Re

- "it wouldn't be healthy to slam punches into eachothers heads with bare knuckles" -

Well, to be honest, from a medical professionals point of view, nothing any of us do is all that "healthy", my parents are both doctors, they gasped and covered their eyes for many years and always gave me crap about what I do and dain bamage and such...

But, if you are gonna do a combat sport/martial art anyway, there is this niffty new invention called a BOXING GLOVE, Kyokushinkai could look into it. I hear the Thais discovered it like 100 years ago... yes, I am being funny

Chinese fighting has gone under a lot of names, and in many places still does. Essentially speaking, SPORT San Shou would mean the unified set of rules set up by the IWUF. If your event follows this format, even with some variation, we call it San Shou these days. But there are still other formats, including some of the old "Lei Tai" where it is bare knuckle and you can attack joints, more like a challenge match than a sport, and often bad sportsmanship leads to riots in these things. San Shou people consider themselves athletes, we try and be civil to eachother.

Shootboxing is a Japanese organization started by Ceasar's gym. It started as a combination of Muay Thai and wrestling with some Judo. The format is similar but the origins very different.

In Sna Shou competition, ANYONE can enter and fight, just like anyone could go to Thailand and fight under Muay Thai rules. But San Shou is a distinct lineage, has distinct strategy and tactics, distinct techniques. People who only have casual exposure may think it is like Muay Thai, those who see it up close see MANY differences. In San Shou competition, 99% of the time a "cross trained" guy who has done wrestling, boxing, Muay Thai etc combined will get trashed by a San Shou gym trained guy. "Cross training" leaves holes where there is transition from striking to grappling, San Shou since it is one system has very smooth transitions. In my part of the world at least, there is a lot of interest on the part of some MMA fighters to do San Shou because it is ideal stand up for a MMA event.

The Russian who won the San Shou amateur world championships in 1999 and who beat Cung Le is now fighting in RINGS in Japan, he is undefeated. His stand up is San Shou, his ground training Sambo/Cambo/Sombo. However, he usually wins because people have a lot of trouble taking him down and he strikes them well as they try and does lots of damage. I would expect more Russian and former Soviet San Shou fighters to take interest in MMA becuase now there is money in it. Ironicly, Brazil also has a strong San Shou team and those guys HAVE done a lot of MMA down there, two members of their national San Shou team KO'd two Gracie trained fighters in an event in 1999. Then they started a pro San Shou circuit from what I understand and the fighters have been doing that for good money

"Wushu" was and is an attempt to appropriate martial art for state use and make money off of it while also controlling any training of civilians in anything resembling fighting art. San Shou comes from within military.