I have a friend who was well trained in Wing Chun (male) and although yes there is some legitimacy in regards to balance, center line etc, the reality was that he was mostly effective due to the distribution of his mass/weight and often only against those who couldn't fight or more specifically didn't know how to defend.

I don't see much mass in these hostesses and given my experience, I don't believe they would be reliably effective against most decent sized untrained male opponents with this style alone, especially when the situation gets to the floor as most aggressive interactions inevitably do.

To provide a comparison, one of my friends has trained in Karate since he was 6 years old, went on to Tae Kwon Do, Boxing, a few others, then heavily into Mixed Martial Arts about 8 years ago and now trains with professional MMA fighters. As far back as a decade ago my Wing Chun (no other martial arts) friend couldn't do shit to him if his life depended on it.

Why?
Wing Chun focuses on blocking and controlling your opponents movements with pressure points and shifting your opponents weight, and this really doesn't cut it in real situations when your opponent isn't trying to hug you into submission, or when a punch just needs to slip though and connect with the base of your chin for a KO, or a lucky hit that simply takes you to the ground.

Now, I'm not saying this idea is completely dangerously delusional, i think it's a good idea in principle to train airline staff including pilots, but feel they are doing it less than effectively as they could.

The point I'm making is that any 1 martial arts is simply not effectively reliable in most confrontational situations due to most/all martial arts having a fair bit of bullshit inter-weaved with legitimate capabilities.

** If airlines are going to train/encourage hostesses to intervene with dangerous individuals they should be teaching the genuinely proven to be effective portions of various martial arts.. to which Wing Chun would play a role imo for upright close combat, but also focusing on some aspects of Judo for take-downs and take-down-defense & Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for when the shit hits the mat, which are all great arts for females and males alike as technique is the key and an individuals power isn't a primary focus for any of these.

Good on them for taking the initiative.

A: wearing a hoodie
B: wearing an undershirt thingy.

Round 1
0:00-0:10 - B tries several 1-2 combinations, but poor footwork and punching technique result in misses.
0:10-0:18 - A shows good distance control, but poor footwork leaves him backed against the door. Slipping and circling to his right would have been a better option.
0:18-0:27 - A and B both try to counter straight/wobbly right hands with their own right hands. Poor technique in general displayed by both. Establishing a stiff jab would have been a better option for both.
0:27-0:35 - Unable to land any strikes, both A and B separate and regroup. End of Round 1. 10-9 B for driveway control and generalship.
0:36-1:04 - Between rounds we get some back story to the confrontation which involves theft of illicit property. We also learn of A's prefight illness, and B's lack of compassion.

Round 2
1:03-1:08 - Clearly motivated, A comes out swinging, with B looking to counterstrike. B is smart to allow A to close distance rather than try to chase him down like in round 1.
1:08-1:13 - Drawing A in, B is able to counter a lunging right hand with a right hand of his own. Poor footwork by A combined with a quick followup shot by B leads to a knockdown.
1:13-1:18 - B tries to land punches before establishing a solid top position. A is able to sweep B with a quick roll. B should have concentrated on establishing his base first. 'Position before submission' is a better idea. A ends up securing side position.
1:18-1:35 - A shows excellent patience, as B expends too much energy attempting strikes from the inferior position. An armbar is available at 1:22, but A elects not to attempt it. The sequence ends with A executing a knee-over pass to full mount.
1:35-2:15 - A maintains mount, but B's lack of grappling is matched only by A's lack of conditioning. B removes A's hoodie. Multiple armbars are available, but A does not capitalize.
2:16-2:20 - B is able to execute a bump-and-roll (upa) sweep, landing in A's guard. A does well to control B's posture. An introductory lesson at their local Brazilian jiu jitsu school would have been a good option for both A and B.
2:20-3:07 - B tries landing strikes from the guard, but poor posture makes them ineffectual. A goes with an open guard, but a total lack of hip movement makes submissions unlikely. The sequence ends with an illegal groin strike.
3:07-4:12 - Too much talking. I have a feeling they may not be wearing the required mouth guards. At 3:27 a dog barks.
4:12-4:25 - A attempts an omoplata, but forgets to hook B's arm. This general lack of control allows B to strike A. A goes to turtle position.
4:25-4:37 - B attempts to take A's back, but does not secure the over/under or the hooks. As A stands up, B goes for an elevated (flying?) crucifix, but B counters it by dumping A on his head.
4:37-4:55 - With B on his back and A standing, A attempts multiple torino passes, but is unable to get to side position.
4:55-5:19 - Round 2 ends, but A shows a lack of sportsmanship by threatening to spit on B. 10-9 A.
Result: 19-19 Draw.

