Asian Games - boxing & wushu

Okay I've combined both boxing & wushu because both were similar. Now there are different forms of wushu, I went with a buddy of mine and we were hoping to see the weapons section, where people essentially do rhymic gymnastics only with weapons. It's apparantly really cool to watch as they brandish various weapons in interesting choreographed routines (I think Jet Li used to be a wushu champion before his film career). But there is another wushu discipline, called Nanshou I think, where atheletes fight each other wearing boxing gloves (without weapons) but you're allowed to kick as well as punch. That was what my buddy and I saw, turns out the weapons portion was earlier in the day. I was disappointed that I missed the weapons.

Now I also saw a number of boxing bouts during the Asian Games and I learned something about Olympic-level boxing -- it's not as exciting as standard boxing. At the Olympic level the boxers are wearing padded helmets and they only do four 2-minute rounds. It does cut back a lot of the excitement as it is unlikely that a guy is going to fall down, get KO'd or whatever. So you just watch guys throwing punches at one another for all of 12 minutes, including the time in-between rounds. And to make it worse all the bouts I saw were really one-sided. The closest bout I saw the winner had double the points of the loser and one match was almost 10:1! It says something that some guy took over 40 punches in 4 rounds and never even hit the mat. So all-in-all not that exciting. Sadly the wushu was similar, although there was an added element in that you could throw the guy onto the ground, but then it looks like you had to step back, you weren't allowed to pummel him or anything.

Upon reflection I had a more exciting time watching boxing back in Bermuda. Once a year they had an event called Fight Night where guys from various gyms (and anyone else who cared to sign up) could get in the ring and box with someone generally matched to their weight. Many of these guys had no clue how to box and the matches were fun to watch; some guys who you figured would get creamed wound up doing well, others ended in surprise KOs, others with training would show us why training matters by pummeling their not-so-well-trained opponents. Good fun, and exciting to watch, something that was missing here.

I really wish I saw the weapons part of the Wushu competition . . .

Rating: 3/10. I'd be happier watching non-Olympic boxing where there can be tension and excitement. Wushu gets 4/10 just because I hadn't seen it before, but it wasn't much more exciting than boxing - my buddy and I left after 45 minutes.