We all know that in karate, the method of defense is blocking. Some karate styles such as Ishinryu emphasize hard blocks, on the theory that a good block can potentially break an arm, or even a leg. Other styles, like Goju, combine hard blocks with soft blocks. But on the street blocking as a defense is a low percentage strategy. Why? First of all, most street fights happen at very close range. And if a punch comes from a close range, is relatively straight, and is not telegraphed, it will be impossible or almost impossible to defend it by blocking. Such a punch is just too fast. And even if you somehow block the punch, a good street fighter will immediately follow up with a second punch, and if you can block that, with a third.
There has to be a better way. Actually there are two better ways to defend. Boxers use an entirely different strategy. In the ring, boxers use their gloves as shields. Just by holding the gloves up in front of their faces they can manage to stop many blows. Boxers then add mobility, either with footowork, or by moving their upper bodies, or both. So punches are not blocked but are either avoided or land harmlessly on their gloves. Because the boxer doesn’t have to block punches, his hands also remain free to hit or counter while he defends with his mobility.
On the street the boxing type defense doesn’t work as well because of the lack of the glove. Without the shielding effect of gloves, it is harder to defend punches with mobility alone unless you add long range kicks in the mix or if you have a reach advantage on your opponent. The same applies to MMA because the gloves are much too small to use as effective shields.
Wing Chun uses yet a different method to defend. Wing chun relies on the sense of touch, instead of the sense of sight, to defend attacks at close range. The wing chun fighter will try to keep constant contact between one or even both of his arms and the arms of his opponent. This allows him to use his feeling to detect attacks, and his reflexes to immediately defend and/ or counter. This works even at close range because reactions based upon touch are much much faster than reactions based upon sight. Also the defending hand does not have to travel a distance with perfect timing to intercept the attack, as in most cases it is already touching the attacking limb.
Wing chun fighters train during chi sao to learn how to “control” the opponent’s arms. What does this mean? Although this is a potentially complicated subject, suffice it to say that in most cases controlling the opponent’s arms means that your own arms are touching his and either on top of his arms or inside of his arms. An even better way of controlling his arms (if you can achieve it) is when one hand controls two. When one of your hands controls both of the opponent’s hands you will have one hand free to attack while the opponent remains completely controlled. This is commonly referred to as a “trap”.
If the opponent’s arms are controlled it is virtually impossible for him to hit you, but you can still hit him.
Is it possible to combine the mobility of boxing with the controlling hands of wing chun? On the surface it would not seem to be possible. When you step away or duck or dodge you will inevitably be breaking stick, a cardinal sin in wing chun. But perhaps the head and upper body movement of boxing could be trained as a secondary defense if a punch gets past your chi sao defenses.
This post will close wiht a video of Mike Tyson’s incredible balletic defense, true poetry in motion. But keep in mind that this type of extreme upper body mobility, while it would probably work well on the street, would be very dangerous in MMA or against a Muay Thai stylist or for that matter against any good kicker. For MMA because of kicks and knees the motions have to be much smaller, and the body cannot be allowed to bend forwards at the waist or go down too low.