Note: I suspect this may not have been a sanctioned Amateur MMA event.

TL;DR: At 3:27 a dog barks.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'martial art, fight, jiu jitsu, grapling, gracie, arm bar, technique, skill' to 'martial art, brazilian jiu jitsu, grappling, gracie, arm bar, submission' - edited by rembar

no i don't have much time for training. what i mostly do, is that i train (and instruct) in taijiquan. the club also has a sanshou team, so i have done a tiny bit of that, but i feel that when it comes to actually being hit and hitting someone, my interest is more academic. hehe. i am too old, and i need all my fingers alive for my job (as a composer, at the piano).
i also did 2-3 years(?) of aikido, and then some medieval european fencing with sword and buckler... and fencing is actually what i miss the most so when i get the time again, i think i want to start training more fencing and taiji sword as well.

In reply to this comment by rembar:
From order of most to least experience, for unarmed martial arts:
Brazilian jiu-jitsu / Submission grappling
Judo
Boxing
Muay Thai
Kickboxing
Wrestling

By this, I mean I'm a lazy sub grappler, a shitty striker, and an even worse standup grappler. Hahah, but I still love doing it.

I have also trained krav maga, wing chun, hung gar kung fu, and aikido for varying amounts of time, but I don't consider them "arts I know" for various reasons. I remember you sifted that old-school GJJ vid, do you train BJJ or something?

In reply to this comment by lavoll:
upvote for rembars comments. but now i have to ask, what art(s) do you do know, rembar?

From order of most to least experience, for unarmed martial arts:
Brazilian jiu-jitsu / Submission grappling
Judo
Boxing
Muay Thai
Kickboxing
Wrestling

By this, I mean I'm a lazy sub grappler, a shitty striker, and an even worse standup grappler. Hahah, but I still love doing it.

I have also trained krav maga, wing chun, hung gar kung fu, and aikido for varying amounts of time, but I don't consider them "arts I know" for various reasons. I remember you sifted that old-school GJJ vid, do you train BJJ or something?

In reply to this comment by lavoll:
upvote for rembars comments. but now i have to ask, what art(s) do you do know, rembar?

What's funny is there is tae kwon do, possibly some judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, capoeira and karate, but as far as I can tell, absolutely no kung fu.

What's screwed up is I know at least one of the women, possibly two or more, and I doubt they had any knowledge of this music vid being made. Creepy....

*sigh*.

While it is true that the Gracie family made submission attacks famous by representing Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) in mixed martial arts (MMA), everything you just posted is - and I almost never say this - completely ignorant of the sport and martial arts as a whole.

Submissions were not brought into "the sport" - and by this, I assume you mean MMA - by the Gracies. The Gracies, as I wrote in my BJJ sift, took the judo/jujitsu taught to them by Mitsuyo Maeda and developed the newaza groundwork into a new system, focused on establishing positional improvement and dominance before the application of submissions. It was this conceptual change from the general judo mindset of throw-and-fall-or-scramble-to-position, rather than the submissions themselves. Judo, for the most part, has all the submission BJJ does, it just generally doesn't train them as much or as well. So really, the submissions were brought into the sport by judo, which was brought into creation by Kano through adaptation of the teachings of jiu-jitsu. If you want to argue about fighters using the submissions, sure Royce Gracie made use of them famously in UFC 1, but the first UFC tournament was set up to ensure no other submission grappling styles, including judo, was entered to make a clearer differentiation of style versus style, among other reasons. When such fighter picking was stopped, submission fighters from many styles sprung up in MMA competition.

