Boxing vs Chinese kungfu

[RongYingMin]

Who will win when greatest fighters of boxing such as: Muhammad Ali, Evander Hollifield, Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson etc. take part in 1 vs 1 fights with Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Jacky Chan, etc. or when Jet Li, Bruce Lee and Jacky Chan fight with each other.

[Loke-Gao-Zhu]

Jacky Chan is overrated

Bruce Lee (Jit Kun Do) and Jet Li (Shaolin martial arts) will definately whoop those boxers

but i like bruce lee more since he's more speedy

so i voted for bruce lee

[RongYingMin]

Jacky Chan is overrated.

Oh, I don't think so.

If you watch his films such as: Drunken Fist; Snake Fist; etc. you'll see that he trained so hard, he was also very fast, powerful and flexible. Based on the fact that he have always acted his scenes without cascadeurs, I think he is very close to Bruce Lee or Jet Li.

But I wonder if anyone in the Chinese side above would be able to stand in steadiness after receiving an extremely heavy punch of a fighter in the Boxing side.

Anyway, I chose Bruce Lee, he is not too far lighter than Boxing fighters (seemed to be 70 kg), he is rather tall (1m 70), his techniques are also more dangerous and practical than Jet Li's and Jacky Chan's.

[warlock110]

Jacky Chan is overrated

Bruce Lee (Jit Kun Do) and Jet Li (Shaolin martial arts) will definately whoop those boxers

but i like bruce lee more since he's more speedy

so i voted for bruce lee

wow... you ever saw a fight in your life before? you don't know squat... chinese martial art generally are train to maintain a healthy life. they're very nice to watch, but as far as power/speed they're no where near as fast as boxing...
boxing and mui thai are the 2 most demanding martial art in the world, just go in a boxing gym and see how they train, then come back and still say they are not as good.

boxing seems like they're not using their feet, but they are... unlike most martial art where the feet are used as weapons. boxer's feet are heavily on doging/movement and at some point increasing their punching power... most boxers have heavy hand (if they don't, then you can see they'll use different stands, there's quite a few different stand in boxing)... heavy hand are naturally born and they hit HARD... see the damage they do with that thick glove on, you'll see what they can do with bare knuckle. not only that, boxer trained for endurance more than any other martial art (try throwing punches for 7-9 straight round while hopping around).... they are also very durable (try getting hit for 7-9 round)... and most importantly, their punch are devastating and the likely hood of them landing a punch is actually quite high, the basis of boxing is to deliver and be able to take hit, they're very quick but also their punch is most of the time 1 hit if it's bare knuckle... also, boxers are very accurate as they train to hit vital spot on the face...

I won't say much any more... just read it up.

but right now the best fighting is still MMA... they cover what boxing lack which is clinch or grapple... boxer don't train much in this area (or rather train to damage while being grab)... this is where mui thai comes in... mui thai is actually more dangerous than western boxing... but strengh wise boxer will still dominate them...

a real fight isn't gonna be like what jet lee or jacky chan does, normal people don't just jump in and pretend to be bear like and get hit like they're retards... most of the time they keep distance... and just by reach alone. jet lee will never be able to reach a boxer's armlengh before he get 1 right in the jaw.

[dracnom]

wow... you ever saw a fight in your life before? you don't know squat... chinese martial art generally are train to maintain a healthy life. they're very nice to watch, but as far as power/speed they're no where near as fast as boxing...

Have you watched fight science??? it was on discovery channel, if you want you can search the local video store for it.

In the video, they put many types of martial arts to the test, however, it lacked potential, as in the amount and the people they chose to do the testing.

Anyway, boxing has one of the slowest punches but the most powerful in terms of force. If you have seen the fastest snake poised on its tail and about to strike, you would know there was no way to dodge it, and even if you try, it is imposible, chinese kung fu, tested, had the worlds fastest punches, four times faster than a snake strike.

Muay Thai boxing has the most strongest knee kick, able to kill someone, it exerts the force able to bend your ribs back and either speed up the heart to extreme speeds (heart attack) or just completely stop it. And so on...

However, I believe many stuff was left out in this show, see below for the information on fight science.

Jackie Chan is more like a stuntsman ranked amongst the three, he would come last, jet li would rank second and Bruce Lee first. Bruce Lee is really fast and agile and if you have seen the movies he has made, it shows what he is capable of and he would definetly beat the boxers.

[dracnom]

FIGHT SCIENCE

More Powerful Than a Sledgehammer

In one experiment, experts in karate, boxing, kung fu, and tae kwon do all took turns striking the dummy in the face.

The researchers were surprised to find that boxing is the fighting style capable of delivering the most force in a single punch.

Boxer Steve Petramale delivered about 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) of impact force, the equivalent of swinging a sledgehammer into someone's face.

His punch, the sensors revealed, starts in the feet and travels up the legs through the hips to the chest and shoulders, multiplying in force as it travels up the body.

Strong as a Car Crash

But martial artists are perhaps best known for being able to deliver devastating kicks.

To test this power, Kelly had the participants use their unique styles to land kicks on the dummy's chest.

The tae kwon do spinning back kick delivered more than 1,500 pounds (680.4 kilograms) of force, while the kung fu flying double kick produced about 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) of force.

But the undisputed winner practices a discipline known for its ability to deliver a knockout: Muay Thai, also known as Thai boxing.

Melchor Menor, a former two-time Muay Thai world champion, uses a simple technique to incapacitate his opponents: a knee to the chest at close quarters.

Menor himself was surprised at how powerful this move can be.

"I wasn't expecting to have the highest force. When he said the power of the knee [kick] was equal to the power of a 35-mile-an-hour [56.3-kilometer-an-hour] car crash, it was humbling."

The displacement sensor in the dummy's chest measured nearly two inches (five centimeters) of chest compression from Menor's knee strike.

Like the boxer's punch, the energy from this kick starts from the feet and moves up to the knee. The blow is delivered to the soft tissue below the rib cage while Menor holds his opponent's head stationary.

The ribs are driven backward through the lungs and solar plexus, a cluster of nerve cells behind the human stomach that controls some organ functions.

Truly a death blow, Menor's knee kick can cause internal bleeding and even cardiac arrest.

Faster Than a Snake

According to an old legend, martial artists should strike with the speed of a snake.

But at an average of eight to ten feet (two-and-a-half to three meters) a second, a snake strike would seem beyond the reach of even the fastest fighter.

As it turns out, a kung fu punch can give even the fastest snake a run for its money

Alex Huynh is a three-time gold medalist in wushu, a style of kung fu. He's also made in his mark in Hollywood as a stunt double in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean.

For the experiment Huynh's strikes were measured by an instrument called an accelerometer.

The results of the test showed an astonishing speed of more than 40 feet (12.2 meters) a second.

"We martial artists knew we had the ability to hit hard and fast, but I never thought I could hit four times faster than a snake," Huynh said.

Huynh is also quick to point out that no one style is best.

"As the show demonstrates, each individual school has strengths," he said. "The goal is to find one that is the best for you."

[RongYingMin]

the day before yesterday, I watched a TV programme on the Discovery Channel called "GO fighters", the MC is a taekwondo fighter, he travelled to many places in the world to find out about various types of martial arts of different countries.
Trust me, from what I saw, any taekwondo fighter in South Korean Military can use his forhead to break a pile of 3 bricks and a former soldier in Russian task force showed his brilliant traditional fighting techniques of Russia which resembles Taiji quan to a certain extent.

[Felix]

More Powerful Than a Sledgehammer

The researchers were surprised to find that boxing is the fighting style capable of delivering the most force in a single punch.

Boxer Steve Petramale delivered about 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) of impact force, the equivalent of swinging a sledgehammer into someone's face.

Hmm, so in real life, we are still far away from the likes of the steroid up Ivan Drago from Rocky IV.

[CFT]

Good grief. Although this is a wuxia forum, let us please stay out of the fantasy realm since this is a question about reality. These individual tests only tell us about attributes of isolated techniques, nothing about the whole package. It's no good hitting hard or fast if your ability to find the correct range and timing is rubbish - you'll just hit empty air. Put another way by Bruce Lee : "Boards don't hit back"!

To be blunt, the "average" kung fu practitioner just would not match up in the slightest against the "average" Western or Muay Thai boxer. The difference is both in the training methods and the intent of the practitioner. Too many kung fu types talk about health benefits of kung fu practice and never truly test their skills against an opponent who is intent on knocking them out. OK, both boxing and Muay Thai have a ruleset, but within that context they have still developed a combat method to deliver knockout force to a reisiting opponent.

Kung fu people can develop that skill too, but must be honest with themselves and test their skills at the appropriate level. You can't just practice your Taijiquan forms in isolation and/or a just a bit of push hands practice and then expect to deal with the someone with real fighting experience. Despite our common held prejudices, boxing and Muay Thai are not just about brute strength. Strength is just a tool to support technique, and their techniques and combat philosophies are really no less subtle than Chinese/Japanese/Korean arts.

[Surferket]

Discovery channel had a documentary called Fight Science where they used wired crash test dummies and all kinds of sensing equipment to quantify the force generated by various martial arts (kungfu, muay thai, taekwando, judo, ninjutsu, boxing, wrestler, jujitsu, karate...) as well as their weapons.

The result:

Best 1-punch-knockout - boxer
Best kicker - muay thai
Best in fastest hits - kungfu
Best in most deadly arts - ninjutsu (because of focused nerve strikes)
Best in balance and stability - ninjutsu
Best overall weapon - samurai sword

It is a very interesting documentary series.

[owbjhx]

Breaking bricks, performing cinematic stunts and (in Bruce Lee's case) founding martial arts styles are all feats worthy of admiration, but personally I feel that sustained success in real fights (e.g. in the ring) is a better indicator of someone's combat effectiveness than what's shown in choreography and educational documentaries. To all those who insist on continuing to talk about the latter: have you watched much modern Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), like Pride, UFC etc.?

I have to admit my ignorance as to the real-life fight records of Jet Li etc., but I'm pessimistic about how long these diminutive film stars would last against professional heavyweight boxers. The general question about boxing versus Chinese kungfu is more interesting, but in terms of combat effectiveness, I'd guess it comes down to how you train and what combat rules you adhere to. The impression I have of a typical boxing gym is that you'd do rather more full-contact sparring and focused conditioning - i.e. actual preparation to fight, including hitting people and getting hit, repeatedly - than you'd do under a 'typical' kungfu teacher, and based on this, I'd imagine sending someone to train at a boxing gym for a year might make a better fighter than if the same person had spent a year learning, say, Wing Chun (or indeed most famous oriental martial arts, with the exception of Muay Thai). But it's really about how you train.

To try and bring this back on topic (within Wuxia Fiction), I'm actually grateful for the ridiculous unrealism in Jin Yong's depiction of the martial arts: old men and little girls thrashing rugged young soldiers; the achievement of m*th*rf***erdom through quiet reading; the slow-motion fight narratives and the importance of a move's intellectual/cultural background; and of course, things like inner power, qinggong and acupoints. Real fighting, in contrast, is brutal, ugly stuff, and furthermore, words (particularly English words) are a cr*p medium in which to capture it.

[CFT]

The impression I have of a typical boxing gym is that you'd do rather more full-contact sparring and focused conditioning - i.e. actual preparation to fight, including hitting people and getting hit, repeatedly - than you'd do under a 'typical' kungfu teacher, and based on this, I'd imagine sending someone to train at a boxing gym for a year might make a better fighter than if the same person had spent a year learning, say, Wing Chun (or indeed most famous oriental martial arts, with the exception of Muay Thai). But it's really about how you train.

You have it spot on.

One can do static forms, e.g. zam jong (post mediation), or dynamic forms where you working everything out, footwork, handwork, etc.

But even if one is doing medium to low power sparring, i.e. making contact but not trying to knock each other out, that is a whole different ball game. When someone is trying to disrupt your game you just cannot get the clean hit in. At the end of the day it is about relative skill. If you can get positional advantage and achieve control of your opponent then you only need to use enough strength and speed as the job requires.

And if you've never sparred or fought, then there is the challenge of overcoming the natural instinct to disengage and flee. We are afraid of getting hit for a good reason and this stops people from being able to fight. Part of kung fu training should be about overcoming this reaction and getting stuck in. Knowing what it is like to get hit and learning to hit someone without any qualms is also part of this process.

