My Sanshou In House Tournament at Tat Wong Kickboxing - 9/14/2008

Below is the video of my latest fight at my school (Tat Wong Kickboxing). This was an 'in-house' tournament which means that it was a fight between students in the same school. We had students from San Mateo school, Concord school and of course the San Francisco School. 

Each Sanshou fight followed the official Sanshou tournament rules. Three 2 minute rounds with punch, kick, throws and push-outs. Those push-outs were definitely something different. It pushes you to know where you are on the mat and making sure that you don't go out of the line. If you're out of the line twice, you lose. 

The main difference that I really noticed was that in this official rules, they actually stop the time when the referee stops the fight due to push outs, unsuccessful throw, etc. You can't imagine how much that delayed the end of the round. I've done this 4 times before and this is the only time when one rounds seemed like two rounds.

Well anyways, enough chatting, on to the videos. Below is my first 2 rounds. It's not even worth it to see the third round =)

History of Sanshou

The History Channel has a show called the "Human Weapon" where they send two people (one an MMA fighter and an ex NFL player) across the world to explore and learn the various martial arts of the world. On this episode linked below, they went to China to explore the History of Kung Fu. Here you can see how the ancient martial arts of Kung Fu has evolved and how it has now become Sanshou.

Watch the History of Kung Fu on the History Channel's "Human Weapon"

One of the Best Sanshou on Video

On YouTube, this video is titled "2003 Sanshou World Cup Highlight". Truthfully, I didn't even knew they had a Sanshou world cup but if you really want to know what Sanshou is like and how intense and quick it could be. This is the video to see. Watch the variety of kicks and throws that these guys use.

And check out how quick these guys move! Sanshou is truly the modern kungfu tournament.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment. Enjoy!

1st Post

Hi everyone,

This will be my first blog. I'm starting this to post and archive anything and everything I can find about the increasingly popular Chinese Kickboxing called "sanshou". Some background on me, I've been doing martial arts since I was 8 years old. Started with Taekwondo, Aikido and when I came to the US, I started taking Sanshou (which at the time I thought was Kickboxing/Muay Thai). 

I'm fascinated by how Sanshou has become a martial art sports instead of a brawl or a violent sport. Just in case you didn't know, Sanshou was part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And they've got some really quick and tactical fighters on that tournament.

If you think all kickboxing tournament is muay thai and a fight is what you see on UFC, you might be surprised with the many variety, rules and style there is all around kickboxing. And I will post here the different styles or discipline that has come out of Kickboxing in general. But the main focus will be on Sanshou since it is what I do, and what I want to share with you. 

Here's the wiki on sanshou:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Shou

Thanks and hope you enjoy the upcoming blogs.