Quote from TraderZones:
I sometimes wonder if the really gifted masters of some of the other styles really get involved in mixed combat.
I had a 5th degree Taekwondo black belt instructor who was also a tenant of mine. I studied 3 years under him, but only 2-3x a week. I stopped at high red.
His speed and power was unbelievable.
I saw a video of two internal grandmasters fighting. It was really old and flickery because it was on film. I will see if I can find a link somewhere and post it.
It was HORRIBLE. I think one guy was a Hsing-Yi guy. It was basically two old men on a rooftop going around and trying to bop each other on the head.
This film was posted in traditional kung fu forums and people were marveling at the technique being displayed. I was like, are you kidding me? It was atrocious.
I do have this to say about kung fu, however. I studied Wing Chun for a while before I was enlightened to MMA. I have used a Wing Chun technique once to defend myself in a very small space when I was attacked out of the blue in a hallway. Wing Chun worked perfectly for that. However in the other 99% of possible fighting scenarios, I would do MMA and not Wing Chun. In fact, when I joined my first MMA gym, I tried Wing Chun techniques against boxers and was subsequently destroyed every time. But there was still no ego, everyone was cool. The instructor said "if you want to try something, here is the place to try it." I was
so convinced that Wing Chun was a superior fighting art and maybe if I just trained a little harder I could beat the boxers. Nope. I was shown objective evidence that I was wrong, and I began learning boxing for MMA. I feel like a lot of traders are like that... "maybe if I just study Woodie's patterns a little bit harder I will become profitable." Nope. But feel free to continue losing money.
Oh and if you find a qualified teacher, some of the internal arts could possibly be beneficial for health.
But if you want to learn fighting, it's MMA or nothing.