Cung Le is a God among men.

[Tom Yum]

mate

mate (ma-teh)- A brisk argentinian tea drank from a vessel called a bombilla.

mate (ma-teh:from blood sport) - "I give up!"

[Tant01]

...Not from you.

Look mate, wots with name dropping the Aussie SAS and picking silly things like lingo to pick arguments on? You seem like a guy who needs external validation so you keep talking it up big so you can be the biggest fish in the small pond of the internet. Quit the ego agenda mate.

Look chump. I can only share what I know. I am what I am. I've been around the world and met all kinds of folks. None of them had a problem with my ego...Maybe you're projecting some psychological need of your own on to me, eh?

Here's an idea, Get bent!

[nutter]

Look chump....

Here's an idea, Get bent!

You like piling on the insults and sticking your middle finger up at people. People who resort to insults are usually people who lack the social skills to express themselves. What does get bent mean anyway mate? Sounds like an allusion to homosexuality.

[danfaggella]

You are both throwing low blows over and over and straying completely from what this thread is, just knock it off for now if you will, or hold this psychoanalysis somewhere else. This isn't an argument, its a bunch of smack talking and it is unrelated to this thread.

[Tant01]

Where's the CMA?

D-oh........

[Tant01]

Where's the CMA?

I would like to know what makes the striking intrinsically CMA and not just kickboxing, I think the gloves make it resemble MT a whole lot, and I wish I could spot where it actually looks like its based in CMA, I know it is mainly based in these styles but it does in fact look a lot like kickboxing with takedowns.

Less about CMA more about MMA...

Cung Le has made a tremendous impact on martial arts and continues to expand his arsenal of tools with the addition of Jujitsu training. His popularity as a fighter has brought San Shou Kung Fu to the forefront of the fight world and is catapulting Le into the main stream.

He is also the subject of a documentary that chronicles his life "Cung Le, The Making of a Champion", beginning with Le as a child in Vietnam, following him as a wrestler in college and taking the audience ringside for his many hard fought victories. The film also takes you behind the scenes to see the type of grueling training that makes a champion. Le was also the featured guest for The Discovery Channel documentary titled, "On the Inside: Martial Arts."

Cung Le has made many of his students champions. His UsH team of fighters have brought home many gold medals, state titles, national titles, and world titles in both San Shou and Muay Thai.

http://www.cungle.com/cungle/about.html

BB mag Interview; By Mark Cheng ..........
.............

...CL: I started Taekwondo at age 10, but that was short lived, maybe for like ten months. My mom worked a lot of hours, so taking me to and from practice regularly became impossible. As a little kid, I wasn't focused enough to benefit from the forms training, which didn't help me at all when the school bullies were picking on me. As a result, I didn't get too involved with martial arts again until eighth grade, when I started freestyle wrestling with a junior high program.....
Following junior high, I went on wrestled in a really competitive high school program that had freestyle, collegiate, and Greco-Roman styles for all four years. By my junior year, I'd earned sixth in the state and high school All-American recognition. Anyways, my winning streak was halted briefly during my senior year, when I was sidelined due to injury.

BB: What was the injury?

CL: My head collided with someone's braces during the state meet, slicing open my scalp. The 11 stitches that it took to close the wound forced me to sit out the rest of the tournament and forfeit my chances at the title.

BB: You also wrestled in college, right?

CL: Yes. I went to West Valley Junior College, and took top honors in the state during my freshman year, took 3rd place in my sophomore year, and made two-time All-American as a result. I wrestled competitively in any arena that made sense. I took the triple crown for the AAU Nationals. The "triple crown" means that you win three events: sambo, Greco-Roman, and freestyle. At one point, I tried out for the national team, and placed fourth, never making the top slot that I wanted.

BB: You mentioned that you won a sambo title. Did you train in sambo too?

CL: No. The way that happened was that I just went to compete in some wrestling events, and I heard about sambo's rules. They sounded good to me, so I just went and did it. I had no formal sambo training at all. To tell you the truth, that's basically the same manner in which I found out about sanshou. I heard the rules - kick, punch, throw - and I thought "Wow, that sounds cool", so I went and just did it. My mentality is like this: just work on your tools and if you like the rules of a certain kind of competition, jump in and do it. If you have your tools sharpened properly, you'll succeed.

BB: Did you compete in judo tournaments as well?

CL: No. Judo was like the only mainstream grappling thing back then that I didn't compete in. I rolled with some judo guys for a little while to see what it was all about, but I never really got into it, either formally or competitively.

BB: So your formal martial arts training was just ten months of Taekwondo and years of wrestling?

CL: No. I started back into formal martial arts training in late 1992 with Master Pham, who taught both Taekwondo and Vietnamese kung-fu. He was the same teacher I initially started training with back when I was ten. Unfortunately, we had a falling out in 1995, and I went on my own shortly afterwards. By 1995, I'd been winning tournaments left and right, teaching all or most of Master Pham's classes, promoting events such as tournaments for him, and yet still struggling to pay my own bills.....


