From: stark@dwovax.enet.dec.com (Todd I. Stark)
Subject: Re: Boxing and Kicks 
Summary: 'Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.'
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date:  8 SEP 92 15:10:35    


psc@sei.cmu.edu (Peter Capell) writes...
> 
>>04-Sep-92 21:52 stark@dwovax.enet.dec.com (Todd I. Stark) Re: Boxing and Kicks
> 
[some comments deleted]

>My point was that if I could be shown the efficacy of low-line kicks
>and put them to effective use (as your everyday bonehead MA'er) in a period of
>weeks, then certainly professional fighters can too.  

I think we (you and I) are in agreement here.  For my part, I wanted to 
emphasize that a motivated fighter of any 'style' with solid contact 
experience can make up for minor gaps in their strategic framework a lot more 
quickly and easily than a good technician in any martial art can make 
up for lack of solid fighting experience.   You certainly seem to appreciate
this point, but many replies from apparently less experienced martial artists 
recently would seem to imply that it is not appreciated by all.  My impression 
was that some people thought that the simple fact that some arts use kicks
would make them somehow turn out more formidable fighters than arts which did
not train in kicks, and this is not the case in my experience.   Overall,
I think that learning to use hands and feet well is more than twice as 
difficult as learning to use hands alone well, and I believe that 
statistically less than half the number of people who try to achieve 
excellence at both will succeed compared to those who train at hands alone.  
Those were the lines along which I was thinking.   It certainly isn't intended
to be a rigorous argument or an 'anti-kicking' argument.

>Now, think about one of my teacher's teachers--once again shamelessly mention
>him, Cai Hong Xiang (5-time national champion of mainland China, full-contact,
>Hua Mountain Shaolin-style kung fu).  Even at age 60, Lu Ping says he could
>easily kick my head faster than I could possibly guard.  This guy is a
>professional fighter, a "knock out specialist" as you say, who uses low-line
>kicks, high-line kicks and amazingly fast flurries of punches (probably better
>than a lot of professional boxers):

Sounds like a cool guy.  My grandfather was a pro fighter who at 70 (certainly
no longer fighting as a pro) could fight circles around most amateurs I know.  
I'm not sure he could do it by pure brute speed as in your example but 
certainly by experience and craftiness he could tie them up in knots and then
appear to be much faster than he really was by good positioning and timing.

Proving that advancing age needn't be the end of a fighter's useful training.

>	What can you possibly tell me about the real utility of boxing
>	over MA?  That *not* using your feet is better?

(1) I consider boxing as MA, and (2) I never meant to imply such a thing as
using no feet is neccessarily better.  Just that in and of itself it provides
no great advantage just because there's a little extra range.  

(Brief personal note to Peter ...)

Maybe I did you a disservice by replying to the wrong topic since so many of 
these topics seemed to be similar when I returned from a few days away and 
saw the large number of boxing and kicking related replies.  My apologies for 
any misunderstanding (?)  I hope this helps clarify.  If you intended your
comments about my 'rhetoric' to imply that I was deliberately trying to
provoke or win an argument (the pejorative use of 'rhetoric') then you
misinterpreted my intention, and again I apologize.

						kind regards,

						todd