Legendary Strategies: www.lawrencekenshin.com/

Anyone who believes their "style is invincible" is by default putting themselves at a disadvantage. First rule of combat, never underestimate your opponent.

I practiced Wing Chun for several years before taking up Khmer boxing (exactly the same as Muay Thai) when I moved to Cambodia. I think WC does have a handful of good moves, but it's an art that only really works for people who already know how to fight. It has some good supplementary close-range moves. Regarding the comment about Chi Sau being unrealistic in a fight: my sifu made it very clear that you can't realistically use Chi Sau the way it's trained in class in a real fight. Rather, it's used to develop sensitivity so that moves that do work are more embedded in your muscle memory. Pak Sau, Bong Sau, and Lap Sau are pretty good moves, and after several years of training, you can develop fairly powerful short-range vertical punches. Still, if a young guy asked me about training in Wing Chun, my advice would be to learn boxing and judo or wrestling, or train in an MMA gym for several years, and then do WC later in life.

Bruce Lee was quoted as saying...the most difficult opponent is a grappler. He respected the future MMA.

I agree with your analyses. I myself practiced karate, taekwondo, ninjitsu, thai boxing and wing chun. I didn't liked the basic stance of wing chun but a few elements are practically useful to apply in sparring. Even Bruce Lee who made it popular used only a few wing chun techniques. He said anyone who trained boxing and judo can defeat traditional kung fu (basically modern mma). - "The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt on any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man." - Bruce Lee

I'm a Muay Thai practitioner of about 20 years, and have sparred with a load of different styles as I love martial arts. I will say that despite Win Chung having blaring weaknesses its hand trapping is quite viable assuming the practitioner has sparred a lot as you say. In my experience sparring against some of these dudes, I was always impressed and how effectively they could get a good hand parry into a quick strike. It felt like a losing situation against a good opponent if you focused only on punching.

As a former practitioner of Wing Chun, we used to spar quite a lot, but it was only ever Wing Chun vs Wing Chun, not any other style. I think that was a huge weakness and I tend to agree with most of your points in the video. Wing Chun has serious practical issues.

One of my coaches is a Wing Chun practitioner. He really enjoys it and practices all the time as he says it helps with keeping flexible, is a good active recovery, and is decent cardio that isn't as boring as LISS or as fatiguing as HIIT. BUT, for combatives training, he also agrees that it's pretty much useless comparatively. He has a passion for it, but he likes to state it's for personal purposes, exercise and entertainment.

This will always be a timeless argument. I studied Wing Chun for 14 years, only retiring due to injury and I think with WC, it is down to how you are taught and how you train. So many WC schools are too traditional - inflexible, dogmatic adherence to old form (low guard, exaggerated footwork etc) no sparring, too much chi-sau and not testing your form against REALISTIC attacks. When I used to train, we would spar with gloves and gumshields every class - more classic boxing techniques, not only to learn/drill basic boxing skills and timing but to also recognise what type of attacks are going to get thrown at you. We would also train what we called feeding techniques everything class, in pairs, throwing REALISTIC punches at each other and practicing your WC techniques against these attacks against gradually increased speed and aggression. When you became more experienced and were fed attacks by someone not holding back you could really feel the pressure and how vulnerable you are if your techniques are not properly applied. Trained at a high level of intensity, this would put you as close as you could be to how it would feel in a real fight. But you always have to be honest with yourself and train with and against REALISTIC attacks or otherwise you are just fooling yourself. Our Sifu was purely focused on our WC being trained and utilised for real self defence in real situations - no kidding yourself and understanding that you could be in a fight for your life. Again, any expectation less than this is just kidding yourself.

I practised William Chaung's classical Wing Chün for about 15 years, I was also brought up with an amateur and professional boxing background. I came from a rough neighbourhood, I used to bounce at pubs and clubs where we had to deal with a lot of gang members and wannabe tough guys. Back then it was normal for pub security to fight like they were on the streets protecting themselves. You weren't limited to using only restraints and holds. Here's the thing, when we did sparring at Wing Chun, it was hopelessly ineffective. I would simply use boxing and dominate my sparring partners. My sparring partners would stubbornly continue to attack using Wing Chun but it was of no use. My opinion is this, Wing Chun is a self defence system that I found highly effective at close range, confined spaces, multiple attackers. Why because applying it in its self defence form, basically survival mode, not thinking of it as a ring sport, you can then use your thrusting fingers to the eyes, palm strikes to the groin, chops to the neck, attacking your opponents knee with kicks. The strategy being used was to finish or incapacitate your opponent as quickly as possible for survival purposes. These no-rule attacks and techniques form a major part of Wing Chun's self defence application which you just cant practice in sparring with gloves on and rules such as no kicking to the groin. Its pointless because you're forced to throw out most of the advantage that lethal attacks give you. Now I have no problem using boxing on the street one on one, but sometimes attackers are twice your size, twice as strong, may have friends with them, may have weapons. If I am going to seriously consider my survival, someone's getting kicked in the nuts, I am going to use thrusting fingers on someone's eyes etc.. My strikes will be to all the vulnerable areas of my attackers. They won't be flashy rapid arm punches. Then I'm going to run as fast as I can and get the fk out of there. Just saying

The Chinese MMA Fighter who dominated the Wing-Chun guys had his Social Credit Score demolished. He lost everything as of a couple of years ago. Poor guy. I hope he is doing better now.

Bruce Lee didn’t drop WC. He realized all system have advantages and disadvantages. He took what is effective in WC and disregarded what is not. He still maintained many WC strikes and principles in his JKD.

