most effective street fighting style?

[Red Rum]

I have done wing chun for a relative short space of time (compared to many practitioners) and it has always held up in fights. (recent REDRUM post taken from the CMA forum)

I am talking about compared to people like Kevin Chan who has trained for decades.

I have completed the wing chun system as far as knowing all the forms, drills, feeding techniques etc and only had chi sao left to perfect.

This is not a hard thing to do. Most people who train in wing chun for over 7 years will have acheived this.

So which is it? I have lurked here for a few years and I think you're full of shit, your posts scream of arrogance and closed mindedness. Please take a long hard visit to bullshido.com

You could call it arrogant - that is for others to decide. As for Bullshido, I went on there and was asked for my credentials after a few posts. I gave them and the head administrator checked them out and validated them.

If he doesn't have a problem (and he is the head administrator) then why do you?

[Red Rum]

P.S.
At risk of speaking for Maxx, who is more than capable of speaking for himself and his own experiences, I don't think he would ever be so brazen as to say he "completed" any art. As far as I know, he's done Tae Kwon Do for nearly (or maybe even longer than) 30 years now. He's an accomplished black belt, and has researched the Korean arts and their evolution more exhaustively than most people I know. And I would wager that, from what I know of the man and his character, he would tell you that he's never felt like there was nothing left to learn in the art. He'd never say, "I'm done with this one. I've perfected it all.".

That is because most TaeKwon Do schools (and I train TKD by the way) teach moves that go on for decades. Like most karate schools, to obtain a black belt, you usually do well over ten years (there are of course exceptions). In the school I am currently at, there are moves that are only taught at black belt level so it takes a long time to get anywhere near completing the art. Saying that, I know of three TKD guys (in person) who have claimed to have completed the system
In wing chun, it is renowned for taking a very short time to complete. I know of one wing chun school (and I am not going to name and shame in this instance) that produces instructors after 2 years of training!!
I have done all the moves in my current (Kamon) wing chun system. As I said, chi sao is always ongoing and you can always perfect drills/feeding techniques. But I was referring to the MOVES in wing chun.

Perhaps more than a few of your beliefs about martial arts come from these kinds of misperceptions. Saying things like "I've perfected everything but..." or "I teach my students everything about the martial arts world" are staggeringly arrogant, and impossible to take at face value.

As I have stated before Mike, my reference to 'everything in the martial arts world' was a general statement. It was meant to reiterate that I got my students to look beyond wing chun and understand the different arts that are out there. It was never meant to be a reference to me KNOWING everything in the martial arts world. Hell I don't even know most of the arts that are out there!

Many people on here are nitpicking at words and phrases, when they should be looking at the posts

[darrianation]

My concern if everyone carried guns on them would be that it would be easier to have people go over the edge.

Explain that? There is no evidence of that at all in fact if it is the opposite studies have shown those with CCW permits commit almost no crimes and those who do, which is less than .01 percent do not commit those crimes with firearms.

[Red Rum]

Like this notion of "completing" a system. Any system! I don't care if you've done every move in wing chun, I'd be hard pressed to believe that you've taken it as far as you need to. .

That is why I put 'completed' in quotation marks. You can always improve on a martial art, chi sao, feeding techniques, etc. You can train them to be sharper or have greater sensitivity etc. But I have learnt all of the moves within our system. It is not arrogance and it doesn't mean I am fantastic at martial arts, it is just the way it works.

Your choice of language and the way you have chosen to express your ideas here make you sound like an arrogant prick because many of us are accustomed to real martial arts practitioners who believe they must always be students. Like Dan Inosanto (oh wait...you've never heard of him) who constantly strap on a new white belt and go back to the beginnings, we're used to seeing people really explore something, never content, and never believing for a moment that they're done with an art. When someone comes along and says "I've completed this art, so I'm rounding it out with other arts," that person (you, in this case) sounds like he has no Earthly idea of what it really means to understand a fighting system. Boxing is probably the simplest art in the world to understand. It's five punches, four directions of movement, and a few evasions. Yet boxers spend lifetimes studying and improving what they know. Champions at the top of their games look for new ways to apply things, and look for new angles on things they already know. Arguably, boxing is far simpler in scope than Wing Chun (no complex trapping, no forms, no dummy sets), and yet you'd face a nearly impossible challenge to find any serious boxer who thinks he's "completed" the system.
.

