Monkeys can't steal peaches, they are Gods creatures, and all peaches belong to God. You can't steal from God, cause he loves you.

now i'm really confused...monkeys can't steal? now i have to start my kung fu training all over again!

They sure can bite, though.

And which god are we talking about bet if a monkey stole a peach off Kwan Di he would lop the little buggers head right off.

No Nerd Gods, Only real american Gods.

Like the great spirit of the native american people you mean.

Maybe he is the only shaolin stylist in the US undefeated, but not in the entire world. There are lots of shaolin stylist(even monks) who are undefeated in China in San Shou. China's San Shou team are one of the toughest fighters I have ever seen. I peronally think anyone on that team can beat Cung Le.

Shi Yan Zi is one of them, and Shi de Cheng is also undefeated in China.

btw, what is your dawm problem with the monks???? just because one apple is rotten it doesn't mean all th rest are.. I f you're so sure they are not undefeated why don't you go ahead and fight one to prove them wrong.. Why don't you go challenge Shi Yan Ming??You talk a lot of crap about them but you don't do a thing.. If your are so sure that they have never fought and that they don't know anything about San Shou go ahead and prove your point. Go to the U.S. Shaolin Temple and say to Shi Yan Ming" hey can I have san shou match with you" ... you know actions speak louder than words....

Shao lin Long,

I agree because some monks can't fight doesn't mean they all can't, and as far as I know nobody called them 'rotten'.

or 'apples'

there are two ways to go about being undefeated. The first is to have lots of fights and never be beaten (and define what 'beaten' means, and what 'fight' means).

The second is to never be beaten by having nearly no fights at all (one of the commonest ways of being undefeated), and by choosing opponents and circumstances that allow easy victory. This makes a lot of sense if you're not fighting for sport.

If there are lots of stylists in China who are undefeated logic says they got there by this method, after all if they fought each other they half of them would stop being 'undefeated.'

In most established combat sports even the best people get defeated somehere in their carreers.

The third way is to make sure that you come from another continent where people speak a different language, and say things about your fight record that are essentially unverifiable.

So these people 'undefeated in China' who are now in America, what's their fight record like there.

I have no idea who Shi Yan Ming or Shi Yan Tse are, I'm just suspicious when people make grand 'undefeated' claims, or when their students make them for them.

Actions speak louder than words, and the first act is to speak with your real name.

Edward (neither in America or China)

incidentally I don't think China's san shou team is made up of monks, so if they met (after a breakfast of Cung Le's)who would remain undefeated?

Monks can't fight. I could kick anyone of those Monk's asses with my limited training in jiu jiutsu and Tim's Shen Wu. Monk's are all scrawny and weak.

But didn't Bruce Lee train at the Shoalin Temple before he fought against that guy with the claw hand and died after the fight. They made a movie about that didn't they?

Just kidding, anway I was watching this thing on Shoalin Monks last year and I came to a conclusion. Those guys are too scrawny and small to pose a real threat to anyone 6 feet or taller and 170 lbs or heavier and who knows some martial arts. They may hit really fast or such but a Westerner has much thicker bones, muscles, tendons naturally which naturally absorb a lot more of a blow than a little guy could ever dream.

To quote my favorite Japanese Manga, Rurouni Kenshin, "you may be very fast and skilled, but because of your small body size and light weight your elbow stike isn't very hard. Go home and take off that silly costume." This is creepily similar to what I'd say to a Shoalin Monk. Of course this was the star of the comic saying this and he was saying it to some teenage girl who was robbing people in the forest, but she was about the size of most of the Shoalin Monk's i've seen. She also had a cute outfit on which sure is a lot more attractive than orange pajamas but I digress.

Anyway, I also have something else to say from the comic. There was the buddist monk in the story who was like 7 feet tall but really skinny. Some people burnt his monastary down and killed some orphan kids in the fire when he was away at night meditating (supply your own anti-meditation joke here) He quit monkhood and 3 years later in the comic they show him, like 400 lbs of muscle ripping the heads off the people who burnt down his monastary with his bare hands and crushing their skulls with ease.

What do we learn from this? Little, weak monks can't fight. Besides, just grab their little monk heads with one hand and repeatedly punch their faces with the other hand. (for some reason i've always wanted to do this)They're so little that you can easily manhandle them. Little people just can't fight. Even for normal sized people, natural fighters who were just born to fight can go into a fight with no training against 90% of the people in the world and beat them. You can either take shots or you can't. You can either hit hard or you can't. Your body either fights well or it doesn't.

This doesn't mean you can't improve with practice. But all the practice in the world won't make you a really good fighter.

That's it, I quit.

Edward Hines makes a good point. I also believe that many of the shaolin monks can fight. These guys train more then we can ever actually try to think we will. There's learning how to fight and then there's learning to fight. What I mean is, so some don't monks spar (learning how to fight) but they sure as hell are good with the tools for it (learning to fight). So with a little time, like any of us, any monk could learn how to fight and use their highly developed tools in a real situation.

I have to disagree with you Mont F. Cessna Jr. I think your comments are ignorant. Shaolin monks may not have any footage of them fighting anyone, so I'd recommend you look up info on a paticular thai fighter to show you what smaller people are capable of. His name is Samkor Keatmontep and he weighs only 62kgs, but his kicks are deadly. Also Ajarn Apidej is a another deadly kicker (works with Fairtex Muay Thai). Now I'm not saying these guys would totally destroy anyone who is as you say "6ft or taller and 170lbs or heavier" but they certaintly wouldn't get man-handled and I worry for their opponents thighs and torso.