If you're not talking about modern MMA, then consider the fact that pankration from Greece in 648 BC was the first Western MMA competition, and chokeholds and joint locks were widely displayed and documented.

Consider that catch wrestling can be traced in nearly every culture, from Lancashire catch-as-catch-can wrestling to the US hook wrestling to the Indian pehlwani.

Or you might even be referencing the infamous gong sau of China, where kung fu masters would challenge each other for the rights to open schools in villages or cities, matching style versus style, starting from millenia ago and continuing to the present day. Of course, dubious as the documentation surrounding those matches were, and as stupid as kwoon-storming is, there have been accounts of Chin na masters defeating other strikers through armbars and rear naked chokes.

As for "ruining the sport", I can only assume you're talking about the present version of MMA, as represented largely by the UFC and Pride FC (which have recently been merged as one organization. The UFC and Pride, as you may know, evolved out of the Vale tudo competitions in Brazil and Japan, which when brought to the US were imitated and televised. Of course, you should also be aware of the fact that vale tudo tournaments were largely organized by Helio Gracie, the original creator of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and his descendants. The UFC was created largely as the brainchild of Rorion Gracie, Helio's eldest son and BJJ black belt, as well as Art Davies, one of Rorion's student. In fact, according to many inside sources who were present for the UFC's founding, it was created in a large part to showcase BJJ for the US, just as Pride FC was created in a a large part to showcase Rickson Gracie, another one of Helio's sons, versus Nobuhiko Takada, a famous Japanese shoot-wrestler and mixed martial artist who also trained in a form of submission wrestling. So how exactly do you figure that modern MMA, which exists largely because the Gracies wanted to showcase the effectiveness of submission fighting versus pure striking styles, is somehow ruined because it did exactly that?

And finally, you have absolutely no idea about submission grappling. If you think getting a submission hold is a "basic skill" that can beat anybody, and the sport now revolves around using and avoiding those holds, then how do you figure that only one of the five current UFC title holders is a well-known submission specialist, and even HE won his title fight two days ago by knockout? If it's such a get-out-of-jail-free card, why doesn't everybody just use those magical subs? How come sprawl-and-brawl and ground-and-pound are becoming such dominant strategies of fighting in MMA fights? Oh, and what did you mean by "strength, skill, stamina or fighting spirit" having no effect on submission grappling? Superior skill, strength, stamina, and fighting spirit is what submission grappling is all about. The fighter with the greatest combination of all four will win, just as with any other art in MMA. Look at Yuki Nakai, the grappler who continued a fight despite being eye-gouged illegally to the point of complete blindness and yet continued on not only win his fight by submission but also fight AGAIN the SAME night against the most feared grappler in the world at the time, Rickson Gracie. Look at Ronaldo de Souza, aka Jacare, who had his arm broken in a fight but continued to fight and win. Heck, look at Rickson Gracie, who is well-known for having an insane cardio routines involving sandy beaches and mountain running. Or any of the MMA athletes at the top of the sport, who train and spar and weight lift and run and work out for hours on end each day and every day so they can become strong and build up endurance and improve their skills, all thanks to their fighting spirit and determination to be the best.

If you doubt me on any of those facts, just get yourself to a real, honest-to-goodness MMA gym, and tell the first MMA fighter you see that submission holds are ruining the sport. Seriously. I'd like to know what happens.

