Quote Originally Posted by Sifu Darkfist View Post
O- Sensei absolutley spent a great deal of time in the southern part of china some in fukien and also guanzhou.
The story is that he trained Chinna as well as tai ji
Whose story?

However at this time bagua was a closed art reservered for bodyguards or extremely reliable Chinese individuals as well as family training.
So again, what makes you think that Chinese masters in tai chi or chin-na would want to teach the invaders of their country aspects of fighting? Especially given the conquerors' war record.

The resemblence to bagua is easily explained, all chinese martial arts come from the same mother to quote my Grand master. Tai JI and Bagua have similar movements in many areas.
That's the resemblance of tai chi or chin na to bagua? Or are you talking about aikido?

THe biggest difference between bagua and Aikido
...apart from the footwork, the power generation, the basic principles...
is that ... true Aikido is defensive to the core.
No it isn't! That was my point before. Of course it depends on your definition of 'true' aikido: if you mean the watered-down non-martial aikido of today, you may have a point, but pre-war aikido was based on the old koryu meaning of 'aiki': i.e. that aiki is the equilibrium to be destroyed (by kuzushi). Nothing to do with the harmonization of your spirit with your attacker's. And it was not defensive. Look at Yoshinkan (which I'm not particularly fond of but it's an example of aikido based on the earlier pre-war model of aiki from Ueshiba): everything starts with a strike/attack to provoke a defensive response in uke, which is then used to get kuzushi.

And not only in yoshinkan, but in all forms of aiki, Ueshiba insisted that you should step straight in and take your opponent's centre, and only if that attacking motion was prevented/blocked/jammed in some way should you resort to the more familiar to layman evasive footwork and circular hand techniques.

The epitome of the gentlemens self defense.
Well, maybe, but I don't really believe in gentlemen as my countrymen are still supposed to epitomize gentlemen to many countries around the world and I've never seen much evidence of them actually existing! Do you have video evidence!?

of course i am sure no one else will agree so it really does not matter.
Maybe it doesn't really matter, but thanks for the discussion anyway.