Did Wing Chun for around 7 years. My original instructor implemented more self-defense only techniques in the beginning as he used to work as a bouncer for over a decade. However, down the road the concepts got so theoretical that I could not continue doing it anymore and have since transferred to Muay Thai, BJJ, Wrestling and am very happy I did that. The overall problem with Wing Chun and many other traditional Martial Arts is not only that it gives people the wrong confidence. It also creates a lot of arrogant people that think they live in a Kung Fu movie and have no idea of the repercussions of actually fighting.

Bruce lee even stated in an interview, that wing chun was insuffient because it limited his movements to certain techniques. Don't get me wrong, there are certain things in wing chun that can be used. But, ultimately, it's just too limited.

I used to spar with the Wing Chun guys when I was training Muay thai and boxing at my local fighting gym. It was actually pretty fun, and at a sparring pace it does some things halfway decently, like punch catching and kick checking. Their little punch catch pivot followed by a bicycle punch thing works in sparring because we were not throwing punches with the intention of doing harm, but simply trying to land in my opponents openings and avoid their return strikes. The second I would switch to a boxing stance and start throwing sharp jabs to the head and body, and stepping in and out of range, they would struggle to land anything meaningful. But the Wing Chun style front kick and inside leg kick were effective. All in all I liked sparring with them because it was different than and challenging. We were all at a pretty low skill level relative to pros obviously, so most sparring was just practicing the techniques we were learning. Just my .02 on the topic.

a lot of valid points here. I've practiced Wing Chun as sort of a supplement to my mixed bag of martial arts training. One thing I found is that it benefits "hand discipline". It gives one great discipline in keeping the hands up and forging a pretty good guard. My blocks and deflections increased greatly through Wooden Dummy training and probably through the Sil Lim Tao; sticky hands actually had very little to do with that. I have noticed that it's very common for Wing Chun-ers to get suckered with hook punches. I think a lot of that is due to the lack of training against these punches. It takes immense amount of training to be able to react to these strikes from a Wing Chun base. I haven't been too particularly favorable on the Wing Chun stance-- it does limit mobility greatly. My conclusion right now isn't so much Wing Chun is useless and doesn't work, but at the same time, it still has some proving to do

Great analysis. One of my friends trains Wing Chun whilst actually sparring. The result is that he looks like a regular kickboxer but he just has a greater ability to counter off of his parries.

I'm primarily a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guy now and I have done Kickboxing and trained in different styles of Karate, but I am still totally one of the guys that wants so badly for a Wing Chun guy or girl to show up and dominate without hate or debate it's probably never going to happen but I still appreciate the lineage and legend of Wing Chun as well as many other traditional martial arts that's kind of in that same category, they are beautiful to watch demonstrated

It does not work when regulated in sanctioned fights. It only works in the streets when unregulated giving the practitioner a chance to target soft tissue areas such as eyes, throat, nose and groin

I practiced karate and after some time I tried boxing, light spar was not a problem but as soon as I asked for some harder sparring initially I was eating a lot of jabs and straight to my face, but in a few sessions I learned my head movements and even the pull counter. So yeah I can understand how a wing chun practicioner has no clue against real punches to the face

Agreed completely 👌 Other note - great to see you're doing so well. From reviewing my bag footage 7 years ago on the Nak Muay Nation page to over 400k subs. So happy for you and your continued success!

One of the highest level BJJ competitors, Rafael Mendes, describes a few of his techniques using Wing Chun techniques. Maybe there is a coincidence but the martial arts has evolved. You have to evolve BJJ just as you have to evolve Wing Chun

Completely true, but it always makes me wonder: did these arts always used to be this ineffective, or did they degenerate over time due to no sparring and always obeying teacher and tradition? There must have been some initial version that saw some success and impressed people so that they decided to learn it, and then it decayed over hundreds and hundreds of years. It seems like TMAs developed from seeing one thing work a few times and then refining it with the assumption that it's the ultimate method. Aikido is all about wrist control, Wing Chun is all about center-line punches and arm trapping, taekwondo is all about fancy snap kicks, taichi is about flowing movements, some of the animal arts are all about raking the eyes etc. It makes me wonder whether the ancient precursors to these arts were more complete.

Narrator: Wing chun is one of the most BS martial arts that a martial artist could ever train. Aikido: Hold my beer.

You mentioned that Xu Xiaodong has a bit of MMA training, but in fact he has been training for over 20 years and was an instructor(until the Chinese Communist gov wiped out his record with a social credit score combo) at a reputable Sanshao school, training fighters in Sanshao(a practical Chinese kickboxing discipline) So, he's definitely not just a bloke with a bit of training.

So true, I started with Wing Chun for about year. I asked the instructor what do you do if you fall down, he said dont fall. I left quickly and took up BJJ and Muay Thai which are fantastic. Wing Chun is better than nothing for confidence but you better hope your opponent is not more athletic and stronger than you.

I practiced Wing Chun years ago, one reason for leaving was I spared a Muay Thai Boxer from Thailand and he utterly destroyed me with a smile on his face :) Main reason I left, its one of the most TOXIC martial arts environments I have ever been in, all these lineage arguments, e.g. don't train with that master, i'll disown you etc When I look at possible Wing Chun effectiveness.. we have Qi la la, Alan Orr's MMA boys and not much else representing it. There was a old clip on youtube - Wing Chun (André Balschmieter) vs. Kickboxer (unknown) The kickboxer is not the best, also intimidated, but the Wing Chun guy clearly has sparring experience (hes had some MMA fights) and he really uses the principles well in that clip. Ramsey Dewey said one very insightful thing about Wing Chun, it literally puts you out of position.. all the time. Because of this massive focus on pressure and the center line and silly chain punching down the middle and you have no sparring experience with other styles if any sparring at all. So everyone dances around this very very predictable thing. Ironically.. the one thing I never stopped practicing of Wing Chun, is the Sil Lum Tao form. Meditative, reduced my injuries, helped my BJJ, Tan Sau, Bong Sau, Fook Sau, all wrestling moves to me.

