Can You Use Fancy Moves in a Real Fight?

“Where are all the fancy moves?” That’s what I wanted to know.

When the internet emerged, I couldn’t wait to peek inside other martial arts schools to see what they were doing.

So many styles! So much mystery!

But each time I clicked on a video of Choy Lee Fut, Shorin Ryu, Praying Mantis, Hung Gar, This-Do, or That-Ryu, I kept seeing the same thing—kickboxing.

Punch, kick. Punch, punch, kick. Frankly, in many cases, it wasn’t even good kickboxing!

Where are the throws? The takedowns? The locks?

Where are the sweeps? The jumps? The rolls? You know—

Where are all the fancy moves?

What a disappointment.

All this talk about hard versus soft, internal versus external, circular versus straight, Eastern versus Western, ancient versus modern, and in the end? It didn’t matter. When it came to fighting, everyone was throwing jab, cross, round kick.

Is that it—jab, cross, round kick?

Is that all the martial arts have to offer? Is that the legacy of thousands of years of combative trial and error? Is that all I should be passing down to the next generation?

Don’t get me wrong—kickboxing is a great sport. I’d rather watch kickboxing than baseball any day! But I refuse to believe that kickboxing is the greatest achievement in human fighting technology. Especially in a real fight.

Which brings us to a question…

With all the different styles out there, with so many different movements to choose from, why do so many people fight the same way?

With so much time spent learning kata, forms, and sophisticated techniques, why do people fall back on the most basic strikes when it’s time to spar or defend themselves?

I’ll tell you why. Strikes are easy.

Yes, basic striking can be sophisticated. Timing, feinting, angling, weight shifting, and creating combinations all require serious practice and experience.

But no matter how you cut it, punching someone in the face in a real fight is a lot easier than taking someone down with a wrist lock or leg scissors.

Like water, it’s human nature to seek the path of least resistance. Therefore, martial arts students stick with the first techniques that bring them success.

People don’t like to feel like failures. People like to feel like winners.

Consider the training progression for striking—

Students learn a strike. Students try the strike. Students land the strike.

FACT: Even beginners are capable of landing a strike. So, they keep doing it.

In contrast, here’s the training progression for fancy moves—

Students learn a fancy move. Students try the fancy move. Students fail to execute the fancy move, get punched in the face, and end up on the floor whimpering.

FACT: Even advanced students are incapable of executing fancy moves in the beginning. So, they stop doing them.

This early failure doesn’t just lead to giving up, it forges a belief:

Fancy moves don’t work. Not for them, not for anyone.

Even in the world of professional MMA fighters, the belief that fancy moves don’t work in a real fight was repeated for years…

You can’t throw someone in a real fight!

You can’t use spinning techniques in a real fight!

Oh, really?

Tell that to Karo Parisyan and Ronda Rousey. Tell that to Jon Jones, Anthony Pettis, and Uriah Hall.

MMA has been a technological arms race since day one. That’s why it’s no surprise that today’s MMA includes an ever-growing list of so-called fancy moves; sophisticated techniques that the “experts” said would never work.

Why is that?

Because fighters are getting smarter. They recognize that surprise is just as important as speed and power. They see the advantage of training techniques that their opponent isn’t accustomed to seeing or training to defend.

The same holds true in a real fight.

Which leads us to the big lesson—

Any technique can work if you make it work.

It ain’t about the technique, it’s about you. Always has been, always will be.

That means if your technique doesn’t work, don’t blame the technique. Get to work figuring out how to make it work.

I asked my Kung Fu San Soo teacher, Sifu Matt Ember, the same question about fancy moves, and here’s what he had to say—

Yes, some moves take longer than others to make work. Some may even take decades! But pushing through failure and doing the work is what separates a weekend warrior from a dedicated martial arts student.

I’m not saying a martial artist must practice every technique from every style to be a master of martial arts. Obviously, life’s too short to master everything.

That’s why it’s called martial ARTS.

The best sports fighters in the world haven’t mastered every technique. Instead, they’ve chosen to master a few tactics and techniques that best fit their mindset and physical capabilities. Techniques they discovered through years of trial and error.

Once they’ve made their choices, they put in the time and effort—the “kung” and “fu”—to make those techniques work most of the time against most opponents.

You should do the same. Figure out your favorite techniques. Research. Experiment.

Figure out how to make them work against big, small, short, and tall.

Practice. Fail. Question.

Don’t get me wrong—if you want to be a kickboxer, be a kickboxer. Just don’t walk around saying that fancy moves don’t work.

Fancy moves work. But only if you do the work first.