You are correct there. When I was young in Taiwan, I had to protect my neighborhood. Sometime someone knocked on my window and said that his young brother was beaten up. I had to grab my weapon and fought someone I had never meet before. Will you call that "gang"? I prefer to call that "neighborhood watching". There was no leader in that group. If you beat up someone, next day, his brothers, his neighbors all beat you up. IMO, it's very good social system. There is nothing like that in US here.
What kind of weapon?
From my time living in Taiwan and China, noticed the neighborhoods were made up of small, close-knit communities. While they may not have official leaders it seemed like they did have people who represented the community with the gov .
Growing up in SF in the early ’70s.,
The city was divided into areas with distinct cultural identities:
Mission District, Mexican, Latino
Chinatown, Sunset District, Chinese
Fillmore, Black
Castro , gay
Cow Palace, Filipino,Pacific Islander
North Beach, Italian
ect.
Each group had its own form of "neighborhood watching" with some depending on time, not good place to be
if one was not from it.
For me a very different place now, lost a lot of the flavor it had growing up in it.
About inventing kickboxing, here’s an early pic way before the 60’s -
Bogu kumite kenwa mabuni - Bing
On Benny Urquidez, his fight against Jackie Chan is one of the great martial arts movie fights ever, his real life kickboxing skill adapted nicely to the movie screen.
Gangster fight or street fight in general, it was much more honorable before, at least in my home country, drawing a weapon or even kicking at someone was considered a most cowardly act and no one wanted to be a coward
I think this is what The Jet was getting at. Like you mentioned, there were things that were seen as cowardly, without honor, or as people might say now, without “street cred.”
In the video, Benny talks about how he considers himself a martial artist first, not just a fighter.
Part of the discussion in the
Is BJJ a TMA? thread.
Fighters win by any means necessary.
Martial artists define themselves by the values they choose to live by, the traditions they carry on, not just by whether they win or lose.
A martial artist can be one without ever fighting.
A fighter, by definition, cannot be a fighter without fighting.
"A martial artist can exist in principle, in practice, and in path.
A fighter exists only in action."
This distinction is most evident in how people are introduced today:
Modern fighters are typically introduced by name, not by style.
