I don%26#039;t intend to insult the Shaolin or the Ninjutsu masters. But I just wonder why don%26#039;t they participate in tournaments like Vale Tudo or U.F.C?|||Shoalin kung fu and Ninjitsu are both martial arts. UFC is a sport, based on martial arts.|||Most true Masters realize the boundaries placed on them when they step into a UFC contest. So the competition is pointless. Training to fight and training to perfect techniques require two different mind sets.
Ninjutsu is an art of stealth and surprise- not designed for out right combat--did not say it%26#039;s not effective. Shaolin is for the focus of internal energy and self control. Not really a MMA kind of thing.|||Shaolin monks don%26#039;t fight for anything other than self defense or sparring.
1) They take oaths that don%26#039;t allow them to compete. It%26#039;s part of they%26#039;re belief system. They think it%26#039;s linked with large egos and steroids and other crap.
2) Chinese citizens are not in physical possession of their passports. They would very rarely have the money - or permission - to just pop over to the USA and fight at will, unless this were a large government-sponsored or accepted event.
3) The government has a lot of influence over what happens at Shaolin. A lot of the skilled monks have reportedly left or been expelled. Add to the fact that one of main attractions to Shaolin is it%26#039;s mysteriousness, the Chinese government are very unlikely to give them up.
A lot of people say they only practice performance wushu but that%26#039;s not entirely true. We do know that they practice Sanda. Look up %26#039;Fight Quest%26#039;. We don%26#039;t for sure if they still practice genuine traditional chinese martial arts or how good their Sanda skils are. They definately practice Qigong though.And you can%26#039;t take a trip to the Shaolin Temple and expect them to teach you everything. If you really want to learn from them, then likely, you%26#039;d have to become one of them and take the oaths. Which would mean you can%26#039;t compete.
I don%26#039;t know about Ninjutsu, though.
[edit]
I guess I should%26#039;ve added the fact that the Shaolin Temple was destroyed quite alot of times and most believe that the Shaolin Monks don%26#039;t really practice the tradiiton stuff, especially when a government opposed to tradition has a strangle hold over them.|||Shaolin Monks are display artists. What they do nowadays has nothing to do with fighting, it%26#039;s a cultural/artistic type thing. Their style has its origins in real fighting, and they sure are amazing athletes, but they don%26#039;t train to fight anymore and haven%26#039;t for I%26#039;d imagine over a hundred years. Their stuff has more in common with Jackie Chan than MMA fighting.
That said, the Chinese San Shou team does train at the Shaolin temple apparently, and recent UFC fighter Pat Barry trained with them. San Shou in general seems to be a potentially prolific breeding ground for new MMA fighters, but modern Shaolin monks have little to do with fighting and haven%26#039;t for some time.
As for ninjutsu masters, it%26#039;s simple: they don%26#039;t exist. If they ever did, most if not all of what they knew has been lost.
Ninjutsu basically is for the benefit of Asiaphiliac Westerners. There is some %26#039;ninjutsu%26#039; in a couple of koryu jujutsu ryu, but it%26#039;s not %26#039;make yourself invisible flip off walls kill armies with bare hands%26#039; stuff. The Bujinkan material and so on was largely made up over the last few decades. With that said, some actual fighters have ninjutsu in their background (Steve Jennum is the most often mentioned, I believe Jeremy Horn started with a Bujinkan offshoot, and there are others I can%26#039;t think of right now) so there are decent teachers under the Ninjutsu banner, but the effective stuff is just good fighting fundamentals and nothing you won%26#039;t find elsewhere.
In short, there are no secret superfighters or revolutionary secret techniques out there. It%26#039;s all a movie/video game mythology. There%26#039;s not much that isn%26#039;t already known, both because the human body can only fight and be damaged in so many ways, and because historians have already been through most of the old surviving martial arts material. MMA fighters make their living off fighting, if the Shaolin monks were as awesome fighters as their reputation, every fighter on the planet would train there. Imagine what someone like GSP earns and how much he spends on training. A trip to China would be no problem for him if he saw any actual value in it.
