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A 69 years old Tai Chi “master” vs a 49 years Sanda fighter

After the miserable Tai Chi’s figure in the fight between Xu Xiaodong and Wei Li (read MMA vs Tai Chi 10 seconds knock out: an explanation), here we have another episode of the fake-kung-fu’s saga.

Note – This article has been asked by one of our Core Course practitioners on Patreon (see how to attend our classes here).

The context:

The two (Chinese) contenders – In the various clips appear Ma Baoguo a (clumsy) “representative” of Tai Chi (69 years) and Wang Quingmin, a not well qualified Sanda fighter (49 years); the 2 contenders as it is immediately clear, have extremely different body parameters but the technical gap is so big that it is useless to continue to discuss this aspect
The content of the videos – The videos show a clash in which the Tai Chi “master” is ridiculously defeated in a matter of seconds by his opponent (the so-called MMA guy, even if it seems to be a Xing Yi Quan practitioner)
The context – In the presence of a discreet audience (in the Shandong province) and taken from multiple angles (through various smartphones, etc.), the fight happened on a typical training / competition tatami
The reason of the challenge – According to the interviews on Chinese TV and other sources, at the base of the match there was a bad Ma’s comment about Zhang Weili (a girl that competes in UFC), he said that she is stupid and that he could easily beat her in a brawl
An incredibly sad story – After 2 ruinous falls Ma has been defeated losing his senses (with a jaw punch); no excuses, this time the fault is totally on one side
Over the absurd – A note that makes everything more than surreal is the fact that before the combat, it seems that the referee asked Ma Baoguo (paid 28000$ to fight) to show mercy to his opponent (who has paid 92$ to face his opponent), saying “when I say stop, you can’t keep hitting him”
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A note by Master Kongling – It is interesting how the opponent of Ma has repeatedly been called by the media “MMA fighter”, “kickboxer”, “boxer” (etc.). It is very disturbing this incredible hostility against Kung Fu (Xing Yi Quan is a style of Kung Fu).

The total detachment from reality

Some premises:

This article is obviously written from the point of view of Kung Fu but it will not be compassionate towards the practitioner of Tai Chi
There are many things that could be said, let’s limit ourselves to the essential ones (useful to our martial growth)
Even if we do not link any video, more and more versions of it are easy to find on the web (in almost any search engine and video-related social networks)

A Master of Tai Chi (worth of this title):

Should not accept (nor provoke) meaningless challenges – As happened for Wei Li, he should not give up so easily to pride and desire to impose himself; this is a total failure from the point of view of Tai Chi (and Kung Fu in general)
Should recognize his (incredibly obvious) limits – Again, nobody knows the outcome of a fight before its start but this time, even a children would have understood that Ma had not a single chance to prevail; it is very sad to see the blindness of an old man that is not even in conditions to maintain a stable stance, who is completely absent and scared by the situation, who is not even able to cushion a fall (read Everything you should know about breakfalls)
Should not try to delude people about his capabilities with fake fights – Unfortunately, there is another video of a “fight” who sees Ma Baoguo “beat” Peter Irving (an English MMA pro fighter paid to act); this older sequence is so unreal that, despite the good quality of the camera shots, it demonstrates once again the incredibly low level of his combat skills (no one could see it as real)
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A note by Master Kongling – The first capability of a good martial arts practitioner (no need to be a champion) is to know what level of challenges can and cannot face. In this case, we are in front of a total self-delusion that overcomes the rationality but the real problem is that this total detachment from reality is not a single case: it represents a big portion of traditional martial arts practitioners. As we already said 1000 times, if you never fight for real, you never learn to fight and from the way he moves (despite the age) it is more than clear that he has never, never faced a real opponent.

The only things that we can say about the opponent is that:

He shouldn’t have accepted the challenge of an old man – Probably Ma was searching this lesson but a serious fighter should not take part in such a farce
He did not seem to be a monster of the ring – His loading movements are big, he moves slowly, he remains extended to much, he has not a perfect balance (but he is certainly 20 times better than Ma)
He has been correct – During the match, he demonstrated a measured and composed attitude
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A note by Master Kongling – It appears that he was afraid of facing Ma.

What we can learn from this fight

A note by Master Kongling – We will not repeat what we already said (in the Xu Xiaodong vs Wei Li fight comment) about the total unworthiness of representing Tai Chi of this kind of people but probably, it is time to ask ourselves why they are accepted as points of reference (read Recognize a good / bad master: 5 characteristics).

In any case, this bad test can teach us a lot:

No one can win every time but certainly (to use a clear example), it is not possible to beat even an amateur Rally driver having been 1-2 times in life on a race track (if not never)
If we never do real sparring (read The meaning of sparring fighting in martial arts), we will never gain the capability to do things like distinguishing a fake attack from a real one, maintain aligned our center of gravity, hit in the right way, with the right timing, with the minimum level of power (etc.)
It is foolish to compare people who have never really fought and / or who are not trained with people who do it regularly; in terms of combat skills it is always in the quality and quantity of the practice to make the difference
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A note by Master Kongling – Ma Baoguo in the past has also challenged Xu Xiaodong but it appears that he called the police a few moments before the beginning of the fight.

In-depth articles

Best martial arts for self-defense – Why delusions can cost us much more than we could imagine
When a belt becomes a blindfold – The risk of becoming victims of own pride losing contact with the reality

Questions

Reply in the comments and share your experience:

Have you seen the video? What is your opinion?

Author: Master Kongling

Founder of 6 Dragons Kung Fu.

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