I have practiced wing chun for many years and I'm not making any claims about it being superior/inferior to any other art but I have to correct you on almost every point you brought up in your video. 1. Just like with any other art, it boils down to the practitioner. I can find endless videos of people who suck at every single art and say "look, look it doesn't work". I studied in a traditional school and you wouldn't even get accepted if your intention was to be a show fighter. First You learn your lineage and respect the fact that the art was outlawed for many years in old China and it was not designed for show casing. You are not to dishonour your lineage by showcasing the art and displaying what others have worked for in secret to eventually be passed on to you. 2. Wing chun punches generate LOTS of power. When performed correctly the power is generated from the leg and twisting motion of the hip as you follow through. This is different to rolling punches which are a bombardment technique. They do generate less power than if you threw your hardest punch but it's not like you throw your hardest every single time you throw a punch in a fight. Just like any other art, each technique has its appropriate time and place. Rolling punches will definitely leave you bloody and disoriented when landed and it's easy to do in the right situations and they are effortless. It is pure body mechanics and weight behind those munches. Very little muscular input is required and allows you to maintain stamina. 3. Where I studied, sparring was mandatory. 4. The horse stance is very different to a forward stance. It's use is for confined spaces and environments where superior balance is required. It looks awkward but its excellent for defending against low kicks and attempts to throw you off balance laterally. The triangular structure is very grounding and offers another layer of support. In a real life situation you would require a horse stance less than 1% of the time and is not something a good practitioner relies upon for winning in most circumstances. 5. Bruce Lee was disowned by ipman for teaching Wing chun to westerners not because of any disappointment he had with it. He was not allowed to study further and he developed his own art. 6. Kicking and leg defense were also a big part of what I learned. It is true I do not see a lot of Wing chun videos with guys making use of their legs but that's their decision not to use them. Not the arts fault. If you ever see guys that are good at leg trapping you would change your opinion. I couldn't watch much more of this but your lack of facts is disappointing. I was really hoping for something more critical and seriously analytical. If you are a person deciding which art to learn, follow your heart but do not include information from this video in to your decision making process. This guy has no idea what he's talking about.

after his ufc wash out, dan severn started his own fight promotion in florida called "danger zone." he, dan severn, professional zangief impersonator, fought tkd, karate, wing chun, "real" ninjitsu guys from strip malls all over florida who saw a flier & signed up. it was old ufc rules: no weight classes or time limits. i recall one ripped, solid 165lb wing chung fighter's fingers poking towards the camera as he was clinging to the cage in order to prevent a 265lb dan severn from supplexing him as "the beast" already had him by the waist and was humping back like a pilot pulling a plane out of a nose dive. SPOILER: he got supplexed unconscious by & taken out on a stretcher before a crowd of at least 50 people. "not a lot of anti-zangief tactics in wing chun" i remember thinking.

I think you have to do more research on Wing Chun regarding chi sau and strikes. Chi Sau is a training tool for different uses like sensitivity, staying within the lines, open your opponent up take take their lines and more. Also as far as punches, they use some of the same concepts as in boxing, muay thai, and other striking arts as far as using ground power and relaxing the shoulder for the power to go through the fists when punching. The pigeon toe stance is another training tool which helps the practitioner to within the "triangle" so the punches and kicks stays within the frame of the opponent. The only thing that sets a lot of wing chun practitioners back is that they don't do pressure testing as far as sparring as you would see in boxing and other striking arts.

The real art of the style is lost just like kung fu. Its watered down today and will get you hurt.

Good video.Only thing I would disagree is that Chi Sao isn't fighting nor sparring.It's an excercise for developing hand sensitivity and reflexes.

My martial arts journey started with wing chun. After sparring with my buddy who took boxing for half the time I was training I switched to muay thai. Everything you say in this video is 100% true

My training in leg exercises and cardio has prepared me for future fights. I'm pretty sure I can avoid all strikes by running away as fast and far as I can without getting winded

I went up against a so called wing chun expert when I was 22 and had only done a bit of boxing when I was 12 but stopped training because as a diabetic I was not allowed to compete, the wing chun expert was about as expert as pedigree chum and got punched senseless, I took up kickboxing at 26 and it saved me from getting a good kicking when I was attacked by 6 lads while doing about 6 miles of my 10 mile run

Great analysis, I love your videos. Simply put, a martial art without sparring = little to no effectiveness. On the same principle, if you spar but only with body hits (no head), your'e gonna get eaten in the ring. Happened to me, I was years in a classic martial art, barely spar and if yes then no face. I went once to try a thai boxing gym, a guy with a year experience beaten me without difficulties. After that I joined muai thai and never looked back.

It's worth mentioning that the Wing Chun a fighter is allowed to use in combat is a stripped down version. It was originally intended for unarmed peasants to fight militia and many of the strikes are intended to maim an opponent, i.e strikes to the throat / eye pokes / kicks that step through into the side of the knee, Many of these strikes of quite rightly banned in combat sports.

I trained with European Wing Tsun practitioners who always practiced punch strength and had some of the hardest blows I ever felt. There was sparring and hand to hand. I think the traditional , China/Hong Kong Wing Chun is ineffective like many traditional arts. Not just Wing Chun.

