Editorial

As defined and modified for the Kung Fu community: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability regarding the effectiveness of their Kung Fu in a real fighting scenario.

This tends to occur because of the general Kung Fu practitioners' lack of self-awareness, which comes from the lack of real, non-compliant sparring training, which prevents some Kung Fu practitioners from accurately assessing their own skills.

Thanks to the overwhelming number of LARPers in the Kung Fu community, Kung Fu is dying a slow and steady death.

No one who trains seriously wants to be associated with LARPers, and people from other martial arts communities can't take Kung Fu practitioners seriously because Kung Fu's reputation has been all but eroded by Kung Fu LARPers.

Let's cut the crap and get right down to it - we hate fake martial arts teachers.

The reason why we're calling out fake martial arts teachers is because they promote unsafe training environments that could get their students seriously hurt or even killed, scam innocent people out of their hard earned money, and contribute to a cult-like culture that is scummy and predatory.

Not only do these fake martial arts teachers profit off of unsuspecting students, they ruin the legitimacy and image of real martial artists who practice their art seriously.

Here is our list of the top signs or traits of a fake martial arts teacher. If your teacher or some other teacher you know matches most of the signs on this list - run away - as they are most likely a fake!

The definition of a "McDojo" is a martial arts school that is solely established to make money instead of genuinely teaching martial arts.

Are you concerned that you, someone you know, or your child may be stepping into a McDojo to learn martial arts?

Read on to find out the top signs of a McDojo, and if your school has checked off the majority of these boxes, your school might very well be a McDojo!

Have you ever met someone who claimed they practiced martial arts, or that they were a master of a certain style, but you weren't quite sure if they were legit, or just full of crap?

Or are you tired of the constant lies and excuse making that fake martial artists keep telling themselves, and other people, when their martial arts fails them during sparring / fighting?

We know we are.

Here are the top most commonly seen / heard lies that fake martial artists will peddle in order to protect their fragile egos, and what they really mean when they say this.

In the world of martial arts, most of us were first exposed to it through movies and media - such as Kung Fu classics made by the Shaw Brothers' studios, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, the Karate Kid movies, or some similar combination of the above.

The romanticized idea of martial arts was always presented to us more or less in a very classical way: Learn martial arts, defeat the bully, exact revenge on the bad guy, win the tournament, and become the hero.

To us, martial arts was about training as hard as you could, winning the most amount of competitions as you could (in forms or fighting, or both), becoming a tough, hardened bad ass with world class martial arts / fighting skills, and becoming the best version of yourself that you possibly could be in the process.

Former Two-Division UFC Champion Georges St-Pierre, the definition of a model martial artist and champion.

The mindset of a true martial artist was to continue to train for life as an eternal student to keep bettering oneself on the path of perfection (perfection of course, doesn't exist), and continue to seek new challenges, conquer new plateaus and reach ever new heights - as long as the body was able and the circumstances allowed it.

We had always thought this was the way of the warrior, and the "hardcore" path that everyone took to mastering their martial arts.

Then we realized, we were in the minority that held that mindset or belief.

Continuing with our trend of analysis into the Chinese Martial Arts world, we decided to share our insight into just why is it that you don't see Chinese Martial Arts (A.K.A. Kung Fu) in modern fighting.

This is a loose continuation of our earlier article - Sanda: When Kung Fu created a solution to its problems - then threw it away, and Is Kung Fu On The Cusp of a Modern Fighting Resurgence?

But wait a minute - is what you're about to read a list of excuses on why Chinese Kung Fu "doesn't work" or be presented with the overused simplified explanation of "it's not the system but the practitioner" (even if it is partly true)?

No, we're going to try to share exactly why, with legitimate reasons, you simply don't see Chinese Kung Fu in modern fighting arenas or combat sports.

This article was generously contributed by Mason Zhong of the Chinese Martial Arts Reformation Society.

In recent years, the combat sports landscape has started to feel the influences of Chinese Kung Fu.

But is it just a ripple, or will it become a wave?

We take a look at some of the most prominent combat sports athletes and fighters that are doing their part in "Making Kung Fu Great Again".

We also give a refreshed outlook on Chinese Martial Arts in the combat sports landscape as it stands today in 2020.

On June 22, 2019. Artem Lobov (30-15, MMA), an MMA journeyman managed to edge out former World Champion professional boxer Paulie Malignaggi (36-8, Boxing) in a bare-knuckle boxing match at Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 6: Malignaggi vs. Lobov.

The unexpected result sent shockwaves throughout the combat sports world and “exposed” the sport of boxing.

We take a look at the Okinawan Karate techniques utilized in a world class competitive fighting environment, (ie. the Ultimate Fighting Championship / UFC), and mainly the only man who is able to make use of such techniques in former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion and UFC Middleweight contender, and current Bellator MMA contender, Lyoto "The Dragon" Machida.

We will breakdown the most important moves that the rest of the MMA world or new school fans unaccustomed to Karate will find "elusive" and "weird".

Having trained in Taekwondo, we understand that the art itself has evolved into a sport and lost many of its other techniques in favour of only focusing on kicks.

Competition Taekwondo, at the lower and middle levels, also looks tame in comparison to full contact Muay Thai kickboxing bouts.

However, high-level, Olympic-level Taekwondo in the Adult Men's Division, is definitely not without its uses.