Yet another style vs. style match-up in China. However, this one goes the way you might not expect.
A few days back we brought you news of Xu Xiaodong using MMA to beat-up yet another traditional martial artist (this time it was a tai chi practitioner who quit after one punch to the face). Xu may have started this current trend of style vs. style fights in China, but now it’s grown far beyond him.
Today we have another style vs style fight and, again, it pits MMA versus tai chi—or at least that’s what the promoter claimed. This time Xu is nowhere to be found. Instead we have a couple of nameless shmoes fighting it out inside a shopping mall.
Video and context of this contest comes from Jerry Liu of Fight Commentary Breakdowns. He seems to be able to find all these fights whenever they pop up. Subscribe to his channel when you get the chance.
The video shows the fighter in the black trunks, the supposed tai chi stylist, taking the fight to the supposed MMA fighter in the white shorts. Tai chi-guy rushes MMA-guy early on and lands some punches before the fight goes to the ground.
On the ground the MMA-guy holds onto a bulldog choke, but that leaves tai chi-guy an opportunity to whale on him with knees to the body/spine. An awkward scramble ensues, which requires a reset.
The reset sees tai-chi-guy in MMA-guy’s full guard. Some attempted ground-and-pound follows before tai-chi guy transitions to a leg lock. The MMA-guy is able to fight it off, though, and land some ground-and-pound of his own.
But tai-chi guy is able to reverse the position, get on top and land some heavy knees on the ground once again (including one that looks like it hit his opponent’s head).
With both guys gassed the fight goes to north-south position, with neither fighter looking capable of ending the fight from there. The tai-chi guy eventually gets back on top position and this time he makes his ground-and-pound count, landing punches in bunches until the referee calls the thing off.
Tai-chi guy wins.
With style vs. style fights growing in popularity over China (thanks to Xu Xiaodong’s viral crusade), it appears as though many MMA promotions are trying to get in on the act. According to Liu this fight was indeed promoted as Tai Chi vs. MMA, despite it appearing as though it is two amatuer MMA fighters.
Despite this fight perhaps not maybe living up to the ‘style vs. style’ descriptor there are still plenty of genuine circus fights going on all over China (and beyond). And it probably won’t be too long before we see Xu involved in another one.