Why do most western fights (e.g. wrestling, swordplay) seem like 2 bodies smooshing into eachother while eastern fighting (e.g. martial arts, fist fights) look compartmentalized and light?
In: Other
Y’all have never been in a swordfight, and it shows.
OP, you’re begging the question a bit and I’m curious what fights you’ve been watching that you characterize Western fighting styles as “two bodies smooshing into each other.”
Let’s take swordfighting as an example (I’m speaking here of knights-in-armor type swordfighting instead of, say, Olympic fencing). Swordfighting is a head game: if you just try to batter your opponent into submission you’re going to tire yourself out long before you accomplish anything. It is very, very hard to land a respectable shot on any moderately competent opponent in their guard, and this fact forms the core of it.
Defensively, your primary skill is in maintaining your guard. Every time you make a move you get pulled out of your guard, and in that moment you’re vulnerable. Likewise, any time your opponent strikes you it pulls you out of your guard at least a little. So you need to get good at minimizing how far out of guard you get and how long you’re out of guard. Minimize your reactions, reset quickly.
Offensively, your primary skill is pulling your opponent out of their guard. There are direct ways of doing this, such as bashing someone’s shield aside, but those aren’t nearly as effective as you might think. Mostly you accomplish this by maneuvering them into a position where they can’t effectively get back into guard (ex., their arms get tangled up) or they can’t get back into guard quickly (ex., they overextended on a strike). If you do that, you create an opening you can get a kill shot into. Of course, you have to do all of this while maintaining your own guard lest you suffer a terminal case of steel poisoning.
I’ve never been much for boxing or MMA, but once I became accustomed to thinking that way about swordfighting I started spotting some similarities in those sports. Boxing is a lot about maintaining guard and trying to get your opponent out of guard. Much like swordfighting, you can batter at your opponent’s forearms all you like but you won’t get anywhere until you connect with their chin.
I suspect a lot of the *perception* that Western martial arts are cruder and bashier than Eastern ones comes from their handling in movies. Ironically, I think it’s in part because moviemakers tend to be less familiar culturally with Eastern martial arts, so when they want to make a kung fu movie they figure they’d better hire someone who knows what they’re talking about. But when it comes to something like swordfighting they *more or less* know what the deal is so they don’t feel the need to bring in consultants, which is how you get nonsense like people swinging swords like they weigh fifty pounds.
Latest Answers