The duel last week between MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong and tai chi master Lei Lei in Chengdu, Sichuan province, sparked heated debate over which is superior – modern combat tactics or traditional martial arts – after a video of the fight was widely shared online.
Xu told The Beijing News on Monday that a handful of other kung fu masters had since responded to his open challenge.
“I will surely accept the challenge,” he said.
Xu had issued the challenge to various kung fu masters and even said on his Weibo account that he could defeat two or three of them together.
Among Xu’s challengers were two tai chi masters Lu Xing and Wang Zhanhai; Guangzhou native Li Shangxian who specialises in the Shaolin Meihua Zhuang form of Chinese boxing, and Yi Long, a monk known for his martial arts prowess.
Lu, who is president of the Sichuan taichi pushing hands research institute, told the Chengdu Business News that he had invited Xu to a public duel to “teach him a lesson”.
“He is deeply biased against the traditional martial arts and his words were insulting. I challenged him so he could have a fresh perspective of tai chi and the true traditional martial arts,” said Lu, who specialises in a form of tai chi known as tuishou, or pushing hands.
Lu said he was 80 per cent sure of winning the fight as tai chi masters had “iron fist, air foot and iron back, which need more than 20 years of hard practice”.
Xu’s form of martial arts was more about projecting an explosive force, he said.
Wang, the other tai chi master, also accepted Xu’s challenge in a public statement.
The Henan native who practises the Chen style of tai chi said it was not necessary to justify the martial art, but that he decided to fight Xu in order to silence online dissenters.
The Chen style of tai chi is characterised by a “silk-reeling” movement that alternates fast and slow motion and bursts of power.
Yi, the fighter monk, wrote on Weibo that he, too, accepted Xu’s challenge.
He would not stand for the MMA fighter insulting traditional Chinese martial arts and deceiving the public, he said.
Xu is a trained kung fu free-combat sportsman who taught himself MMA fighting.
In his duel with Lei last Thursday, he pummelled the tai chi master to the ground within 10 seconds.
Wei is a practitioner of the Yang style of tai chi, characterised by its slow, steady movements.
Xu said traditional Chinese martial arts were all about form but not practical. Tai chi could not be compared to real combat tactics, he said. - South China Morning Post
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