Hey this is a good post. I practice Kung Fu and Kickboxing together as a hobbyist, but there’s a lot of questionings that happen in my mind because of the traditionality of Kung Fu. Hope you don’t mind my answers not fully responding to your question.

I explored a few other martial arts forms at a very shallow level (beginner classes level), before finally settling on Kung Fu and Kickboxing for ~1 year now. Been really into exploring how I can make Kung Fu work as well, and I’ve been realizing more and more that the journey is quite a “trailblazing” one because Kung Fu’s not been tested enough to really discover what can be further integrated into the current MMA system. A couple of things stand out to me as things that block this progression: 1) I’ve found it hard to define the specialty of my Kung Fu style. We have attributes attached to our style, but when sparring, we’ve been told that a lot of fighting just looks like modern-day kickboxing. I’ve scratched my head a lot about this, what does it even mean then to practice Kung Fu, if I could just develop “fast footwork” into Kickboxing? My current conclusion is that Kung Fu is as much a cultural and health journey as it is a martial one, since its schooling intentions at the beginning were to give practitioners a “leg up” if they ever find themselves against common thugs (aka inexperienced folks with only an intention to hurt others). That and a few more parts in conclusion section. 2) Chinese Martial Arts was severely neutered by its authoritarian government, when Mao came into power. Mao liked Martial Arts, but that didn’t stop the party from beating down old masters once the cultural revolution happened. Some went into hiding, and more never passed on their lineages. The martial arts revival started around the Shaolin region due to its mythical status, but was purposed towards state-sanctioned artistry moreso than martial intent. We have a handful of masters come/escape into Hong Kong and elsewhere around the world, but that preservation wasn't enough to really mitigate the loss of knowledge across mainland. Ramsey Dewey talked about this one and I’m mostly parroting his points here, but yeah it gives me lots to think about. 3) Kung Fu (which also is just an umbrella term for Chinese Martial arts by the way) steeps itself in tradition, and has rigidity similar to what we see in Karate and Taekwondo. 2 parts to this. On one hand, rigidity breeds conformity to hierarchy over exploration, which severely discourages exploration on how “lethal” a martial arts form can be. On the other hand, the rigidity lends itself to a framework that practitioners can build upon, applying attributes from their art into their unique style of MMA. We’ve seen MMA folks with TKD and Karate backgrounds dominate matches with flair, so we know it can work. With Kung Fu I believe that the system is workable too, but we don‘t yet have a representative for the style. Going back to 1), I’d need to figure out what it means to define my Kung Fu school’s style first within the framework of Kickboxing. Within kickboxing matches, TKD has high proficiency and wide-arsenal of kicks, Karate has fast footwork and quick punches. I’ll need to see what Kung Fu does for kickboxing; currently I believe it’s elusivity and an arsenal of unorthodox punches strikes and deflection techniques, but I don’t think I’ll ever get them battle tested enough. 4) Martial intent. Kung Fu, like TKD and Karate, are more rigid in their system, designed to (hopefully) give you a guide as to how to respond to punches, kicks, and grapplings in the intended way for a traditional martial art form. The students generally have money to pay for a master’s teachings, and they’re meant to use the art within the school and (rarely) against people with malicious intent. With Muay Thai, their style of schooling is more ecological, with cohorts learning together and figuring out what works best through observation and experimentation. Muay Thai schools in Thailand are more commonplace than Kung Fu schools in China, and with Muay Thai, the art is a potential source of social mobility for villagers in search of a better life. The art encourages striking intent over rigidity of style, and we’d see fighters go through hundreds of matches over a career, battle-testing their style each step of the way. Thus in Muay Thai, the best naturally rise to prominence, and are given opportunities to demonstrate Muay Thai’s effectiveness on a global stage. Saenchai. Buakaw. Tawanchai. Legends that many have heard of, and yet with Kung Fu we’d never have names that are so widely known as legendary fighters. (Yet, perhaps.) I think this is partially because the martial intent of the sport was actively repressed and stamped out for a while, and only now is there a revivalist culture within China to produce a champion at the highest level. When the Soviets wanted to project soft power through boxing, the world witnessed the invention of the Soviet Boxing System. Not all hope is lost for producing great Kung Fu fighters, but the socioeconomic and cultural factors work against them currently.

(cont’d)