My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He’s Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them.
Mixed martial arts has small windows of opportunity and there’s always new faces coming through, so it’s easy to forget you.
If you had no real training, if you hadn’t spent years and years studying a martial art, how would you kill the bad guy?
We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.
My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He’s Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them. And Bruce Lee was amazing.
My first experience of doing martial arts was weird, real traditional, strange smell with incense burning. We did a lot of bowing, it was a lot of path of least resistance and go with the flow… Really good stuff for when you’re at a young age.
I joined Khalsa College just opposite Don Bosco in class XI, but soon I quit studies and was sent to Bangkok by my father to learn martial arts, as that is the only place we could afford given that I would also work there to support my training.
Anyone can get beaten in mixed martial arts. It’s the nature of the sport.
I do practice martial arts, more as a recreational thing, but a lot of my friends have been heavyweight champions the in mixed martial arts world.
As a kid, I was heavily into martial arts and wanted to be the next Jean-Claude Van Damme.
I’ve been learning martial arts since I was 8 years old.
I do a lot of mixed martial arts – it’s like unlimited fighting. I do Brazilian jujutsu, beach volleyball. I don’t like my routine to get stale, so I also lift kettle bells and push cars.
It is amazing to have the UFC to come here to Perth… it is great for Australian Mixed Martial Arts and great for the sport, and it is going to be great for Perth to have such a world-wide event, through pay-per-view, hosted here.
As a lifelong practitioner of martial arts, I’m trained to remain calm in the face of adversity and danger.
Work out really hard and be confident because bodies are beautiful, sensual and natural. I’ve also trained in Wushu, a form of martial arts – it’s very beautiful and flowy, and it’s predominantly used in fight scenes in movies, which is how it was introduced to me, and I just love it.
To make a film like ‘The Grandmaster,’ I know I’m not going to make just a standard kung-fu film; it’s not going to be just tricks or like wire works. So I spent seven years on the road interviewing different schools and a lot of real grandmasters from Chinese martial arts.
Martial arts is what pulled me through tough times, and it is one of the reasons for my happiness.
I have a lot of guy friends, from martial arts and film, and soccer. I actually barely know women.
Antonio Inoki majored in strong style. He showed real emotion with real technique in the ring. Hard shots that look like hard shots. But the important steps is the real technique from the real martial arts. It means detail is important.
For me, learning is a continuous process and an all-inclusive one – reading a book, learning a musical instrument or learning the martial art called taekwondo. Teach myself something new – that’s my prayer.
My fighting style is mixed martial arts. It’s not just stand up, or ground and pound, it’s everything together. I have 26 years of a fighting career, and it always works together.
I picked up a lot watching Ultimate Fighting. I studied martial arts. But I had an idea to be different, to portray a character people would like.
I do feel I’m being respectful to Buddhism and martial arts with ‘Mortal Kombat.’
I’m very, very, very interested in martial arts.
But my middle daughter, Kate, is very involved in martial arts, and I was just at one of her competitions.
Che Mills is a great fighter, and a worthy opponent. Just because he hasn’t been seen in front of the camera that many times doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous or a great martial artist.
When I worked on ‘Xena’ I had to concentrate on fighting like Lucy Lawless. In ‘Kill Bill’ I not only had to stop fighting like Lucy, after three years of copying her moves, but start fighting like a Wu Shu martial artist. I’d never done Wu Shu before so mentally it was a massive challenge.
My whole life, I’ve been training for something, whether it be baseball or football or wrestling or martial arts.
When you think about martial arts here in the states, kickboxing was here in the ’70s, and it kind of ran its course. But I always felt there was a place in combat sports for kickboxing.
I’m always involved with training and the martial arts. It’s not like I go to a desk job somewhere and then throw on the gloves.
This fight is something I’ve been working towards for 10, 12 or 15 years, since I first started competing, not even competing, just training in Mixed Martial Arts. This is a dream of mine, and to fight Georges St-Pierre in his hometown for the undisputed belt, it’s surreal and an opportunity of a lifetime for me.
As a martial artist, I discovered that there’s always so much more to learn.
The mixed martial arts way of life will give you focus.
My goal is to make wrestling more like mixed martial arts.
As a kid, I was always a tomboy, playing sport and doing martial arts. And I’m pretty opinionated – I’ve never been told that I’m a weak person.
I had a few months of physical prep where I was training six hours a day – I was doing an hour and a bit of yoga, I would do a couple hours of cardio and weight-lifting, and then I would do an hour or maybe two of martial arts training.
When I’m at the gym, I work very hard to achieve my goal and to get better as a mixed martial artist.
I think Ang Lee is a very, very talented director. He used martial arts to talk about love and girl, you know… But Zhang Yimou tried to use martial arts film to talk about Chinese culture, Chinese people. What do they think, what do they want and what do they hope the world will become.
I just want to hone in on how I like to fight rather than just keep exploring new styles and new martial arts.
When I was a teenager, my dad used to put a lot of pressure on me to be successful, and I’d really beat myself up about things like losing martial arts competitions.
Jackie Chan is a very good comedy/martial arts star. He does one kind of martial arts that Jet Li doesn’t know how to do and Jet Li does a martial art that Jackie Chan doesn’t know how to do. You can both go to two Chinese restaurants, but both can have different kinds of food.
I’m a huge, huge lover of weaponry, of Japanese martial arts movies.
The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.
Since I do seven different styles of martial arts, I don’t foresee myself fighting the same in any two movies. I think every fighting style should fit the character that’s doing the fighting.
I already knew that this is what I’m gonna do during my life because martial arts, for me, it’s not just my job. It’s not just the way to get some money. Of course it’s important.
I am not an insecure person. Thanks to my training in martial arts, I have it in me to appreciate good work, say ‘Wow,’ and say ‘You deserve it.’
Sometimes we equate anger to destructive physical violence, but anger need not be martial.
My brothers are both 6 ft. 5 in., and if you have younger brothers who are bigger than you then you have to learn the ancient martial art of sarcasm.
I hate it when people call me a cage fighter. I’m a mixed martial artist. But people take one look at what we do, and they just start making assumptions.
I don’t believe that Dana White is a martial artist. I don’t see a martial way that he is following.
Take a martial art that you enjoy. Don’t worry about the end result; just enjoy getting up and going to training. And there is no right martial art to do. They are all good.
With Carlson Gracie, who saw something in me, I started learning and loved mixing together the martial arts.
Mixed martial arts was invented by Brazilians, whose families had been trained by the Japanese. Those Brazilians came to the U.S., where their invention was bought out, gussied up and presented to the world, which found it good.
Martial arts is just practice. Being a geisha requires complete control.
In mixed martial arts, if you get kicked in the face, it’s your job not to show any expression to your opponent.
I still and will always have a passion for martial arts and do not believe, as a Christian, that it’s wrong for myself to compete in a professional sport that is violent.
The reason why I got into mixed martial arts is the competition: I’m a competitor. I wouldn’t be doing this for anything else but competition. I want to take out the best.
My father didn’t compete ever in martial arts tournaments because they were not real. They were tag tournaments or touch tournaments, which he thought was bizarre and not really what the martial arts is about.
I’m a little greedy for action scenes. I’m a martial artist, and any time I get to show off some of that art is great.
Standing up for yourself. That’s the thing martial artists aren’t used to. You’ve got to really stick up for yourself and be a tough businessman when it’s time for negotiations.
