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mmm I really feel able to whoop ass and I have never been in a real fight... I guess that is a thing you just know..

I do believe that you can learn to fight without fighting, like with two man drills and forms..

Another thing to think about is if sparring really has anything to do with real fighting.. for example I usually spar with this friend of mine who has been training kick boxing for a while apart from being a weight lifter.

In the sparring matches usually he leaves totally unharmed and I leave somewhat bruised, because while he has no problems in hitting me, I think that one of my punches could really injure him, so I just push him a bit and leave it there..

My belief is yes, one can learn to fight with just forms and drills. Though one must realize that fighting is just a comparison of two or more individuals in a certain situation. If i do VT, or a close range style like it and make the fight "look like" chi sao i will probably win give the other person trains a ranging style. If it ends up a spacious ranging confrontation i will probably be at a disadvantage. I do believe sparring can help a martial artist learn his/her range as far as closing quickly and learning what techniques may be useful against certain "foreign" strikes. Say you are sparring a kick boxer as roger above, using a low gan sao could be detramental. If the kick boxer is good he will notice this movement and move his kick slightly higher to the elbow, thus breaking your arm. I believe sparring helps with the "chess match" of fighting not the normal person, but other martial artists. Again this is all just my point of view. Thank you.

For me, VT doesn't really teach you how to fight and is pretty fragile if trained like it does. VT can be looked at as a set of principles and few techniques which back up these principles. Only fighting will teach you how to fight, VT training will give you the advantage though and it is a very big advantage.

Interesting. I heard that the old day ving tsun guys trained only for self defence and not for sport, social reasons, fitness, demonstration or whatever... that it was different because it broke the traditions of other kung fu (by not having hundreds of forms, shrines, school ceremonies, belts/uniforms etc) and was just to develop good fighters. I guess the only thing I know about VT and fighting is that I've been in 0 fights since I've started training.

You can be a fairly good fighter learning forms etc against someone who knows nothing. But the UFC has proven (for one-on-one combat) that you need to fight as close to full contact as possible in as many "styles" as possible to be able to fully adapt to a fighting situation.

Saying one can know true combat simply by "practice" fighting is insane. Ask any soldier. I've seen many a "black belt" etc. get their butt creamed by "seasoned" street fighters who don't practice anything.

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