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BB: So when you're teaching now, do you pass on the traditional Vietnamese kung-fu and Taekwondo to your students?

CL: No. Although I learned those things, I was never really good at remembering forms when I was younger, which are an integral part of both of those systems. I could do the single basic techniques perfectly, and I could spar well, but I never really had a knack for the forms until later on in life. That's a large part of the reason why I gravitated to sanshou. You just work on basics and then the application of those basics in a fighting situation. No forms to remember.

BB: Obviously there have been other influences on your martial arts skills since then. What else has made up your martial arts training in the past few years?

CL: I'm one of those guys who'll go out and see something that resonates with me, and then I'll incorporate it into my own training so I have the best possible techniques for myself and my students. My training partners have been very beneficial to me that way. Someone will come along and I'll see something that might help me in the ring. So then I'll train with them, learn their specialty, and we benefit from each other. All it takes is someone to show you a technique or a theory. It's up to you to put it into action and apply it in the ring. I picked up muay Thai that way.

BB: You also trained briefly with the Gracies, didn't you?

CL: Yes. Ralph and Cesar Gracie. Their groundwork is awesome, as everyone has seen, so as a wrestler it made perfect sense for me to gain exposure to what they're doing and open my mind to that system of training with submissions. Unfortunately, the commute to their school is fairly long, and I have to shoulder the responsibility for my own school here, so my training there didn't last as long as I'd have liked. Also, there's not too much call for groundwork with what I do in sanshou, although it definitely helped in fights like the Shidokan.

BB: Does western style boxing figure into your training?

CL: Boxing is definitely a part of what I do. I went down to Orange County for a while to train in boxing there, and one of my trainers up here, Jivoni Jordan, is also a good boxer that I work out with. The thing is that I make sure to include the other parts of good training to make myself a complete fighter. Things like roadwork, sprints, power lifting, running the bleachers. Even football pass drills are part of my training. They actually make you run faster than you normally would, since you're sprinting down the field to catch the long pass. My training sessions can get really intense, so once in a while, you have to change things up to keep it fun. Changing things around like that makes it fun for my students too. That's why my two gyms are doing so well, even for the people who come to train just to get in shape and never spar or fight.



................



BB: Speaking of the K-1, I heard that your fight went five rounds.

CL: Yeah, it's been two years since I went five rounds with anyone in a sanshou style format, actually since the Draka tournament. It was an ISKA sanshou title defense for me. My fight was just to add some different flavor for the K-1 crowd, since the sanshou rules are obviously so different. Over here, it's not like in Japan, where people will fill the Tokyo Dome just to watch world-class kickboxing. Americans wanted something in addition, so the head promoter, Kazuyoshi Ishii brought in sanshou and muay Thai fights to add a little different flavor. I think it worked to get the crowd's attention and entertain them. I'm very happy that because of guys out there like ISKA's Strike Force promoter Scott Coker and Ishii, sanshou is getting more attention and gaining new fans.

BB: Do you think that sanshou fighters have a place in tournaments like the K-1?

CL: Sure, but the problem with that is the lack of throws. I saw a K-1 tournament in Japan that featured fighters from China and Japan, and because the K-1 rules prohibit throws, you could see very clear differences in what was going on. The Japanese fighters were far more adept at throwing knees, but the Chinese didn't have the use of their best weapon - throws. That was a distinct handicap for them, so for me, when people always ask me if I'll fight other rules than sanshou, I say "Of course, as long as I can throw." I don't care what you allow in the rules as far as strikes. Knees are fine too. Just as long as I can throw.

BB: In a tournament like the Shidokan, you were forced to wear a gi. Was that something you were uncomfortable doing?

CL: Not at all. It added a different flavor to the fight. The only thing about wearing the gi is that it gets hot in there. It's also a little more like being in a streetfight to me. You know, like when someone grabs your leather jacket and pulls you into a knee or something. In sanshou we're out there bare-chested, so it's a little different. To me, it was a new experience, definitely. Shidokan was great because throws were allowed all the way through, regardless of the variations in striking rules that go on through the different rounds. It was a fast format. Even the groundwork section only gives you 15 seconds to work for submission. The fighter I fought in the finals, Arne Soldwedel, was the hardest fight I've had yet. Although I knocked him out in the seventh round with a right hook, it was a total war. We were in each other's faces, going back and forth for a long time before he dropped. I couldn't bend my leg for six days after that fight, and almost retired after that one.

BB: So what's next for you as a fighter?

CL: A professional sanshou world title. Right now I own the US title, but I still want to win the world title as a pro. I almost got a chance to fight the kid from Iran who I got disqualified against in the World Wushu Kung-Fu Tournament, but he backed out. There's also still Ramazan who gave me my only other loss in 1995...


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