I was, of course, saying that half jokingly (though I do think it would be pretty funny to see it done in a comic). You mention Gene LeBell, who was actually a close friend of mine. He had some good stories about Bruce Lee but the one that is probably most germane to this is the one that got turned into a controversial scene in the Quentin Tarantino movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where Brad Pitt's movie stuntman character manhandles Bruce Lee in a real fight. Tarantino took a lot of flak over that but said it's a fictional character in my fictional world and if I want to say he can beat Bruce Lee, then he can (ironically, Gene was not fictional and did put Bruce in his place on the set of the Green Hornet).

So yes, if Marvel says kung fu is the deadliest fighting art and Shang Chi is the greatest fighter in their comics, then it is and he is because that's their fictional world.

As for kung fu in the real world, I'll just say that it, like most traditional martial arts, is vastly misunderstood. Most of its empty hand styles arose primarily as performance-based arts done in Chinese Opera, temple festivals and street entertainment and not necessarily as pragmatic fighting methods, at least by modern standards. Which is perfectly fine. Not everything has to be about fighting.

While you're correct that it comes down to the person doing the art, the art itself does matter a great deal and, nowadays, the best real life warriors (like U.S. Army Special Forces) are all doing pretty similar stuff for their hand to hand combat training. And it's not kung fu.

I won't comment on this anymore in this thread, since I don't want to derail comic discussion with something that's probably only of interest to a couple of people here. But if anyone feels a need to discuss it further, they can message me in private. Now, back to the comics!

I'm sure he would have. In fact, I think it would have fit his character even better! Rufus had all the self-aggrandizing flair of an MMA star! 


Oh absolutely, the visual appeal plays a major role in what we choose to show. In a Youtube video, Michael Jay White demonstrated how an easily blocked roundhouse kick to the head looked much better than a far more efficient feint that ends up as a straight kick. That feint, more useful in a real fight, actually looked kind of sloppy when seen from a distance.

Most grappling techniques would probably be in the same boat; they work great, but can look kind of boring to the uninitiated. Heck, judo introduced blue gis (bleah) several years ago because the public at the Olympics had a hard time telling what was going on!

Gene was a great guy and, even in his later years, someone you would not want to mess with (just ask Steven Seagal). I still feel the pain from some of his submissions or, as he called them, "finishing holds." I miss him dearly.

Those are great questions. I have read almost no comics that have come out in the last 10 years so I don't know if MMA is featured much. The comics I've read from the early 2000s certainly didn't include much of it but MMA really boomed in popularity after 2008.

On the one hand, the problem with using MMA as a major feature is that it lacks an exciting back story, at least one that can be easily encapsulated in a comic. "Ninja assassins" or "mystical kung fu temple" is a catchy back story so it's probably still sexier to make your comic martial artists ninja or kung fu masters. On the other hand, comics have always been about pop culture so if the trend in combat sports entertainment is MMA, it wouldn't surprise me if you see more of it included in comics.

But in movies, and especially TV, I think you do see a lot of use of it. In cinema, I think I've seen more movies that revolve around the world of MMA than boxing in the last 20 years. If Stallone were making Rocky today, chances are he'd be a mixed martial artist. And in TV shows I constantly see it. When they have a plot line in a detective show that revolves around something like fixed fights, as often as not it's shady MMA fights portrayed, where as that always used to be boxing.

But you're right about the visuals. I think for the same reason that MMA fans prefer seeing slugfests to ground battles, when they do show MMA in movies or TV they often seem to concentrate on showing punches and kicks before maybe finishing the fight with a ground move. Many of the choreographers are definitely aware of that stuff, Gene was a stuntman and coordinator in Hollywood for 60 years. But people want to see blood and you get that more from a punch in the face than an armlock. Even in comics art, it's more dynamic to show a big roundhouse punch with a "WHAM!" effect than somebody applying a chokehold.

Lethal Weapon is probably the prime example I could cite, with the fight between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey, at the end, as demonstrating MMA fighting, before it was even on the national stage. Rorion Gracie contributed to the fight choreography and the battle includes Gibson using a triangle choke on Busey, to put him down, after a mixture of striking and weapons, and some "jailhouse rock," a fighting style developed in prisons, which could be described as "dirty boxing." Lethal Weapon 2 includes savate, from the South African goon, demonstrating how little real savate was ever used for Batroc.

Early UFC had some matches where the crowd is really booing grappling stuff, as it is too hard to really see what is going on, on the mat, when they are maneuvering for position. Royce Gracie and Dan Severn got a lot of that, until Gracie pulled out the triangle choke. Gracie and Shamrock's rematch was even more of that, as both played defense, and spent a lot of time in the guard, on the mat, looking for position or a submission. The UFC fans preferred seeing people hitting each other and then you started seeing more and more of the ground and pound from grapplers, especially pure wrestlers, rather than submission grapplers, like Ken Shamrock and the shoot wrestling crowd, or the BJJ and Vale Tudo guys.

Bruce Lee incorporated a grappling/MMA spot in the opening fight of Enter the Dragon, with Sammo Hung, at the end, when he grabs him in what pro wrestling called a Crucifix and submitted Sammo. That fight is probably a textbook for cinematic fighting, mixing styles. There is a little of that in the Billy Jack films, with Bong Soo Han choreographing the fights, based on his Hapkido style, which is primarily kicking and striking, but included some take downs.

Shang Chi did fight a grappler or two, though more of the sumo variety, to emphasize the size. Never faced a real submission wrestler, though. That could have been interesting, but hard to convey visually, in an exciting fashion. Probably the artist who could best do it is Jaime Hernandez, as he captured pro wrestling beautifully in Love & Rockets and, especially, Whoa, Nellie! He mainly hit the highpoints of the move and I would think that would probably be the best approach, for an MMA-style fight, in a comic book layout. Otherwise, you have two guys on the ground, which is the same problem of long dialogue scenes of static images.

Am I the only one here who now has Neil Diamond singing "Forever in Blue Gis" stuck in his head?

Cei-U!
Make it stop!!!

My last two slugfest contributions to this thread. First is a real oddity, the all-mighty Galactus throwing down with the nearly omnipotent Sphinx to decide who gets to eat earth. Not sure why Galactus is resorting to fisticuffs when he can just zap people with his cosmic power but the Sphinx must have really annoyed him because Galactus just hauls off and b****slaps him!



And finally, to show I'm not entirely stuck in the 1970s, the climactic fight between the Hulk and the Sentry from the World War Hulk miniseries back in the early 2000s. I thought the whole thing was overdone and didn't care for the art but... it's the Hulk vs. the Sentry!