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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ed_Laprade" data-source="post: 3467715" data-attributes="member: 40172">From what I've read the more traditional a martial art, the less likely it is to be worth much in a real combat situation. Pretty much every 'History of X-Style Martial Art' article I read many years ago (about the time Bruce Lee was starting to shake things up) said pretty much the same thing. X-Style started as sub-form or counter form of/to Y-Style, and was The Next Big Thing because the originator had relaized that Y-Style had atrophied into a traditional form. But after a generation or two, with the original Master no longer around, it too atrophied into a traditional form. (Bruce Lee learned Wing Chung because it hadn't atrophied as much as many of the Chinese forms, but when he used it in gang fights he found that it didn't work as well as he'd hoped.) I don't know much about the MMA, but I'm not at all surprised at what I'm hearing here. Back when, there was a tournament set up to determine once and for all which martial art was the best, Kung-Fu or Karate. The traditional Kung-Fu boys got beat badly, but declared that the best Masters hadn't entered. This went on for a few years, with more asian martial artists entering from various styles. In the end the Thai Kick Boxers walked off with all the prizes because they actually fought each other.</blockquote>