Kung Fu Master Challenges MMA Fighter To No Holds Barred Match

You can pinpoint the exact moment when he knew he’d messed up…

Pitting different styles of martial arts against each other is not a new trend. For literally thousands of years it’s been a regular practice across the globe, in an attempt to find the ‘superior’ martial arts style.

What prevails from most of the style vs. style bouts is that it’s the martial artist that actually wins the fight, not the art itself. For any fight, there are a number of factors that come into play, but mostly it’s all about the fighters themselves.

Bruce Lee taught martial artists many things during his brief time on earth, but one lesson stuck with this subject in mind. No one martial art is superior, rather a combination of all martial arts.

Lee, a master of multiple disciplines and a Hollywood star, is the godfather of modern MMA. The lessons and methodology he laid down were the building blocks for massive organizations like the UFC.

That’s why it still causes confusion when traditional martial artists, only versed in a single discipline, issue challenges to mixed martial artists. MMA fighters have all the tools required to win a fight, not just one, so why do these kinds of fights still happen?

The subject of today’s article is a wild story, with an even crazier ending.

For those interested, the full story behind the fight is courtesy of Mixedmartialarts.com:

“Morrison Butler, while filming the fight, politely tells Wayne’s coach that he didn’t have the lock and would not be able to choke his opponent (you can listen to the entire conversation during the last minute of the video of Wayne’s fight in the above link); his coach goes ballistic over Morrison’s advice and immediately challenges him to get on the “stage”.

“Fast forward 20 days after that silly discussion – Morrison receives a text message from Wayne Hunter saying his coach was going to come to KnuckleUp and prove to Morrison that grappling is not important. He was going to jump on the “stage” and defeat Morrison without taking the fight to the ground.

Nobody believed he’d actually show up, but yesterday (9/22) he showed up at KnuckleUp with an entourage of 15+ of his students, and his own timekeeper. After signing a waiver of liability, the coach decides NOT to use gloves and asks for ONE 15-min round. There would be no rules on the fight.

The Kung Fu instructor took quite a prehistoric approach, thought to be lost somewhere in the early 1990s after the first UFCs with Royce Gracie. In fact, the coach did resemble Tank Abbott somewhat. 

One might think the coach overreacted, after all, it was a spur-of-the-moment discussion during a fight – but there’s much more underneath the surface.

After Wayne’s beautiful debut at the AFL Fight To The Finish VI, he was quickly boosted to local celebrity status amongst the MMA community in the Outer Banks and was the main event at the Fight To The Finish VII in Elizabeth City.

However, despite his ascending MMA career, Wayne has never had any grappling training and lacks basic ground skills. Wayne lost his past two matches due to his inability to defend himself from being taken down and dominated on the ground. But when he finally faced the need to learn Jiu-Jitsu and Wrestling, his coach (the Kung Fu master in the video) would not allow it.

For whatever reason, Wayne’s coach believed (I don’t think he’s so sure of it now) that grappling skills were not important for MMA.”