Wudung style tai chi chuan



Gracie ju jitsu fighters in combat



A cage fight


By: Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262
aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk






IS THERE AN "ULTIMATE FIGHTING ART"?

Gracie ju jitsu is the king of the castle at this time in performance




None of us need to be told that we live in a dangerous world. The national and international media is full of news and features about the uncertainties which individual countries face. Local media focus on perils to the individual person.

Now, the first thing that I would like to point out is that social positions at both the national and personal levels count a great deal. Well-protected nations and people have proportionately less need to be able to defend themselves than others. Well-protected people tend to be high on the socio-economic scale.

Luxembourg (the richest per capita country on Earth) does not get attacked because the whole might of the Western world would be brought to bear in its defence. North Korea needs to watch its defences continuously because there is a shortage of third party protectors.

At the individual and personal level, additionally, one finds that the lower a person is socially the greater his or her need to protect himself by his own actions.

If you go to a rich part of London such as Knightsbridge you will probably be unable to get hold of a martial arts magazine. If you go somewhere like Tottenham many newsagents sell such publications. The people who go out of their way to learn to fight tend, other things equal, to be poor and underprivileged.

Just think what would happen to somebody who physically attacks the lord chief justice. If the same thing was done to the court usher at that august personage’s palace of justice the consequences are likely to be less dramatic. The court usher has, probably, a greater need to defend himself by his own efforts than his lordship has.

The same principle applies to females. Just imagine what would happen to the man who rapes the wife of the a leading personality at London’s stock exchange who just happens to be a former head prefect at a girls’ public school and a first class honours philosophy graduate from one of the colleges of the University of Oxford.

When I was younger and interested in pop festivals a vanload of hippy girls was attacked by thugs and all the occupants got "gang banged." When they went to the police nothing happened.

Bearing the above in mind, therefore, I regretfully submit that the subject of this article is that which is of most interest to those who are relatively low in society’s pecking order. The matter at hand is whether or not there is an "ultimate fighting art" and, if so, what that might be.

This is a subject which has riveted males from time immemorial. Since before the blind poet Homer extolled the military virtues when he recited the Iliad to the Greeks the fighting man who wins has been the admiration of other men and the desire of women. Not for nothing has it been said that the military career has always been the most noble path of social advancement.

Our concern here is somewhat more petty and circumscribed, however. What we are interested in at this time is personal defence for the man or woman who feels endangered.

I might as well get the most unpalatable fact out of the way at this stage. The very best and most effective personal fighting techniques are and always have been secrets which are and have at all times been kept from the hoi polloi.

In the United Kingdom the most dangerous methods which enable men (usually) to kill quickly and silently with their bare hands and to cripple and incapacitate enemies effectively and surely are almost monopolised by elite branches of the armed and security services and other highly placed establishments and people.

It is a bit like spirit mediums. If a person (usually a woman) advertises her services as a "spirit medium" you will know that she is probably a fraud because if she was genuine the powers that be would have taken her up and prevented members of the public from contacting her in her professional capacity.

It follows, if my premises are correct, that as far as the man in the street is concerned the people who offer “ultimate fighting arts” and the like with the lure of absolute personal safety are not in the business of purveying genuinely effective and devastating skills and know-how.

Since we, most of us, move in relatively humble circles of life it is improbable that a Santa Claus of the fighting arts is going to drop down any of our chimneys one Christmas Eve and present us the secrets of inflicting death and destruction weapon-less, which only persons such as the most trusted tried and tested members of the Royal Marines are allowed to be even acquainted with.

Nevertheless, we, the relatively poor and underprivileged, feel the need to protect ourselves and are interested in the ways and means of doing so.

Nature, scientists tell us, abhors a vacuum. Since the space which would otherwise be filled by the potent skills of the secret service agent is unoccupied, offers to remedy that come principally from various kinds of Oriental fighting systems whose exponents say they are prepared to instruct for reward.

There is no lack of them. These fighting arts come from almost every part of the world, especially the so-called third world. In the United Kingdom, however, the man in the street has three major fighting systems and two major methods to choose from.

The three systems are the Japanese, the Korean and the Chinese. The two methods are the striking and the grappling arts.

Of the striking arts, karate (Japanese), taiquondo and similar (Korean) and “kung fu” (Chinese) compete fiercely for pupils. Of these, the Chinese make sure they have most publicity with the famous Bruce Lee motion pictures in everybody’s minds.

Once, in Madagascar, after watching a Bruce Lee film, one cinema audience got so excited that it went on a rampage on the streets outside, which incident became known locally thereafter as “the kung fu riots.”

Of the grappling arts, judo and similar (Japanese), hapkido and similar (Korean) and tai chi (Chinese) offer the public their skills.

Truly, it has been said that different kinds of fighting arts are indeed dissimilar and therefore suit dissimilar people. It has been said that choosing a martial art is like choosing a wife. What is right for one man is not for another.

As George Lincoln Rockwell (the infamous American rabble-rouser) once wrote, the final test of any and all claims is not talk but action. He used the word “performance.”

All these martial arts have one thing in common. They are all internally valid. In other words if one uses these methods of self-defence and fighting on other people who follow the rules of whatever system is being followed, all is well if one is skilful enough.

But what happens when the opponent does not play by the rules? The judo fighter does not expect his opponent to hit him on the nose, for example. The wing chung (Chinese boxing) fighter does not expect his opponent to use a judo throw on him. The karate man does not expect his opponent to use an arm lock.

In the world of computer chess programs the ultimate test of any software suite is to test how it performs against a wide variety of human and computer opponents and not just on how well it performs against itself. Thus, one concludes that “Fritz” is a stronger program than “Chessmaster” although both are formidable.

It is at this stage that I reluctantly come to the most unpleasant part of writing this article. I have to bring up the (extremely) brutal world of cage fighting. This is not far from being the human equivalent of dog fighting which is unlawful in most civilised countries.

Because there may be female readers, I will spare our gentle circulation from the close details. Let it suffice that in the cages all sorts of fighting ways are pitted against each other and that there are winners and losers. Those interested can consult the Internet and their local martial arts retail merchants for DVDs of cage fighting.

Additionally, there is available for the public footage of real (not staged) fights between high-level practitioners of different fighting schools. For example I have watched a short film of a fight between kuokoshinko style (the hardest and toughest school) karate on one hand and taiquondo and “drunken man” kung fu on the other.

The conclusion to which comparative analyses lead is that there appears to be a top fighting system which survives gruelling challenges from all others. Ironically, it is the least visually impressive of all. There are no spectacular flying kicks or anything like that.

It is the curiously named Gracie ju jitsu. Ju jitsu is the father of judo. Judo itself is a distillation of two ju jitsu schools.

The many schools of ancient ju jitsu were, however, intended for the protection of property and women during a period in Japan when there were no police to keep the peace and open violence was the ruler of the world.

Therefore, if you feel the need to learn to fight to survive, think of Gracie ju jitsu. And remember, no matter what you know or can do on your own, you cannot prevail against a powerful gang.

My advice is to run away. That is what I would do.

THE END

This article was published in the 24 August, 2006 issue of the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the Bangladeshis of the United Kingdom - read everywhere from the arctic to the antarctic.