No. 11: Sen Ling
Discipline: Karate
Strengths: Selling wolf tickets
Analysis: A fairly straight forward fighter in a fairly straight forward styles match, Sen Ling opens up the Kumite with a valiant but disappointing effort.
The karate-based fighter initially attempts to kick with Suan Paredes, until realizing this opposition’s varied muay Thai (and capoeira?) were far more effective at range. Ling attempted to adjust by landing a cheeky backfist on his opponent before everything was all said and done, but Paredes answered back with a hellacious uppercut (which resembles Sagat’s from the “Street Fighter” video game) that put the karate master away.
Although the fight scene ends with an unconscious Ling being buried by the betting slips of his disgruntled supporters, I seriously doubt a traditional martial arts fighter like Ling would get that much love from gamblers given what we saw a competent kickboxer can do to him, much less a grappler.
Ling is quietly a good candidate for action fights, but I’m not sure he has a meaningful MMA career past the late 90s.
No. 10: Ng Yuk-Sue
Discipline: Freestyle martial arts
Strengths: Actual martial artist and stuntman
Thoughts: As film lore has it, Ng Yuk-Sue (Yu-Shu Wu) was a legit badass martial artist and stuntman who was told to “take it easy” on Jean-Claude Van Damme during their fight scene.
A Hong Kong action director, actor and stuntman, Wu was essentially the Asian version of Brad Pitt’s character in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Apparently, Wu specialized in his kicking abilities (which looked good in his small sample size), so I guess it would make sense that production didn’t want him to upstage their star’s main strength.
Anyway, anyone who can mimic Cliff Booth in real life gets extra points with me, as I would not be surprised to see this “Ng Yuk-Sue” character have some success with Katsunori Kikuno-like kicks on mid-level opposition in most MMA eras pre-2004.