"Take things as they are: punch when you have to punch; kick when you have to kick. Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own." - Bruce Lee

I been practicing wing chun around 4 years now. here's my take on it, and I asked SiHing about wing chun in general on youtube once, he explained this way to me. they didn't really understand wing chun or know how actually to fight, if we're just going to use wing chun from 400 years ago in modern days, of course it's not going to work, we have to evolved or adapted to make it work. thats why my Sifu pressure tested all of techniques and he will keep on updating his system. I am blessed to find school like that. we also train defense against boxing and wresting techniques. we learn how to take hits, everything we do isn't light sparring, they don't hold back. Chi Sao is never meant to be used in combat, it's just training to develop their reflexes, sensitivity, structure and form. Bruce Lee said wing chun was insuffient because it limited his movements to certain techniques that was because he never really learn full system of wing chun and he didn't learn how to control opponents due to the fact he left Hong Kong for America before he even got chance to do so. thats why he fill up with other martial arts styles. boxer/mma will train 40 hours a week with few different techniques in gym vs wing chun person train million different different techniques in kwoon 3 time a week so who is likely to win in fight? Person who spent 40 hours a week for training.

Another problem with Wing Chun is that many of the techniques that the style heavily relies on involve the practitioner occupying both of their hands offensively, such as trapping with one hand and striking with the other. It seems like a great tactic in theory, but in practice it means you are spending too much time in punching range with your face completely unguarded, and your opponent can often just circle their punch out of the way of your trapping hand, causing you to swat at air while a hook comes around and hits you in the face. Wing Chun encourages practitioners to embrace the tendencies that beginners in real striking should be training to stop doing (i.e. reaching your arms towards your opponent's hands to prevent them from hitting you). Ultimately, I think Wing Chun has some useful techniques, but they are only very useful in the way that a wheel kick or a spinning backfist in useful; you should only use them infrequently enough that your opponent doesn't anticipate it, because otherwise you can easily get countered.

I have always had a passion for Wing Chun and always will. With that said, I think that the reason why so many of its practicioners are having a hard time with so many different styles is because they hold to the traditional aspects of it too tightly. As a result, they lack the flexibility to adapt to what is in front of them. It's all about flexibility. For example, while working in the school system, two male students were fighting. The assistant principal restrained one. When the other students saw me coming, he started throwing punches at me. I immediately put myself in what my safe/attack distance. No need to explain why I call it that. While there, I was timing his punches being thrown and assessing his speed. When I knew that I had both, I Bong Sao with my right, Pak Sao with my left, parried his right punch, entered, grabbed him around his waist in a bear hug, and held him until calmed down and surrendered. Now, if that were a real fight and I used that same approach, my opponent would have been in trouble. Flexibility. It's all about flexibility.

Weapon based marts do not work in rings with fists. The light fast punches are very effective with knives in hand.

I'm a wing chun beginner and my teacher told me since the beginning that this martial art is for self defence. The most effective moves are not allowed in challenges because are dangerous for health. We do a different training for challenges with sparring. But i agree with you: using only wing chun to fight for a challenge make it seem like it's a loss of time. Self defence fights last only seconds and if in this small time you have better touch sensibility, faster hands and you know where to strike probably you'll save your life. Love your videos

Wing Chun is like the guy in Kung Pow the trained wrong on purpose.

Because those wing chun guys were not masters, were posers, even Xu Xiadong (One of the MMA guys) say it in the title of his videos, also there are MMA or UFC fighters that use wing chun and they win the fight more quick than others MMA guys.

When a Chinese man unmasked his own nation's art, it really makes a great impact. So far a countless time Wing Chun was defeated yet they always made stories for excuse and got away with it.

Every style of fighting is special; its not about the style but about the person using it

I think WC's best use is at the very beginning of a street confrontation, when both participants are standing in close proximity & square-on to eachother.

As a youthful traditional martial artist, I was quite taken with what struck me as Wing Chun's stoic efficiency. Today, I recognize it as an especially flawed overall approach to combat given what seems to be almost universally absent head movement (a missing ingredient in many TMA's, in fact), effective footwork, and sheer obliviousness to the reality that an opponent who is throwing strikes with power is moving toward you in such a way the requires both the ability to move and to counter strike with timing, speed, and power- all of which seem to be in short supply in this esoteric art. Mind you, these are many of the same criticisms I have leveled at my own TMA (Oki/Jap/Kor) karate- so, I am practiced at recognizing the particular kind of ineffectiveness that propagates within the gilded enclaves of the TMA world. Perhaps the most ironic thing is that the origin story of Wing Chun tells of a collection of Chinese masters pooling their knowledge together to form a kind of early mixed martial art, if you will.... Ah, evolution.

Here are some fighting tips from personal experience in relevance to this video about wing chun being useful or useless. As somebody who has had a solid 3 years wing chun training to almost teacher level (skipped the weapons training because I wasn't interested, completed all hand to hand training) with a very open mind and alot of streetfighting experience before AND after learning wing chun I will give my summary: - SPARRING IS A MUST. We had sparring, but it was only light. there were also alot of weak people in my class, both physically and mentally who I knew would be cannon fodder in a real fight, these are people who would get dominated like most of these RU-vid videos I've been witnessing. I had to spar with friends / got into actual fights to gain experience. - WING CHUN PROMOTES the idea of being able to win fights if you are smaller than the opponent. This I think creates a false sense of security which is why there are so many scrawny unfit wing chun students. Strength training, cardio and conditioning all MUST be incorporated into your training. You can't win fights if you can't apply power to your attacks, end of. This is why Muay Thai gets a better reputation. Most wing chun practitioners are weak. - THE STANCE is only useful for a few second's when you are very close and in correct position to plant in. And I'm not taking about the silly toes inward bird stance as I would never face someone like this, it would be strongest side facing opponent. Kind of like southpaw but with strongest hand forward. At this point the punches you throw are going to be landing/getting blocked this is the point where you will just pivot to where the opponent is pushing your punches this in turn creates the ' divert his force against him ' but will be happening very fast and alot of times unless he goes down in 1-2 hits like I had done. - STAMP KICKS/low side kicks are very useful (and dangerous). These need to be thrown from a certain point though. Not from a wing chun bird stance. One side forward ONLY. You must be light on your feet until the right moment. Never plant into a stance in the middle of the street awaiting incoming attacks thinking you will be able to deflect punches. Most likely you will get KO'ed. - CHI SAO is only useful for milliseconds of a fight an it will look nothing like it does when training. It is literally used to get you used to sensitivity i.e your punches being pushed / diverted and how to counterattack with this. - STRAIGHT BLAST is a very effective punch but must be treated as a strong jab. I prefer to punch like this because it feels more stable. Also, it can be used during a pivot whilst moving your head to create a corkscrew kind of punch where you will hit your opponent and avoid being hit simultaneously. - CHAIN PUNCHES do work but again you need power each punch must be treated as punching THROUGH someone behind the head and only used in short bursts (uses alot of energy) and again in the right area (near a wall or if he's down and you are tracking in). - ELBOWS AND KNEES are very good but overkill to b honest. - FINGER STRIKE works but overkill to be honest. As Bruce Lee rightly said, absorb what is useful and discard what is useless. There are a good amount of useful techniques to be taken from wing chun. But alot which are useless. I'd recommend mixing the BEST PARTS of wing chun as I've mentioned above with alot of boxing, thai boxing, brazilian jiu-jitsu and whatever else may work for you and your body type and train your body at the gym just don't over do it on muscle mass as this can slow you down. Don't be a guy who thinks styles prevail over another. It's about the individuals heart, training and natural skill. Stay alert and keep safe.

people forgot the origin of Wing Chun. It was created by a woman and meant for weak people like women, which explains it's defensive form. Offence is the best defense and that is why Wing Chun struggles against every other martial arts because it is the most defensive striking martial arts.

I loved and wanted to train Wing Chun for a long time and had been learning it from online sources, but since there weren't any good schools near me I started going to a JKD school instead. While training JKD I've found a lot of bad habits that I had been teaching myself in trying to learn Wing Chun, that being said I don't know if that's due to not having been taught in person, or defects in the system itself. My teacher in JKD is of the same opinion as you, in that the way Wing Chun is traditionally trained is ineffective and land swimming, he's a firm proponent of sparring. That being said there are several Wing Chun practitioners that seem to be making it work in combat sports, Alan Orr and his Iron Wolves fight team have tested his Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun in MMA, boxing, and kickboxing competition and done really well with it. Similarly Kevin Lee here on RU-vid has been doing great stuff. There are others who's Wing Chun looks pretty great like Dominick Izzo and Gary Lam though I don't know if they or their students have tested their Wing Chun in combat sports, but without training with them I can't really make a judgement. I think a large part of why Wing Chun gets dominated in these combat sports is the lack of emphasis on physical conditioning and fitness seen in many of these other disciplines. That being said there seems to be a consensus in the Wing Chun and JKD community that there is a lot of bad Wing Chun and JKD out there, but the same can be said of any martial art, there are mcdojos for any art out there. And yes while Muay Thai, boxing, wrestling, and Bjj have seen the most success in combat sports, I really want to see other styles utilized in combat sports as well. Hopefully we will see more JKD and Wing Chun practitioners emphasize conditioning and gear their training towards realism, whether in self defense or combat sports (I really dislike the "self defense only", "it's too lethal for sports" people, if it's an effective martial art it can do both, all arts have more lethal moves not used in competition, it's not like a Bjj guy couldn't just snap a person's neck, but they manage not to do it so why can't we? But I digress).

Traditional martial art without sparring and pressure testing have the same outcome KO and humiliation ...

All "wing chun practitioners" you watch on internet don't know how to step, can't close the distance, can't circle around, can't sweep, can't control the adversary momentum, don't have a clue how to use their elbows, don't know the distance they should stay, don't aim for the neck and always get into a bladed stance out of desperation because they can't reach the target (putting themselves in a position their techniques don't work). I call them "wing chun dummies"- how can they fight if they don't know how to move? Wing Chun is a good, but incomplete, martial art.

I'm a wing chun praticioner and totally agree with your analisys. The most of practitioners do not spar and do not test the techniques trained. It is a fact that lineage and family make a lot of difference within wing chun. The family I belong to is called Applied wing chun, maintained by sifu Duncan Leung. The emphasis is on combat. Search "applied wing chun" and you will see a big difference to others lineages.

Absolutely correct 👍🏾. I boxed as kid but fell in love with kung-fu movies. Which led me to wing Chung. It isn't effective at all, unless you have a boxing background. It wasn't a huge waist of time because I got to see what does and doesn't work in real life. Wrestling, boxing, kick boxing, muy thai, and Bjj are the paths to follow to learn real self defense.

As a former Judo player and an Arnis player. There are advantages and disadvantages for each combat sport or style.

