Changing for the Worse

Two weeks ago, I watched Ip Man 3, which tells the story (with creative license of course) of the Wing Chun master Yip Man of his formative years. I remember feeling absolutely aghast when the protagonist modified his school’s Wing Chun to include high kicks. There was a fight scene where he sparred with his senior and in close quarters, somehow managed the remarkable feat of planting a kick behind his head while fighting close-in. This travesty does not stop there, for in later fight scenes the protagonist continued his bastardization of the Wing Chun, with other martial arts thrown in to add to the disgrace.

After the movie I wondered how many people actually thought what they just watched on screen was Wing Chun. Martial arts these days are already confusing as they are without having pure styles merged in various combinations. I can imagine some ignorant lau wai who will catch on the craze generated by the Ip Man movie franchise and go to a school and demand to learn what was shown on the screen. Imagine the shock he would cause when he inevitably argues that Bruce Lee, who executed plenty of high kicks in his movies, learnt his martial arts from the late Yip Man, and therefore, Wing Chun should have plenty of high kicks!

This hypothetical scenario aside, I am sure that there are many idiots out there who think that Bruce Lee was a Wing Chun exponent. Actually, he was not. He had his roots in the said art but he was really a mixed martial artist.

Wing Chun does not emphasize on spectacular high kicks. Bruce Lee added high kicks because he found the said art’s low kicks too limiting. He really wasn’t a big fan of the classic forms, seeing them as impractical and staid. That does not mean he was right. Mixed martial artists tend to deride traditional martial arts as being too limited. Taking Wing Chun as an example, they point out that when it comes to ground-fighting or kicking, Wing Chun is essentially useless. However, they are missing on something important here. Even if you only know one martial arts style, you can still win every fight if you can impose your own *limited* style on an opponent until he can find no effective counter to it. Being brilliant at one thing is better than just knowing a thousand things.

I am not a big fan of modifying the martial arts. Most of the time these attempts only serve to water down the techniques and in the long run, only cause a deterioration in technical quality. One may argue that even traditional martial arts have always been modified. Tang Lang Quan (Praying Mantis Fist) has quite a few variants, so it stands to reason that the martial arts should adapt.

I do not disagree with that. Like everything else, the martial arts are evolving and if a martial artist thinks that he can improve certain techniques, it is reasonable for him to do so - but only he has already achieved a sufficiently high technical and tactical proficiency in the style he is modifying. In today’s world, where martial arts are regarded by most as a pastime, it is already difficult to find one sufficiently skilled in his chosen style, let alone a master. But unfortunately, we have people who learn one martial art, give up halfway to learn another, and then take up yet another martial art. It’s like learning English and finding the grammar hard and then skipping off to Spanish to make up for the ‘weaknesses’ in the English language. Their attitude makes me hard to give most mixed martial artists any respect.