This is going to disappoint you if you’re a believer in those old kung-fu movies.
Being a martial artist means you learned methods to physically protect yourself from the harm brought on by attackers. Brazilian jiu-jitsu, for example, was made popular by showing smaller people that they can use leverage to defeat larger opponents. Then there’s Muay Thai, which allows practitioners to use eight points of offense to beat the shit out of people.
There are also not-so-useful arts that do little to help you in combat. Tai Chi is one those arts.
Tai Chi Master Versus MMA Fighter
In a post published on the Pear Video YouTube page, a Tai Chi master, whom the video identifies as Lei Wei, takes on MMA fighter Xiaodong Xu. Unfortunately for Lei Wei, his mastery of the same style my mom uses to meditate wasn’t enough against a guy trained to push dudes to the brink of death.
That was ugly.
The video description goes on to explain that this was an exhibition of “modern” versus “traditional” martial arts. From my understanding, if a martial art is traditional, it doesn’t necessarily disqualify it from being successfully applied in modern times. After all, even MMA has its roots extending 2,500 years ago with Pankration. I think “useful” versus “this doesn’t apply to fighting” is a more accurate way to describe this match.
h/t Maxim
lso