I did 2 years of wing Chun. The problem is that's completely centered around dirty fighting. Punching the throat, poking the eyes and kicking the groin. That's the reason for the stance, arm punches, chi sau, lack of sparring. However, as we learned from judo, it's better to have a martial art that rely on safe but effective techniques and spars, than one that rely on dangerous techniques but doesn't spar. But you could look at Applied Wing Chun school, from Duncan Leung, it's a school that spars and competes, looks very different from other schools.

I absolutely love Wing Chun. I also recognise that it's use is primarily to surprise attack street punks that have little or no training. Against any decent boxer, grappler or kicker it's useless. Shame, as I think it's cool and always will, but hard truths are hard truths.

You have no idea what you're talking about. That guy was exposing FAKE kung fu masters, not genuine practitioners. Ive seen just as many BJJ "black belts" get whipped by brand new students. Every martial art has its imposters. Chinese imposters, largely fueled by government agendas, are simply better at being arrogant and susequently get destroyed in public more often. I have taken multiple traditional arts AND MMA favorites like BJJ, Kickboxing, Judo etc. I have found Wing Chun to work the best for me. Everyone is different, but it works the best for me. Lets also not forget that Krav, arguably the most thorough self-defense system, uses Wing Chun as its foundation. Would I recommend Wing Chun for regular self defense? HECK NO. But for someone who wants to find a real teacher and apply themselves, its absolutely an option.

Love this! I hope you do some part 2 of this, since I see that there are a lot of people from facebook who still needs more clarification on this thing. I love the narrative and I think by doing more of these, it would allow most of the people to actually open up their eyes!

I think wing chun definitely could have some utility. Being able to tie up peoples hands and open them up could be a very useful tool. That's just it though, it's 1 tool that got stretched out into a whole martial art. Really that's the overall issue with wing chun. It's a tool but it *isn't fighting.* All effective martial arts (boxing, muay thai, bjj) have a recurring trait imo and that is that they all know that they're playing the same game. They all recognize that fighting is fighting, they simply represent different ways to go about accomplishing the same goal. The issue with wing chun is that it exists in a bubble, it does not play the same game. I would honestly love to see wing chun turned into a proper combat sport, I would love to see it evolve and have the interesting techniques honed in on while the useless ones are discarded. The way I could see it is as almost a hybrid grappling type deal where they use maybe boxing style footwork to close in and focus mainly on using hand traps and working in the clinch in order to open up people's guard and land proper punches on them. Basically standard western boxing but with more of a focus on clinch work until it turns almost into a form of standup wrestling.

“Boxing and Muay Thai only work in MMA, but they would fail in a real fight. Wing Chun only fails in MMA, but it would work in a real fight.” …that is the kind of bullshit excuse I would use to defend the merit of my worthless TMA in order to avoid admitting that my investment is bad.

I know a German dude here in Texas. He spent his life training kickboxing and wing Chun. Guy is legit. It's very impressive to see him fight. He made his own set of partner drills for fighting in kickboxing.

So true. The fact is Wing Chun is one of the most ineffective martial arts systems out there. This is not only because it is comprised mostly of already ineffective or not very effective techniques but it is further messed up by the very flawed curriculum training which many times DEMANDS that students never practice its techniques against real, non-compliant opponents (sparring). If they at least allowed sparring they would most definitely manage to make it an effective system by weeding out what doesn't work and by modifying and/or adapting to modern combat what does work. But they don't even do that and as they say, you cannot hope to improve if you have a closed mind.

Why WC Gets Destroyed: 3) Yip Man WC, the most overwhelmingly common style, has crappy, if any, footwork 2) They specialize in in-fighting at grappling range while almost completely ignoring grappling and, most importantly, 1) Hubris; they seem to think they're superior and don't need to learn anything from other styles. Honorable mention: Very few WC schools engage in free-sparring, and no, Chi Sao doesn't count.

Yeah, I was with a Jeet Kune Do group for 17 years. We were heavily in the water. We did a lot of supplemental muy thai training, boxing and sparred heavily. Many of us fought muy thai, kick boxing and Shooto matches (via Erik Paulson.) I was also a massive boxing gym rat until I was 50 years old. Wing Chun is part of our curriclum, but it is very modified since we are from the China Town era when Bruce threw most of it away. We had a 15 year wing chun teacher come one night. I easily beat the tar out of him. Like wise with a guy who used to train with us who was an alternate on the U.S Tae kwon do team. Both styles have serious flaws, but have things you could use if you practice them in hard sparring. We worked the hell out of intercepting which was from both wing chun but more heavily Fencing. about the only other things I pull off from wing chun is sliding leverage and The bong sau is automatic as an emergency block sometimes. Other wise it's fairly useless.

I have a friend who has practiced wing chun his entire life I have very little martial arts training just little bits of Muay Thai, kickboxing and boxing never had any fights apart from 1 charity kickboxing match which I trained for 4 weeks for by myself. I told him to come at me and try and put me down, he came towards me and I just clinched him and threw him to the floor repeatedly. He was shocked, I’m guessing because those techniques work against opponents that let you do it to them 😂 there was no power in his punches it felt like I was being hit by a 5 year old girl. I always believed the hype around wing chun until that happened.

One thing you fail to mention is the older (1980s-1990s) open exhibition wing chun in America openly challange other martial arts and boxing/western practitioners. They actually train to block and parry haymakers. Nowadays the common conception is to not "block" or parry any haymakers if you look at Master Wong or other modern Wing Chun, they don't block anymore but instead opt for alternative options. I think that's the jist of it. Back in the day I witness wing chun fights end in a dozen punches nowadays the chain punches are non-stop. Iuno how that was all advocated but somewhere between the 1990s and 2000s wing chun changed for sure.