That is what Inosanto does, and he is not representative of many of the martial artists around. Alan Orr mentioned in a Combat Magazine article how he completed wing chun at a young age. Kevin Chan completed the wing chun system (and was recognised for doing so by Ip Chun) when he was in his 20's. People have a conception of completion. You could complete a jigsaw puzzle but dismatle it and do it again but quicker. And this is what Inosanto appears to have done.

Boxing is more of a sport, but if someone has worked all the movements and all the footwork etc, then yes I would say that they have 'completed' it.

My point was that I had done all the movements in wing chun and just needed to perfect chi sao, work on feeding techniques etc.
Therefore I had moved to another art to look for other ideas.
Your petty criticism of the word 'completed' is laughable.

No martial art is ever finished because you are always getting more powerful, stances dig deeper, hands move faster etc.

But there are syllabuses that exist in many arts and many people complete these within a decade

RedRum, you seem to snap back with answers to these posts from a purely emotional place. You don't consider what you're saying, which is why you're having to constantly tell everyone that we need to look past what you're saying and look at the posts (whatever that means). Forgive me, but it speaks volumes about how you must fight. That alone tells many here that you might not have gone as far in your training as you might think.

What on earth are you on about? From an emotional place? You mean that when someone pisses me off, I answer them back. Well then, yeah, I am guilty as sin. Just as many others are. (someone makes a comment about Inosanto and all the JKD guys go mental)

Passion is good.

[jubaji]

Boxing is more of a sport, but if someone has worked all the movements and all the footwork etc, then yes I would say that they have 'completed' it.

You really are a dope, kid.

[Tom Yum]

Where's Sherwinc when you need him

[Red Rum]

RedRum,
It's not a personal thing, but maybe we just have different perceptions of what training and excellence involves. I have always seen the pursuit of any martial art as far more than a technical endeavor. I see it as far greater than a physical exercise. When you say you've completed a style or method, it makes me wonder about all of the lessons that the process is supposed to teach. You have said three different times now that your idea of "complete" involves learning the movements of the system. I see that as a very raw beginning. It's like learning the alphabet and saying that you've "completed" English. To me, and this is just my opinion, martial art is different and useful precisely because of what it teaches beyond movement. Yes, the movement can be useful in defending oneself. Yes, that's probably why any martial art was created. But warriors inevitably realize that fighting other people will either kill you along the way, or become a secondary concern in life. Then what purpose do your arts serve?.

When you train lok sao, you complete it to the extent that you know the moves, changes, attacks etc that it has to offer. However, once you have done chi sao, you can go back and revisit the drill. Although you have completed the drills, you can add different concepts to it.
My point was that, when you have completed the movements in wing chun, what you have left to learn is energy, position, footwork etc. If you are purley training wing chun to do this, you will not progress. Bruce Lee knew this and many JKD guys around know this. They might not use the word completed (although I do hear it a hell of a lot here), but they 'finish' the art to an extent and search for other ways to improve what they have learnt.

This is why many go into other arts. In an art like wing chun where there is no ground game, arts like BJJ help. You can then go back and add to the art

The original argument was about MMA, and I was relaying why people cross train. After a while (in any martial art) your learning starts to slow down. Many martial artists compare it to like climbing a mountain, with it getting harder and harder to climb as you near the top. People who train in just one martial art will find they are trying to strain out the juice from the martial art and struggle to perfect it without allowing other concepts in

For me, each and every martial art maintains its usefulness beyond combat because it teaches us things like the subduing of our passions. Passion is a useful thing - not an inherently good thing, as you have asserted. It's a tool, and when properly applied, it can help you overcome certain obstacles. Running rampant, it's a hindrance, an obstacle, and a pitfall for youthful, inexperienced fighters who just haven't gotten the point yet. Training in almost any art, for example, involves some measure of self-sacrifice. It involves denial of "want." That's not a "movement" within a system, but it is crucial to understanding and indeed "mastering" any system. There are tons of other lessons like that within a system, and I personally place a premium on these lessons. I find them far more useful - for self-defense and every other part of life - than the punches, kicks, pak saos and lop saos will ever be..

Yes, but I was talking about the movements of the art. Knowledge and understanding is good, but in fights it is much better to rely on muscle memory and moves that you have drilled in, rather than 'think' your way out of a punch coming towards you

Forgive me if I've misread you. It could be the cultural differences. I only bring up the point because, to me, saying that you've completed a system because you understand the movements and the drills only shows that you have no real concept of what the art is there to offer in the first place.

Again I don't take it personally. We are all martial art brothers and sisters at the end of the day. Some of us don't get on, but argument produces many interesting points (rather than a co-operative forum where everyone agrees with each other). I would rather hear an argument about martial arts than watch a show like Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves