Wing Chun on “Human Weapon”

For those unaware, the History Channel airs a program called “Human Weapon“. With hosts Jason Chambers and Bill Duff traveling around the world and encountering a country’s art, they spend one week learning from masters. At the end of the week, one of them spars with a champion from that art, hoping to survive it.

Personally, I love this show. It is interesting and insightful to see some of what most of us will probably never get to experience by seeing up-close and personal how these arts train. The funny thing, though, was their show about Krav Maga and kung fu.

First, on the Krav Maga episode, they were talking about how Krav Maga uses simultaneous attack and defense, and how no other art does that. Obviously they have never heard of Wing Chun since the art revolves around that fact.

Second, their episode on kung fu “did” have a bit of Wing Chun, but it was exclusively on Chi-sau. Interesting, and while I am unfamiliar with the master that they were working with, he was obviously quite skilled (and the guy puking over the Great Wall of China was an added touch).

Now, every art will say “why didn’t they go into more detail” when it comes to their art, so admittedly, this is a bit biased. However, there is so much to Wing Chun, and all they got to see was Chi-sau?

It would have been a lot more interesting if someone would have told them “Wing Chun was originally designed to defeat the Shaolin methods, so let’s compare it to today’s training and see how it stacks up.” Now that would have been a great show.

But I guess it also has to be entertaining, too, in order to stay on the air. And again, everyone thinks that their methods are best (which is why they train it). Still, this is a great show and I recommend it to everyone who wants to see what other arts are like.

And when you see San-da or Bokator (Cambodian art), you will start salivating because it looks like great fun to work with some of those practitioners!