I've completed the wing chun system and also learned shuai jiao, some choy ley fat and did boxing for some years. My 2 cents: 1) its unlikely we'll see traditional kung fu styles besides choy ley fat working in the ring in the near future. Competition is not part of the culture and most practitioners have no interest in it, thus few have the know how to train fighters to compete 2) wing chun and other styles do work, but it takes a long time and you have to train with other people afterwards. I have no problem with that. In traditional kung fu culture you learn one style then move on to another and another so you can form your own individual approach. 3) "it looks like kickboxing" - everything looks like kickboxing if all you're looking at is the punches and kicks. The difference between boxing and traditional arts such as wing chun is how power is generated through the hips and spine. In application most kung fu is more akin to military combatives with heavy emphasis on weapons and involve a lot of standup grappling. 4) quality control in kung fu is bad. Very bad. When I search wing chun lessons in youtube the very basics are dilluted or simply taught wrong I'm not defending anyone. Seeing these guys getting their asses kicked is a much needed wake up call to the chinese MA community, who have coasted on movies and legends for far too long and have become weak. Maybe the next generations will change that, but I suspect most kung fu will survive as family styles since most do not lend themselves to being taught to huge numbers of people. Kung fu is most valuable for its meditative and spiritual aspects, which are far more important for normal citzens in modern times

Loving these videos on the (in)effectiveness of certain martial arts. Love to see more arts get dissected like this. 😎🤘

Honestly being humble and a person who is still training in wing chun.Every martial arts has its pros and cons.There all great and all have strives in all 🙏🏼.

Wing Chun was the first martial art I trained in. I was living in HK back in the mid-90s and was able to train at a school in Mong Kok. Much of my time there, The Sifu was teaching me The Little Ideas form. While I respect the art, I got bored and left. Fast forward to 2013, I started training in Kyokushin Karate and the first days, I was learning the basic attacks and defense. Plus sparring every class. I continued training in it and now I'm Shodan. OSU!

It doesnt work because the higher ups dont allow their students to make it work

It's popular because too many clueless Bruce Lee fanboys watch too many movies.

As a teenager, every time I (boxing+random Japanese martial arts for funsies) would play fight my friends that did Wing Chun, I always found that they never knew what to do when a punch was thrown towards their face. They always tried to do their slapping thing but it's never fast or effective, and they'd get the ol gloved nose boop.

"People cannot learn to swim on dry land... A martial artist cannot learn to fight without actually fighting." Yeah, but who did Bruce Lee actually fight though? Nobody. Guys like Masahiko Kimura (Judoka) and Helio Gracie (BJJ) actually fought one another and other high level martial artists of different disciplines back in the 50s.

God this is tedious. There's almost been a movement over the last decade to discredit Wing Chun, mostly from people whose understanding of it comes from the RU-vid Academy. Any Wing Chun practitioner who gets his arse handed to him is described as a "Wing Chun Master" and any WC practitioner who has some success is accused of not using Wing Chun. It's all nonsense. Frankly, if you're a martial arts practitioner and you're using your time to trash other styles, make claims about the supposed superiority of this style or that, or use MMA with its rules and regulations as some kind of metric, you've seriously missed the point. Anyone with even elementary understanding knows that success or failure is nothing to do with what style a person does. It's all about the individual. Seriously, this video is simple bait and it will catch a thousand badasses who have trained in some style for a few years and can't wait to hate on whatever it is. It'll also catch the odd person who knows better. I like this though... "Wing Chun, as a martial art, has been around for over three centuries. Likely more. It seems obvious now that in all that time, it should've occurred to at least one practitioner to test it in a life and death situation. We've all been wasting our time." It seems kinda weird to me that Wing Chun gets more hate than the thousands of McDojos around the world. Shit video.

I agree with everything except for chi sao part. Thats a sensitivity drill and not a replacement for sparring. Saying "real opponents wont just stand there and roll hands with you" is like saying boxers hitting a bag isnt realistic because bag doesnt hit back.

I did a year or so of Wing Chun before doing Thai Boxing. I felt it really helped me. No, pure Wing Chun is not enough for actual fighting but I think it's great for first training or for children so they don't have to take head shots.

I love this question. It’s not the art itself. It’s the practitioner. Martial arts as a whole is now a mess because majority of arts rely on a system of rules, of which self preservation doesn’t ever fall into. Self preservation means I either live or die. So being able to survive is most important. A friend of mine got attacked by a guy that was bigger than him and got bitten and eye gouged by this person, thinking his BJJ would help him. I have another friend who’s a high level mma BJJ black belt, judo black belt and wrestler AND Muay Thai fighter and got his eyes head butted duirjng a street fight because he used undertook Muay Thai clinching. These are mostly sports now and CAN be used in real life however there are massive limitations to these things even when the person is a champion. Most fights are one on one, in the sme weight class and without weapons. Add a love blade or gun or an extra person against one person and you have a far bigger issue that most martial artists aren’t prepared for. Hence the dilution of the effectiveness of any art form like wing Chun. I would like to mention that there ARE outliers that were very effective with wing Chun that I wouldn’t want to face under any circumstances. Those guys don’t need to face some guy in China in a dangerous insanctioned fight lol. They’re true representatives of their art and they help others pass on their knowledge. If you watch majority of the fights where wing Chun loses, they’re always backing up and getting charged. When I watch true masters of wing Chun, they move towards their opponents because the entire premise is to intercept the attacks and not to meet them at full strength and power.

Most wing chun people are practicing bad Wing chun. The art itself is effective. If you look at most of the videos you see they are trying to fight medium to long range which is not where Wing Chun is effective, close range being the target zone. Like any martial art, you need good footwork and interceptions skills, which again, most Wing Chun practitioners are bad at because they were taught by ineffective teachers.