Not everyone who can fight is in MMA of course, there are good fighters all over the place who don%26#039;t compete, but they aren%26#039;t on some higher plane of martial achievement, they do the same stuff everyone else does, more or less. Put it this way, if I told you there%26#039;s a taxi driver in downtown Bangkok who%26#039;s the greatest Formula 1 racedriver in the world but doesn%26#039;t compete because it%26#039;s against his religion, would you believe me?|||hey there, i%26#039;m from malta and i travel quite a bit
i can%26#039;t speak on behalf of ninjitsu, but i do know a bit about china and shaolin
i went to yale for 2 years, and there are some VERY smart chinese students there. the chinese i met could do calculus in their head, recite the Oxford dictionary word for word w/o looking at it, very intelligent. but when i discussed martial arts w/ them, NONE of them could fight. i could kick their @ss with one hand and that really surprised me, b/c china is the birthplace of martial arts.
but then one girl explained to me, nearly all the overseas chinese people here in the united states, in malta, in europe, in latin america, are either businessmen, or students. you know, students sent over to learn, study, trade, work all involving academia. they%26#039;re not hard core kung fu masters, farmers, manual laborers sent over to kick @ss at will. realistically, the US government wouldn%26#039;t approve this type of imigration. it does not stimulate the US economy. so let me break the %26quot;myth%26quot; that all chinese people are smart and one can bet your money in getting an A+ copying off their homework.
so the reason why chinese don%26#039;t compete in UFC here in America is due to financial reasons. they%26#039;re stuck in China, working hard, making $130 US dollars in Beijing, they%26#039;re capitol, so think how much folks make in the country side. $940 chinese yuan a month dude!
but, at the same time don%26#039;t get cocky and assume America%26#039;s UFC can beat everyone. I worked in hainan island for a publishing house and went to see SANDA fights. it%26#039;s basically chinese police vs. american police competing in kickboxing w/ throws %26amp; sweeping. and 90% of the time the little chinese dudes win. second, I always thought Thailand%26#039;s legendary Muy Thai kickboxing was tough. their national champion got his @ss beat by some young san shou fellow.
anyway, i believe IF china%26#039;s communist gov%26#039;t wanted to train, finance and send over fighters to beat gracie, tank, fedor, shamrock, tito, whatever. i think they could do it. because with 1,400,000,000 people, they have a bottomless gene pool to select their athletes from. i still remember their Olympics where China got something like 8 golds in weightlifting (all of them), 4 golds in boxing, 3 in Taekwondo, another 3 in Judo and wrestling, while the US didn%26#039;t even get a bronze in any of these categories, which are the primary components of mixed martial arts
so, maybe the communist gov%26#039;t would do that some day and you and i could sit down watch some entertaining fights. but at the moment? it%26#039;s a pity they%26#039;re too busy making money.|||ROFLMAO! I love some of the answers here...
Crackity has the best answer by far.. I will add some further elaborations.
I also like lolcats explanation about Chinese citizens...
Here are my reasons.
1. Anyone with the claim of %26quot;Master%26quot; is either very old, or generally full of themselves and not truly a %26quot;master%26quot;. Since there isn%26#039;t a 70+year old division in the UFC, and the desire to see really old guys attempting to fight each other isn%26#039;t really high, you don%26#039;t see them.
2. What is claimed as the Shaolin has very little true ties to the original monastic order. Secondly, they do mostly performance based stuff and what sparring and fighting they do is generally reserved for the younger. It has nothing to do with oaths, or that they would kill. The purpose for their Martial Art is fitness, and through this fitness helping acheive a higher state of being and peacefulness. At least as the original montastic order. The current Shaolin is more of a tourist trap/government propaganda type of thing than anything else.
3. There are no true Ninjitsu masters. Hatsumi is the closest that they have, and in general his lineage isn%26#039;t verified. There is no historical evidence that any of the styles supposedly tied to Ninjitsu existed before he brought them to light. The texts and scrolls he supposedly possesses have never been verified or looked at by any authority.
