From my teen years, I was a massive fan of action movies. My favorite action superstars were Jackie Chan, Tony Jaa, Donni Yen. I knew Bruce Lee. Watched several of his movies on Network TV. I was not a big fan at that time. The Bruce Lee movies were a little outdated for that era. It felt cheesy but loved the action. At that time, I knew Bruce as an actor. I did not know his huge achievements in the field of martial arts. My introduction to martial arts was from these Hong Kong movies. Martial Arts simply meant Chinese martial arts. I did not even know the difference between Chinese Kung Fu and Japanese karate like most of the novice in this field. I call it the first stage of a martial artist. Most of us were influenced by these movies. Even some of the great MMA fighters were influenced by these martial art action movies.
Though this martial art action movie has influenced hugely, most of the fake martial art gyms and centers grew due to this. Martial art movies often depict unreal, and fake moves. They are supposed to do this because they want to entertain the audience. But, some frauds and fake instructors promote themselves to these movie watchers by showing them those fake applications of moves and manipulates them. They talk about phony mysticism and the mana of martial art. All novice martial art practitioners were victims of these instructors even for once in their lifetime. Unfortunately, the fake martial institutions dominate the business sector over the real martial art gyms due to the fact that they are easy to learn, their promotion is eye-catching, and their movements resemble the movements of those Hong Kong movies. But, eventually, a practitioner comes out of this stage and realizes the fakeness.
The third stage is the introduction to MMA. Mixed Martial art has changed the martial scenario of the whole world. In 1993, when the first UFC was televised, the audience was amazed by how a lanky Brazilian named Royce Gracie distamentled fighters twice or thrice bigger than him. All the preconceived notions regarding martial arts began to break after that. My introduction to MMA was from watching Kimbo Slice fight videos on Youtube. I was a huge fan of these backyard bare-knuckle brawls. One day while watching, my Youtube suggested me a video of a fat Russian man who was named Fedor Emelianenko. After watching his first fight video, I immediately fell in love with this. Despite his heavy non-athletic stature, his fast pace and amazingly fast movement fascinated me. From that time, one by one this sport made me interested to research more about traditional martial arts which saw success in the MMA ring. One by one, I was introduced to Sambo, Ju-jitsu, boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, Judo, Karate, and Taekwondo, etc.
All these experience have put me in a realization that the real martial arts are the one that is continuously being tested on the battlefield. It is similar to a weapon that has not battle-tested can not be relied upon. Most fake martial arts will oppose competition because their mysticism mysteriously disappears when they compete. But, recently some of those martial artists began to accept the open challenge against MMA fighters. One famous example is Xu Xiaodong a Chinese MMA fighter, who challenges their traditional martial arts grandmasters. Though being an average MMA fighter, in his competition videos we can easily see that those so-called grand-masters are nowhere near him in terms of fighting expertise. Xu Xiaodong’s work and the story is inspiring for the seeker of true martial arts. Though these fake martial art gyms are still dominating, hopefully, their days of ripping people’s pockets off will be over soon.
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