"One of them had recently been a contestant on “The Gong Show” (1976-1980) and recruited the young actor, now going by Paul Reubens, to do a routine with her on the show. He agreed, despite the fact that up until this point he considered himself a serious dramatic actor and had not thought about doing comedy. Their routine, “The Hilarious Betty and Eddie,” was a hit with the judges. During the late 1970s, Reubens ended up appearing on the show 15 times, playing various characters and winning four times, but he always expected to be gonged.

The “Gong Show” experience led Reubens to an improvisational group in Los Angeles called The Groundlings, in which members were proactive in writing their own material and developing their own characters. Reubens already had more than a dozen or so characters, but in 1979, introduced a new character named Pee-Wee Herman in a Groundlings sketch that took such children's television icons as Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers one step further. Pee-Wee was a manchild-ish hybrid of Howdy Doody’s appearance and a children’s show host’s sensibilities, only with a slightly more mischievous side."

*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.

Ghostly....uhhhhh....wow. Wow.

No personal offense to you, but you've never trained wushu, san da, or san shou, have you? Because uhhh....Wikipedia isn't the source of all knowledge, contrary to popular belief.

To be TRULY pedantic, your interpretation of the word (via Wikipedia) is completely wrong. Although "wu shu" may translate figuratively as "martial arts" (it more accurately translates as "martial skill", similiar in many aspects to the comparison of "do" versus "jutsu" in Japanese martial arts), it is not generally used in the martial arts world as a blanket term for martial arts or even Chinese martial arts (CMA). This is similiar to Tae Kwon Do, which means "the art of kicking and punching", but which trains most practitioners much more on kicking techniques than punching techniques. The "meaning" of a word isn't always the definition of the thing it represents, dontcha know.

Wushu nowadays is generally used in China and in CMA communities around the world to describe this gymnastic/acrobatic activity, while the blanket term used for CMA is "kung fu" or "gong fu" if you really want to be anal about it. Also, san shou/san da is a style in and of itself (originally the ruleset under which the style developed), not a subset of wushu. In fact, if you look into the history of CMA and its transformation over the years, wushu developed into what you see in this video due to influences by the Beijing/Peking Opera House, which mimicked or incorporated CMA movements into choreographed theater fight scenes, rather than any Western influence. As a result of the change of wushu, along with the rising popularity of kung fu flicks in the U.S, "kung fu" was slowly adopted as the new blanket term for CMA.

Wushu practitioners nowadays practice forms and choreographed sequences like this one, while san shou/san da practitioners generally practice by sparring. There is very, very little overlap between the two.

The misconception of what wushu and kung fu are, I think, is largely due to the fact that people like to share their own beliefs on topics that they actually have little to no experience in.

But what do I know? Good, bad? I'm the guy with the 4 oz. gloves.

Elke Summer, J.P.Morgan, and whoever the white guy is, gave her 10 10 & 10, and she got the check..

...How Much Was the Amount Of the Prize On the Gong Show???

Yeah Yeah....just keep bangin' that "we are the best religion" gong. Let's get a Pastafarian Vid up here for some true religiosity.

The Gong Show is infamous for several especially salacious escapades. The most memorable was an act called "Have You Got a Nickel" (better known as "The Popsicle Twins"), which consisted of two women, made up to look like teenaged girls, sitting on stage and provocatively sucking Popsicles while the song "I'm in the Mood for Love" played. According to Barris in an interview years later, the censors would regularly nix acts that he thought were safe enough to air. So, he made it a point to submit acts to the censors that were totally over the line so that some of the questionable ones would slip through. The Popsicle Twins was, in Chuck's mind, totally over the line and he submitted it as a stalking horse. While legend has it the Popsicle Twins were only seen on the East Coast because the switchboards were flooded with complaints as soon as it aired, and edited out before broadcasts in other time zones - it was, in fact, seen on the West Coast. Jaye P. Morgan wouldn't allow either of the other 2 judges to hit the Gong & when the girls finished - she said "That's how I got started." The Gong Show Movie includes ten seconds of footage from this act.

Another watershed moment was when Jaye P. Morgan ripped off her top and exposed her breasts while Gene Gene was dancing. Supposedly, that act resulted in Ms. Morgan's firing from the show. Like the Popsicle Twins, this can also be seen in The Gong Show Movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gong_Show#Show_format

Incidentally, if you're never read Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or seen the movie version directed by George Clooney, I highly recommend picking them both up. Barris is actually a really funny, smart, and talented guy.

...most of the gays i have known or spent any amount of time around, all have had an aura of self-hate, hard to describe to folks determined to beat the human rights gong so loud that it drowns their sensibilities...
This christian has the disease of the machine...power, wealth...itll' fuck the best and worst of us up-to use him as an example of what fundamentalist b-thumpers are like, is as sophomoric as any other blame-game.

The disease is mentioned in a verse from the bible "my people perish for lack of knowledge."

All this banter serves mostly to stroke one's own convictions.

Brain Storm This: How do we bring 200 million people up to speed with the rest of the civilized world, so bombs don't go off in London, NY, etc, so women can uncover their faces in public, so practices of teaching self-hate, race hate, clitorectomies, etc. will cease?"

Screw the queers-are they really worth paying attention to??

look it sucks...people down vote. I at first hated antz for down voting all my stuff, but everything he downvoted he didn't like so why should i take issue with that? Should i make him like it? antz has also posted up votes for some videos so maybe he doesn't hate my taste, just some of it>!? (or he hit the wrong button )

what does it matter?? Everyone has their taste and that's that. So deathcow feels like gonging you...big deal. More than 20+ people died while i wrote this...what about them.....? Your on the fancy smancey pc crying about how someone downvotes you. Bad times ehh?

BicycleRepairMan - come back and gong me when you are able.

I love CYE, i dont feel like defending a tv show as much as you feel like ripping one, so you win!

Congrats!

That should be ((( GONG! )))

<<< GONG! >>>