That being said he is a very talented Martial Artist. Essentially I believe he has created his own style, much more than inherited something tied to ninjas. I don%26#039;t think that it is a weakness as many of his techniques are indeed effective. However, I think it is a codified system of Martial Arts that he invented.
So being that Hatsumi, the only supposed master of anything remotely based in Ninjitsu is also like 78 years old, I also don%26#039;t think there is a need for him to compete.
4. The large majority of those people claiming study in any of those arts, rarely hard spar, much less fight in competetion. There are a few who have, including early UFC guys, Steve Jennum and Scott Morris, while they claimed Ninjitsu, they were actually representing an artform called Robert Bussey%26#039;s Warrior International. Who was at one time did study Bujinkan but felt he had surpassed them and that they were outdated...
5. Both of the main draw of these arts is that they are clouded in supposed mystery. In truth even if there was a well known and highly celebrated member of the Bujinkan or other Ninjitsu based community or Shaolin Kung Fu, they would make more money never competeting and talking about how they would only kill and selling their DVDs, seminars and the like, then fighting in relative obscurity and getting trounced.
7. Considering San Shou and Sanda are supposed to be the competetive forms of Kung Fu, but look exactly like Muay Thai with throws, what does that really lead you to think of as far as the practicality of the animal styles, complicated movements and Qi Gong of Kung Fu in a combat environment. Sanda is supposed to be Kung Fu, where is the Eagle Claws?
8. In short, masters are too old, and these styles rely on mystique. They rely on the mystique that there are hidden techniques and that by training in an ultra exclusive club that you can kill easily with your bare hands, without ever having to learn how to take a punch to the face or hit another person.
Keep in mind there are exceptions to every rule. There are great Bujinkan schools out there that actually spar, fight, and train in a realistic manner, just as there are Kung Fu schools that do the same.
But by in large, you find way more fake schools touting Shaolin and Ninjitsu then you find good ones.
In my opinion.
Umm Lucifer you might want to fact check a little there dude..
US Won a Bronze Medal in Boxing, China won a gold, a silver, and a bronze. So a slight sweep there...
US won 2 Bronzes, and a Silver, in Tae Kwon Do, China won 1 gold, 1 Bronze..
In Wrestling US Won a Gold Medal, 2 Bronze, China won a Silver and a Gold. (it can be noted All medalists for China were women)
In Judo we won a Bronze medal this year, we have never won gold in the sport.
Only place where you were right was weightlifting, they did win 8 golds there. But that is not %26quot;All of them%26quot; it%26#039;s closer to half of them, but still damn impressive. Weightlifting is also a well known sport in which the US is weaker in. (Pro weight lifters can make more money in other sports in the US, so it is not our strong suite).|||Probably the same reason I don%26#039;t care to fight in UFC. So called %26#039;Ultimate Fighting%26#039; defies the entire essence of martial arts, which is honor, courage, humility, self control, etc.
Many of the fighters I%26#039;ve observed in UFC display arrogance and hostility. Completely NOT what martial arts are about. Martial arts are merely 10% physical. In other words, I believe UFC gives martial arts a bad name.
Plus, what they train to do is very basic and barely scratches the surface as to what can be done to the human body. They don%26#039;t get into nerve strikes, skin manipulation, body meridians, internal strikes. . .none of that. I just don%26#039;t care for it.|||i admire ninjutsu, i think they don%26#039;t participate due to the fact that their discipline might forbid it.. or they might kill some one accidentally while fighting...
from what i know ninjutsu and shaolin were developed to kill the opponent with the least moves possible. and i emphasize the word kill..|||Same reason you don%26#039;t see Krav Maga in UFC. Just because arts aren%26#039;t geared toward UFC or Vale Tudo don%26#039;t mean they%26#039;re not effective.|||there was a ninjutsu master in one of the first ufc programs. can%26#039;t remember who knocked him out.|||Maybe it%26#039;s because UFC fighters have been found guilty of drawing out fights to make it look good on TV. Several UFC memos have been found or stolen that discuss having the fight last as lon as possible to draw a large pay-per-view. Why would a Shaolin or Ninjutsu master fight for a company that tells them how long the fight should last? I don%26#039;t think they would like that.
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