The experience of Doug with Sanshou did no surprised me. As a fighting system it is pretty complete and should not be underestimated. I am speaking from 38 years of experience and involvement in Muay Thai.I was also fortunate enough to grow up in northern parts of Malaysia close to Thai border where both Muay Thai and Shanshou existed.

Those who were MT trained would try to avoid street fight with those trained in SS despite knowing that we would beat them in the ring. It was more a street fight system than sport. They were not trained to the level of fitness like us to last five X 3 minutes round.

Their fight experience were much lesser comparing to ours as they could never accummulate as many fights in competition than we could get. MT being a professional sport, fight events were so frequent that we normally fought between interval of around 3 weeks all year round. Most SS trainee I knew did not participate in sport tournament. If any were, SS tournament only happened once a year in state level, once a year in national level and once every two years in international level. IE. average of two and a half fights per year.In street fight, SS trainee could never have the same numbers of fight as MT fighters. If they tried, many would be permanently mained or killed long before they reached the number of fights an average MT fighter could accummulate. A basketball mate of mine has uncle who was a renowned SS streetfighter in town. He was a 'Tiger General' in the local Triad and he lost one eye in one of the fight.

MT, with more than seventy years of experience in professional ring sport is undisputely the king of the ring in full contact stand-up striking sport. The level of skill that developed over this period is unsurpassed by any other system. SS in its development as a sport will never reach the the same skill level in the ring unless it developes into a professional sport with popular support.