I find I get asked this question a lot these days. People who know me, always want to know how I feel about UFC or MMA. I personally love it, I wanted to learn martial arts as kid. I was a fat kid and the youngest member of my extended family. I wanted to learn to fight and to do all the cool stuff I saw in Hong Kong action movies growing up. The school I went to was already a mixed martial arts school, they combined different kinds of fighting and made it in one system.
I enjoy all fighting sports, BJJ, boxing, UFC, K1 and Thai Boxing and so on. The fact that the world finally caught on to it I think it is great. Like all thing, there are always people pretending to be something they are not. UFC just exposed then to the light. I believe Bruce Lee talked about this in the 60's. There is a reason they wanted to keep this stuff behind closed doors. This been going on a long time study up on 1905 Boxer Rebellion, sad but true.
I find the skills I learned as a child practicing Kung fu, served me well in my life and career. I don't know where I would be if not for martial arts. As a stuntman I use it a lot, I learned to fall, roll, take a hit, all these skills sets came from my Kung Fu back ground. Over the years I took up many others types of fighting skills. I am like a collector of styles, I enjoy it. As my old master says “I don't want to do MMA I want fuse all the styles together so you can't tell where one style begins and the other ends.”
I find working with other fighters who just have MMA background harder to work with. They never have good foundations, they don't remember choreography well, they tend to get injured more often. Most lack the muscle memory need to look the part of a great fighter. There are always exception to that rule and I worked with many of them too, but the odds are against them.
Movie fighting is more like dancing, you have to remember the moves. You have to act like your really trying to hit someone with out really doing it. It is not as easy as people think. I train actors and stunt people including my teen age son. I try and show them the different flavors of fighting. I personally enjoy BJJ and mixing it with other styles, always learning and trying to create different combinations. I am very lucky that I get to do what I love for a living. I make money from my skills as a martial artist, best part is I don't have to make weight. lol
