Mr. Cartmell,
I was wondering what types of stylists
gave you the hardest fights during your
full-contact fights overseas.

BTW, I enjoy the sight and your books.

Regards,
Peter

(to get a better answer you could eliminate the 'overseas' qualifier in your question).

Good idea. Please strike "overseas" from the record.

Regards,
Peter

Peter,
Xing Yi fighters and fighters that could wrestle (Shuai Jiao and Judo).

Tim,

I get what is tough about fighters that can wrestle, but what makes a Hsing-i fighter tougher than say a boxer or kempo or whatever fighter.

Is it the strategy employed by the art, it's tactics, it's mindset, it's conditioning?

Robert,
Well, for one thing the Xingyiquan schools had alot of competitors, so their pool of fighters was large. The more people you have training to fight, the more good fighters you will produce.

Xingyiquan also attracts people more interested in actual fighting, the forms are not especially pretty (to the novice at least) and the training may seem a little harsh and repetitve. Therefore, people with a fighting mindset tend to gravitate toward arts like Xingyiquan.

Finally, Xingyiquan is a straightforward, practical style designed to produce fighters in a short period of time.

I'm not saying practitioners of other styles were not good fighters as well (there were many), I'm only talking about my personal experiences.

Tim, are you mainly a xingyiquan guy? Or are you just as good with the other internal styles?

Tim, if for some reason you were limited to studying only one system, which would it be?

Dork,
I spent about an equal amount of time practicing the Internal styles. The principles are the same, so it's hard for me to say which "style" I prefer.

Kenneth,
It would depend on my primary goal for training, and mostly on the teacher.

Tim, let's say you were training for "street" survival. Good answer about the teacher, though. I once chose a supposedly "lesser" art because the teacher was so much more than other instructors.

hsing-i, judo, shuaijiao and similar arts are more realistically oriented so the guys know how to close with, and "destroy" the competition.

Kenneth,
I wouldn't go with any one art in particular for "street survival," I'd take the most relevant strategies, techniques and training methods from any art I had access to (keeping it as simple as possible) and train.

Gee, now that opens up a whole new can of worms.

Hi all,
This is an old thread but since I've rejoined the list, let me add support to Tim's views...all the arts I trained really began to make sense when I first learned and then instructed in XingYi. For example, I learned a circling/practice form in Hung Gar Kung Fu that using San Ti, I adopted for my class to learn to go "around" the opponent and we used it successfully. You will utilize anything you need to defend yourself on the street and it was my expereince, you don't even know where some of this stuff came from! It was muscled memoried and then used when you had to. But combining what you know in a simple, straight forward way can save you and/or the hides of your students.
Xingteacher1 (Rick)

Tim,
In your varied experience, what was the single hardest fight you ever had and who was you opponent?

Depends on the venue. The hardest BJJ fight I ever had was in the PanAmerican games against Rommel Dunbar, he's a black belt under Pedro Carvhalo.

I believe the original question of this thread was "What kind of stylists gave you the hardest fights?" Tim, didn't you tell me a while back that you had a real hard time against a hair stylist in Hollywood because he wouldn't take no for an answer and kept on attacking your wee-nuts?