I am not a wing Chun practioner, but there is one element I borrowed from them. When i spar in either muay thai or kickboxing, I use the flurry of punches to set up other strikes, like any kicks, hooks, knees, and elbows. They're good distractions especially if I am able to break through the shell guard. I don't use the tactic much as it does drain my tank in later rounds if I don't rehydrate.

In wing chun there is no training for full contact competition, therefore wing chun is not good for full contact competition. WOW!!! What a concept... I'm mindblowned...

Sooner or later a person like Machida comes along and proves there is a way to make their martial art work in MMA.

What a lot of people get wrong is that wing chun isn’t a style of fighting you can learn in a month, most wing chun fighters who we see lose their focus during fights are beginners, or even those who have trained for 4-5 years. To really be good at it requires an incredible amount of discipline, focus and patience

Wing Chun should not be understood as an offer of ready-made technical solutions. Wingchuers often try to apply the very drills they learned - in a fight. Standard Wing chun techniques and drills are only a methodological basis for learning the application of martial principles. At some stage, when the principles are adopted, the techniques should be forgotten. What the application of Wing Chun will look like in practice depends on the practitioner. And for fighting in the ring, you need to prepare appropriately - in the ring, with a sparring partner, gloves and protective equipment, you need to develop speed, strength and endurance, as well as mental preparation. For that, a thousand wing chun direct punches and 30 1st forms per day are completely irrelevant.

The lack of proper sparring in the formation of a fighter is a hole I have yet to see properly supplemented. As in, if you don't get enough sparring while learning and developing, you will hardly be able to get up to speed later. One of the main reasons why MMA fighters from a strict wrestling or BJJ background may so often be ineffective on their feet. That said, the lack of sparring may not always be a failure of the style. Specially with very popular styles like wing chun, taekwondo, karate, judo, and believe it or not even BJJ and muay thai, once you get "McDojo's" proliferating like hell with "instructors" with veeery dubious background and skill sets, the unavoidably bad students that follow may cast an equally bad light on the style as a whole - and unjustifiably so. It may not be the style's "fault", but the shameful low level of the next door gym. With wing Chun that's most definitely not fully the case, as (a) Bruce Lee himself called out this flaw on their training regimen and (b) the lack of any successful practitioner in the high leagues speaks volumes against the style's effectiveness, but that's something to bear in mind.

I train in Wing Chun and was made to spar from day one. It really shocks me that this would put me with only 5% of people who do the style.

bro you need to get your facts right, bruce lee never completed the system, he left hongkong to study in the states. nobody is going to fight you in the locked knees, that stance is only for most trainkng drills such as sticky hands.

Wing chun works in it's own way dawg. The punches come from the back. U don't understand. My buddy has me spar w him and he uses wing chun. It's really difficult to overpower him. Muay thai took components from wing chun to advance the art. All arts these days have learned from others. Search Gary Lamb. He can teach ppl to use it. No way this art would survive this long and be so reputable with as little functionality as you claim

They lied to us this whole time with those old kung fu movies 🎥 🍿

Because of the popularity of the Ip Man films, Wing Chun has become the face of Kung Fu. Before that, the most popular form of Kung Fu was Choy Li Fut, which is, overall, a more complete fighting system. It is Wing Chun's superior.

Honestly, having practiced and studied wing Chun myself... I think it's meant for bigger people to be useful in a traditional sense and even still it only has moments of true effectiveness and even still SHOULD have branches to connect to, ie boxing, Muay Thai/ Muay Buran... I get now from experience why and how Bruce made jeet kun do.

To be fair Bruce was a monster in practical Wing Chun too. He used it effectively against many skilled opponents before he ever "coined" the JKD style. A few examples are the following... 1.) Bruce at 18 yrs old with NO boxing experience, beat the crap out of an established amateur boxing champion (Gary Elms) in the Hong Kong St. Francis Xavier Boxing competition. British sport reporters covered the event and stated that Bruce used "unorthodox chinese boxing methods". 2.) Bruce's first two students in Seattle (1959) were both combat sport veterans with bouncer experience before ever meeting Bruce. Jesse Glover (top level Judoka) and Ed C. Hart (bouncer/former pro boxer). Both of these men outsized Bruce in both height and weight by a large amount. And yet they both admitted that Bruce immediately was able cut through their guard like nothing, no matter what they tried. Jesse Glover was also the man that introduced Judo to Bruce first, not Gene Lebell. 3.) Bruce had a very brutal and short encounter with a challenger in Seattle notorious for "dojo storming". His name was Yoichi Nakachi, a skilled Karate black belt and Judo black belt competitor. Jesse and Ed were eyewitnesses to this fight. Bruce knocked Nakachi out in approx. 11 seconds. Ed even got nervous afterwards because he thought the guy was dead. All of these events occurred BEFORE Bruce adopted the JKD mantra.

Wing chun - and quite a few other traditional martial arts - also suffer from one other terrible flaw: they’re too arrogant and believe their techniques are perfect, rather than asking themselves a) can something be done better? and b) is this relevant?

Some of those fighting and sparring videos you show are Tai Chi fighters, so far the videos I’ve found and seen with Xui Xiadong are him fighting Tai Chi teachers, another thing that also can affect the outcome of a fight is the person, and other factors

I started wing chun after years of MMA. It's a dated martial art with big weaknesses, but I feel like if you take the base if it and incorporate it there is actually a lot of fun utility.

It's common knowledge that Wing Chun is for self defence, not for fighting skilled or trained fighters.