Lu Zhenhong delivers a cracking head kick knockout of He Jianwei at RUFF 13 on June 7th, 2014.
– Footage by Christopher Cherry and David Dempsey
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Lu Zhenhong’s Headkick KO at RUFF 13
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Douglas Wile mentions The Last Masters
The cover of one of Wile’s books on Taiji and Daoism
Douglas Wile is one of the most prominent martial arts scholars alive today, and in a recent article for JOMEC, “Asian Martial Arts in the Asian Studies Curriculum,” he mentions The Last Masters blog. Pretty cool.
Dr. Wile has written a number of books on traditional martial arts, check some of them out here, and be sure to read this essay linked above, as well as Ben Judkin’s response/review, “Will Universities Save the Traditional Asian Martial Arts.”
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Assumption, Identity and Markets in Martial Arts
36 Elbows – Artwork by Chris Rini
I wrote a couple stories, one for Fightland about 36 Elbows, and another for Roads and Kingdoms about Kungfu and MMA, and these stories helped me move a little further down the road in terms of clarifying and understanding what it is that is happening in Chinese martial arts today.
The stories themselves are, for me, nice to see online, but are actually exercises in exorcising assumptions really. And gauging reactions in a way as well. One of the best reactions came, as always, from Ben Judkins of Kungfu Tea, who posed a series of questions that caused my ideas to reset …
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Some Disjointed Thoughts on Ceremony, Magpies, Art
I can’t listen to all the good hop hop that is out there to listen to. And if I can’t listen to all of the hip hop that’s out there, there is no way I can listen to all of the good country music out there, or rock music, or trance, and electronica and all of the other music that I could and perhaps should be listening to. There’s too much. I can’t read all of the books I want to read, and I can’t read all of the great writing, good articles, and interesting blogposts that are out there either. It’s impossible. There is an ocean of great content being produced every day, and I could never take it all in, even I spent ever hour of the day reading and listening. The stream is endless, and if I can’t handle what is created in a day anymore, how could I possibly read all of the amazing literature that was created by man in the past?
— Eli Sweet
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The Ya’an Fight Night Extravaganza
(A condensed version of this story went up on Fightland)
When the Apocalypse goes down, I want guys like Moses Baca and Juan Quesada on my team. They’re both MMA fighters out of the renowned Cesar Gracie Academy in California, one of the sport’s legendary gyms, and both have years of training and fights behind them. Moses in particular is old school, having grown up and trained with the legendary Diaz brothers, Jake Shields and Gil Melendez during that team’s decade of dominance. That’s enough to give them a special place at the table. They make a great tandem: hard as nails Juan reborn again in martial arts, and soft spoken Moses, a BJJ black belt who loves to play with the kids.
Unfortunately, most of that was lost on their Chinese host. For Sichuan-based C3, the tiny provincial promotion that paid to bring them over, Juan and Moses were just warm foreign bodies, part of a big show for the people of Ya’an, a city at the foot of the Himalayas famous for good fish, pretty girls, and lots of rain.
