After defeating Wei Lei, Xu Xiaodong had expected the controversy to be over.
Instead, his life began falling apart.
A businessman publicly announced a huge reward for anyone who could defeat Xu.
The message was that Xu had insulted Chinese tradition and needed to be taught a lesson.
Suddenly, Xu wasn’t the challenger anymore.
He was the target.
For a while, Xu disappeared from public view.
In an online message, he said he had lost everything.
His career was finished.
He had gone after someone he believed was a fraud and had ended up becoming the target himself. Most people would probably have apologized, stayed quiet and gone back to running their business.
But Xu did something completely different.
List of 100 People for fight
He took a piece of paper and a pen.
According to Xu, more than 100 people had challenged him to fights after the Wei Lei incident.
So he made a list.
He ranked the challengers in order of priority.
And he decided to deal with them one by one.
The challengers began showing up.
There was no major organization arranging these fights.
No standardized licensing system.
No professional governing body.
Just a challenger on one side and Xu Xiaodong on the other.
By October 2019, Xu had fought 17 such opponents.
And according to the account, he won all 17.
But one of the most interesting fights was the one he did not win.
In March 2018, Xu faced a Wing Chun practitioner.
Wing Chun is the style of Kung Fu that became globally famous largely because of Bruce Lee, who began his martial arts journey with it.
Hundreds of people watched the fight.
At the beginning, Xu deliberately left his defense open.
He allowed the other fighter to punch him.
Almost as if he was saying:
“Go ahead. Show me what you’ve got.”
Then Xu began attacking.
He knocked his opponent down several times.
Blood was coming from the man’s face.
The fight ended.
The announcer picked up the microphone and announced the result.
The word was:
Draw.
Nobody had won.
Nobody had lost.
But Xu’s battle wasn’t limited to fighting.
He was also challenging the people who claimed authority over traditional martial arts.
In 2017, he publicly questioned one of the senior masters of one of the most prestigious Tai Chi lineages.
This man was considered a 19th generation master.
He had taught Tai Chi around the world.
But Xu called him a fraud.
That led to a defamation lawsuit.
In 2019, the court ruled against Xu.https://time.com/5448811/mma-kung-fu-xu-xiaodong/
He did not Apologized for fight.
He was ordered to pay 400,000 yuan in damages and publicly apologize on social media for seven consecutive days.
Xu paid the money.
But he refused to apologize.
And this is where the story stops being merely the story of a fighter and becomes a story about a system.
In China, there is a list for people who fail to comply with certain court judgments.
If your name appears on that list, everyday life can become extremely difficult.
You may be prevented from buying airline tickets.
You may be restricted from using high speed trains.
You may be unable to stay in certain hotels.
You may face restrictions on purchasing property.
Xu’s name was placed on that list.
One of his gyms closed.
His social media accounts disappeared.
His name became difficult to find through Chinese search engines.
Even renting a home became difficult because his income had collapsed and people were reluctant to associate themselves with someone who had openly challenged powerful interests.
Then came May 2019.
Xu arrived in Xinjiang.
He had travelled for 36 hours by train.
He had come nearly 3,000 kilometres.
He couldn’t fly.
He couldn’t use the high speed train.
He couldn’t stay in an expensive hotel.
And then came the final humiliation.
He was told to cover his face.
So Xu put on colorful, Joker like makeup.
And on the poster, instead of his real name, they used a mocking nickname.
His opponent was another Wing Chun practitioner who had spent weeks making videos insulting him.
The fight lasted just 47 seconds.
His opponent’s nose was broken, and eventually a doctor had to stop the fight.
But Xu kept fighting.
And something much bigger was happening across China.
More and more fights began appearing in which people calling themselves martial arts masters were being tested by ordinary fighters.
In one particularly striking case, a 69 year old Tai Chi grandmaster was knocked down three times in roughly 30 seconds and eventually lost consciousness.
His opponent wasn’t even a professional fighter.
He was an amateur.
This time, however, the public reaction was different.
People laughed.
The fights became memes.
And slowly, something began to change.
In 2020, China’s Wushu authorities issued a statement asking practitioners to stop casually calling themselves “masters” or “grandmasters.https://unbiasedpollkhol.com/“