This is the difference between the "average I do kung-fu for health" types and those who train to fight in whatever venue - ring or street.

[warlock110]

also... for those that think other kung fu hit so fast that you can't dodge. try it on a boxer... they are very VERY evadsive with their foot work. imagine their butt in the ring with no where to go... how do you think they keep dodging punches... lol... like i said. the only weakness in boxing is that they can't do damage while grapple simply because of the style that takes upon them... you can still train heavily in grapple with wrestling/judo/jujitsu... stuff like that to make up for it... not everyone can train as a boxer (they literaly make people quit)... but most people can do other martial art...

[duguxiaojing]

Bruce Lee himself admitted he was not Ali's match, mainly due to the huge size and weight mismatch...all the other boxers listed are much bigger and heavier then Bruce BTW. In a "real" fight its hard to say who would win, but IMO the best fighters today would have to be cross trained in several disciplines and be well rounded. You cant just be trained in one art and dominate (IE Royce in the early 90s) due to the higher level of skill of other martial artist.

I voted for the boxers, not neccessarily because they are better fighters then Bruce...simply because all of them MAY have been too big and heavy for even some one like Mr.Lee to handle. (He was 5'8 130-140?)

[K2Grey]

Boxers can knock pretty much anyone out with one punch, but you still see fights where 4343 punches are thrown and no one is KOed because it's not that easy to connect cleanly.

[crazylife123]

if the chinese kung fu masters could get the boxer down on the ground, they'll win. however, just one clean punch from a boxer, those guys will go down. with one single blow from mike tyson to any of the members here in this forum, we will end up in the hospital or dead.

[warlock110]

Boxers can knock pretty much anyone out with one punch, but you still see fights where 4343 punches are thrown and no one is KOed because it's not that easy to connect cleanly.

again, with the evasion of their foot work... it's very hard to land clean on a boxer... they keep moving and swaying so there's no fix target... it's actually easier to land on a regular fighter because even though they're train to move... but they aren't swaying the way the boxer does... and it's true. bareknuckle they'll knock anyone out in 1 clean hit.

and also, chinese kungfu are very nice to watch, but as far as attacking power. karake/judo/taekando will be more efficient at hitting people. they're less fancy and more focus on hitting the target and the most efficient manner. you don't really see this in them because most of the time they fight in their own group ex: karate vs karate so it doesn't really show because their oponent are also understanding the strikes... but against other people is where it really shine out.

[K2Grey]

Yes, I agree with what you are saying in that boxers can own normal people, not so easily other boxers who as far as I know have some nice footwork going.

[Snafu3721]

I was afraid of a topic such as this one...

There are SOOOOOO many factors involved that there is no definite answer. It depends on: what background you come from, if you've ever been in a fight (with boxers and other martail artists), what your beliefs are (existence of chi), etc.

For the most part, I would seperate people into two categories-- fighters and "true" martial artists. By definition, a fighter is anyone schooled in a particular discipline and has attained some fighting proficiency. A "true" martial artist is someone whose life is dedicated to the perfection of attaining some sort of ridiculous level of enlightenment in the field of martial combat.

With that said... about 95% of people today who claim they practice martial arts are really just regular fighters. They do it as a hobby or for simple self defense. The other 5% of people, who were forced, since birth, to engage in physical labors that the Western world can't even imagine (or would jsut deem inhumane)--are true martial artists.

Within these parameters, a martial artist will OWN a boxer... in less than 2 seconds. Examples of such people would be- Masu Oyama, Wei Xiao Tang, Wang Shu Jing, Morihei Ueshiba, etc.

I have personally met and witnesses many of these "masters." They are nothing short of amazing, and pretty damn close to JY's Book and Sword type of fighters (not quite as exaggerated and wuxia). These people were forced to fight each other since early teens to death matches using weapons. This is something that NO boxer ever has to go through. In fact, the reason why these people became great martial arts masters is because they LIVED to attain greatness.

[strife_au]

Boxers would give the martial artists a caining... best thing for them to do is run.
Seriously Jet Li and Jackie Chan have no chance against even mediocre heavy-medium weights IMHWO.