Friday, January 25, 2008

Mixing Martial Arts in Movie Fights

A student of mine sent me this video saying it was an awesome fight sequence that incorporated Jiu-jitsu. Needless to say, I was keen to give it a watch.

At first I thought, "This isn't Jiu-jitsu," as the actors threw Kungfu-style hand strikes and high spinning kicks. Then the fight went to the ground showcasing a number of submissions and manoeuvres that have been popularized by Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. The reason why I don't say that they are simply BJJ techniques is that most of these are also taught in Judo, Sambo and some styles of traditional Jiu-jitsu.

The two actors demonstrate the use of side mount, closed and open guard, arm bar, triangle choke, a knee lock that is applied by twisting the ankle, and rear naked choke. They also do a few neat throws including shoulder throw ("ippon seionage" in Japanese) and stomach throw ("tomoenage" in Japanese). Outside of Jiu-jitsu and Kungfu, you can also see some wrestling elements in there with their use of the sprawl as well as a couple of wrestling-style takedowns.

This fight sequence is pretty cool in the way that it draws from so many different disciplines anyway and easily appreciable by any martial artist. Enjoy!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I realise the fight scene is a bit spectacular and a real fight would probably not go down like that but nonetheless I think their atheleticism is truly remarkable! In particular, I think the way he spun into an ippon seoinage throw was really beautiful!

Sensei Tim said...

Do you know what movie this is from?

Lori O'Connell said...

Silly me! I should have mentioned. It's from the movie "Flash Point". The winner of the fight is Donnie Yen who fought opposite Jet Li in the first fight sequence in "Hero".

Sensei Tim said...

Is this a HK movie? I'm going to have to track this one down.

Lori O'Connell said...

Yes, I believe it is.