Check out this Kung-fu vs MMA fight between Mantis traditional kung-fu and an MMA fighter. This fight clearly proves the truth behind the saying, “it’s not the system, it’s the fighter.” There are beginners and intermediate fighters in every system. There are hard punchers in every system. There are athletic and less athletic people in every system. People compare the top fighters of the most popularly televised tournaments to determine in their mind what the best martial art is. This is called marketing. Tournaments are heavily curated the types of fighters they allow in and setup fights with odds beforehand knowing who will likely win. Also, they have weight classes. How often have you seen champions move up in weight class and get destroyed their first fight. This is a jarring, disappointing fact seeing your champion get destroyed easily when moving up in weight class proving it’s not just the style and fighter, but pure physics and biology. Force = mass x acceleration, more mass means more force with the same amount of acceleration. How often have you seen a fair fight in the streets? How about never? One person always seems to have an advantage making them confident to start the street fight. People are cowards and nobody will start a fight they are going to lose.
In the fight below, you can see the Mantis Kung-fu is better trained on actual fighting. Does this mean Kung fu is better than MMA? Will an MMA fighter vs Kung Fu master always end with Kung-fu winning? No, obviously not. The essentials of striking is pretty much the same across the board, they all have some sort of block and some type of straight punch, front kick, etc. If someone is able to straight punch really hard, regardless of the system or style they learn, and there is an opening in the fight, that person can strike to the head and the fight could be over.
The advantage Wing Chun provides is teaching strikes that are not mass dependent. Yes, anyone can do an eye gouge. The point of Wing Chun is teaching and practicing how to do it because it is not intuitive how to do it without some instruction. How often do boxers get instruction when and how to eye gouge? Do you see boxers practicing drills eye gouging a speed bag? Everything sounds like it would be easy, but is harder to do under pressure. When pressure and time pressed, the reflex of the boxer will be to jab, maybe someone in BJJ would do a take down or lock, and maybe a Wing Chun student goes for the neck or eye. Learning to eye jab in the boxing ring is useless for winning a boxing match. This is also why a Wing Chun practitioner won’t out jab jab cross uppercut a boxer in a boxing ring since that is not what is emphasized in practice/training.