Do you know why I'm annoyed by your comment, Enzoblue? I'm annoyed because training submission grappling is not fucking easy. It is hard, painful work to train. It is expensive as hell, in terms of money as well as time and effort. I am shit-awful at it, and my only goal each day I step on the mat, which is every damn day, is to suck a little less than the day before, and sometimes, like today, I don't feel like that's happened, and I haven't been able to move my neck in certain directions for days because of a neck crank that got cranked on too hard. And yet tomorrow, I'm going to put on my smelly, sweaty gi, get in my friend's carpool, and go roll around on a mat with large, sweaty men who outweigh me by over 50 pounds on average for several hours, and come back tired and sore and cranky. (Hah, pun, get it? It's a joke because my spinal column isn't functioning properly.) And I'm happy with all of that, from the musty gym smell to the same old jokes my friends make about me being gay that they've made for years, because through my training I know I am acquiring a skillset that is not available or acquired in the general public, and yes, I do take pride in what I do because it is a part of my life and part of who I am, and also there's the fact that my training and dedication can and have helped me to choke fools out who are deserving of it, just as those things have saved the lives of friends and acquaintances who were attacked in ghettos and Iraqi villages. And yet here you come to say that I, along with every other MMA competitor who has devoted far larger amounts of their life to perfecting the art of submission grappling, am ruining the beautiful sport of mixed martial arts, a sport that I am, as well as those competitors far above me, dedicated to as well and one that I do my best to represent well in the public eye. No. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you say that, because you're wrong.

Consider this: the UFC and modern MMA changed what "one would actually consider fighting". People used to think those flicky, chambered TKD kicks would hurt, or that they could just avoid a takedown attempt with elbows to the spine, or even in later years, they could just fight out of guard. The sport has evolved, and anybody who has a half a brain can see that a good MMA fighter needs to train to fight out of the three ranges that have been established through the test of the fight, standup, clinch, and ground, as well as be able to strike, grapple, and submit from all three ranges if necessary, as well as defend against an opponent's attempts to do so to oneself. Submission grappling is part of the sport out of necessity, not because it's what people (and by that I mean Westerners) think of when they think about fighting, or because it looks pretty - it's in the sport because it works. The skills and abilities trained in sub grappling allow a more skilled fighter to beat a less skilled opponent, given reasonable size comparisons, just as with every other martial art that has been used with success in MMA. The concept of MMA is the extension of Bruce Lee's philosophy of Jeet Kune Do - take what works, and lose what doesn't. So in reality, sub grappling being used to win fights in MMA is really part of the evolution and development of martial arts, in fact it embodies what MMA and the development of effective martial arts is all about. And if that simple fact offends, then perhaps you don't understand quite as much about MMA as you might like to think you do.

DigitalDragon, you misunderstood Empire's argument about contact. Boxers, Muay Thai fighters, kickboxers, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, judo all have their students start whacking, throwing, or submitting each other from Day 1. They continue to train this way at all times. So who do you think's going to be a better fighter, somebody who gets punched and punches people all the time and learns to put power in it, or somebody who whirls their feet and hands around and maybe touches their "opponents" when dancing? Practice makes perfect, right? How come capoeira players don't practice hitting each other, then? You said you've seen masters fight each other in person. Any of them ever get KO'ed, or even get knocked silly? I doubt it, and if it was, it was probably an accident.

*sigh* This is why arguing on teh internets is dumb. It's so much easier when the people I'm arguing with can put on some 4 oz. gloves with me to put their claims to the test and then get themselves punched silly. So much easier that way.

Actually Capoeira is not effective at all, and here's why:
-Unlike most martial arts, in capoeira the "fighter" is constantly off balance, either by doing some ludicrous moves or by rotating insanely. It's not efficient at all, and it's a waste of energy (which basically contradicts every actual martial art). Even the stance constantly rocking sideways is a waste of energy.
-Unlike martial arts, Capoeira was never actually put to the test. How many revolutions or wars have you heard about that happened in Brazil during the slave trade era? And if they used it against their "masters" they would certainly be done for. Martial Arts like Kung Fu, Karate, etc, have ALL been put to the test of actually engaging in real combat, not just sparring.
-Also in Capoeira they never really fight, actually they're not even supposed to touch each other. So, not only was it never used in actual combat, it's not even trained as such.
So... Capoeira is cool looking, and I'm sure it's a very complete body workout, but as a fighting style, it's completely pathetic.
Now, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu... that's efficient and effective.