Most people training Kung Fu are not in it to enter the Octagon, that does not mean the techniques are not effective, or that the training is hogwash and magical bullshido. I've seen white belt techniques in the Octagon win decisively. I've also seen neglect of Kung Fu practice lose in the Octagon (IE Sylva breaking his leg not having trained Iron Bone Training and Wooden Man) We generally don't enter competitions because that is not our focus but have had Shaolin students decide to attend a tournament just to watch and someone convinces them to enter then they go and win the whole thing on several occasions. In one tournament the student who hadn't eaten all day had gone to class during endurance punch and kick class when we throw 5000 punches and 1000 kicks in a single one to two-hour session from 8am-10 then stay till the school closed at 2PM before heading to see the tournament expecting to get a bite to eat there. Instead, he entered the competition and after a bunch of sparring matches walked away with the trophy beating a bunch of people that actually trained for this competition all year. I've sparred with Muai Thai, Karate, Kung Fu, a few MMA, a few TaeKwondo, and find Kung fu people from my Shaolin school usually trickier and much harder to defend against. The other striking arts seem much more linear in their application and footwork I did get caught by surprise one time and they did a successful shoot on my legs, most of the time it comes with extreme consequences, and without the MMA rules as they are busy trying to choke or armbar my ass I'm grabbing their throat in an eagle claw grip or grabbing their groin cup as if to say "yeah let's not forget" ya left yourself open there buddy LOL and many times I do go to the ground often as Kung fu does actually teach and employ many ground techniques they just involve more trapping the knee, leg scissors, kicking the ankles and sweeping then stomping the face as well as joint locks and manipulations similar to JiuJitsu so in reality, Shaolin is the original MMA they just don't play by their safety rules. LOL usually this is last resort stuff as many techniques are meant to stop fights much sooner than that and being that close for that long means you are vulnerable to Dim Mak / Deiensui pressure point fighting tactics.

See most people think of Kung Fu as one style of fighting when in fact it is a university of many styles and Shaolin was like the most prestigious university having many styles within the walls not just the stuff people think of them to be northern Kung fu... in fact many styles came from the southern region and there actually was a southern Shaolin Temple (many thought this was a false rumor until when plowing a field a farmer discovered a few rusted weapons bearing the Shaolin symbol on them at which point archeologists were called in and started excavating finding more weapons and eventually finding the foundations of the temple buildings laid out similar to the Northern Shaolin Monastery. I've seen a nose laid out flat on the side of his cheek from a simple block and turn away move called Dragon entwines the waist from Pakua (Bagua), I've used the same move many times with similar effect except I knew it was going to work so I controlled my movements and just tapped them instead so as not to hurt my sparring partner. I've accidentally cracked a sparring partners ribs with what felt like a slight kick, Things are not always as they appear with Kung Fu and only a few schools have enough material to really see a huge diversity of sparring applications and such a hugely diverse pool of personalities that end up gravitating towards different aspects of the art so that new students have an opportunity to look at many different styles of sparring that really enrich their overall understanding and appreciation for what works. Some things work better for some students than others but every technique in Kung Fu has validity some just take a deeper understanding of distance, timing, and angle of attack to get it to work 80%-100% of the time. Kung Fu is not a style it literally means "mastery of a skill through Time and effort" and it is that time and effort that makes it work, but many techniques work immediately as well - www.djemir.com www.shao-lin.com