Mont F. Cessna Jr.

I've seen quite a number of "small" guys, that practice CMAs and Systema, comfortably take very hard and heavy strikes from big, strong "Westerners" and Asians, sometimes 100 lbs heavier then the smaller guys.

I Systema teacher I use to train with, "Sergei Ozhereliev", was around 140 LBs? At that time, I think. He could easily take hits from any of his students, some of them were 200-260 lbs and hit very hard. This was not exclusively his skill by any means, as quite alot of his small students could take very hard strikes from big, heavy "Westerners" too.

Size can be a big advantage, but it's not all down to size.

But Mont, what would you do if 2 or 3 little monks ganged up on you? If one got in a lucky shot to your gonads, you'd be all scrunched over and whimpering while the monks milled all around you like a pack of little bowling ball-headed gnomes tugging and smacking at you! I mean, what could you possibly do then??

After reading my comments I realize I did speak a little too quickly. (Maybe quite a bit but lets not push it) But maybe I sure clear up my position. A little shaolin monk against a 6' martial artist who trains a lot? I'm not saying that these monks aren't good. Anyone who practices *that* much better be good. I'm saying that because they are so little, would they have a chance against a someone who naturally out weights them by 40+ lbs and trains half as hard as they do?

What about someone who trains as hard as they do? Also, I watched the monk's entire training day on tv once. I've still to see where they hit the heavy bag, do power drills, and do a lot of the conditioning real fighters do to increase their kicking and punching power. They may be able to do flips and other gymnastic tricks, kick and punch fairly fast (I've seen someone who outweights them by 40 to 50 lbs kick faster than them, he's a 6th degree blackbelt in TKD and he won the Korean National Championship, he was the instructor at the TKD school I used to go to)

Kenneth,

I'd arrange to have 3 little monks thrown in a pit with mike tyson and watch to formulate a battle strategy. I'd later sell the tapes on e-bay and bill them as stress relief entertainment. (Does biting your opponent's ears and noses off qualify as a strategy?)

Or, in case that doesn't happen, I'd use a simple strategy. I'd just start throwing elbows to the body and head and Thai roundhouse kicks to the legs until they are unconcious. One good hit in the head from one of my elbow strikes will put anyone out cold. (Maybe not a heavy-weight pro boxer but I'm not planning on fighting one of those anytime soon)

If I hit the monks in the ribs they will invariably break also unless they have some mystical Qigong training that makes their ribs into steel. In which case I'd have to resort to my mystical Qi power and fly away just like in Iron Monkey

Lol, good strategy, Mont. But seriously, 40 lbs. may not be enough weight to make much difference depending on the skill of the individual, which brings me to my point. A lot of people think they can create some kind of formula, such as "small guy with skill beats big guy without skill, but big guy with skill...etc." but it doesn't always work that way (though often it does). Everyone has some level of skill and strength different from everyone else not only in amount but in proportions as well. Throw in the other important factors such as commitment, and (yes) plain, dumb luck (for instance, strength doesn't even factor into many techniques, so IF a situation arrises where one of those methods would be most appropriate...)and you start to get the picture.

Kenneth,

I understand what you're saying and I agree 95%. The 5% I disagree with you on is that 99.9% of the monks could not take someone 40 lbs heavier and a skilled in fighting. I think you pulled small people into the whole topic (or maybe I did accidentally) I'm saying that monks can't fight well because of two things: A lack of realistic fighting training, and their tiny size. This makes them really fast (but as I've said, I've seen faster which probably resulted from realistic fight training), flexible, and good at their flashy forms and gymnastic routines but leaves them at a serious loss against someone bigger and skilled who can take a hit and knows how to hit. Grappeling against a tiny monk would probably be pretty easy too.

I'm not saying *some* small people can't fight. I'm saying small shaolin monks can't fight (as a general rule, sure there may be a couple but then again, 1 out a hundred million can run a mile in less than 4 minutes)

Small people are at a disadvantage when it comes to fighting. Good training can make up for a lot of the size difference but throw Oscar De La Hoya into the ring with Lennox Lewis or *any* good pro boxer who outweighs him by more than 40 lbs (or maybe even 20 lbs) and he's gonna hit the canvas hard.

Mont, on that last, I believe Tim beat an opponent in a match who outweighed him by at least 45 lbs, I read about it somewhere on this forum, and if I recall correctly, it was a grappling-type tournament. True, Tim isn't a shaolin monk, but then again, he was up against a fighter who not only outweighed him by a considerable margin, but was apparently comparable to him in skill. My old sifu was the most powerful man I ever knew, and he was a skinny little guy. We've personally seen him injure a body-building kickboxer, and rather easily at that. Power training in CMA doesn't lead to large muscles, so it is seldom easy to tell a fighter's ability by cursory examination of his physique. Anyway, I don't know any real shaolin monks. I don't even believe they exist, as China is a communist nation, and those "monks" you speak of are appointed by its government, and the historical ones were geurilla fighters masquerading as monks. Still, since they were established strictly for the tourist dollar, you may well be right.