At the back of a hall sits a 40 year old man. He is heavily built
But what immediately catches your attention is his face.
It is covered in colorful makeup, almost like the Joker.
He is about to fight.
But he hasn’t put on that makeup for fun.
It was a condition imposed on him. He had been told that if he wanted to enter the ring, he had to cover his face.
Even the poster announcing the fight does not carry his real name.
Instead, it uses a mocking nickname “Shu Totongua.”
The humiliation was deliberate.
And this man had travelled nearly 3,000 kilometres to get there.
He spent 36 hours sitting on a cheap seat on a slow train because he could not buy a plane ticket.
Not because he was poor.
He had been banned.
He could not travel on high speed trains. He could not stay in expensive hotels. He could not buy property for himself.
What had he done?
“If you can turn the inside of a watermelon into pulp without opening it, then show me what you can do. Fight me.”
The fight happened.
And within about ten seconds, an average MMA fighter had knocked down one of China’s most famous Kung Fu grandmasters.
That fighter was Xu Xiaodong.
And from that moment, Xu became a villain in the eyes of the Chinese establishment.
At one point, a billionaire even announced a reward of 100 million yuan for anyone who could defeat him.
At the exchange rate of the time, that was roughly ₹5 crore.
But to understand why this fight became such a big deal, you first have to understand what Kung Fu means in China.
China’s traditional martial arts are broadly known as Wushu.
In the rest of the world, we generally know them as Kung Fu.
But Kung Fu is not one single fighting style.
It contains hundreds of different schools and traditions.
Shaolin is one.
Wing Chun is another.
Tai Chi is another.
Most people have heard of Tai Chi.
You may have seen elderly people in parks in the morning, moving their hands slowly, controlling their breathing, maintaining balance and shifting their weight from one leg to another.
Today, most people associate Tai Chi with health and exercise.
But originally, Tai Chi was a martial art.
It has existed in China for centuries.
And for China, traditional martial arts are much more than physical exercise.
They are part of the country’s cultural identity and soft power.
In a way, Wushu and Kung Fu occupy a position in Chinese culture somewhat similar to the position yoga occupies in India.
When Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, his government began placing greater emphasis on what it presented as traditional Chinese culture.https://time.com/5448811/mma-kung-fu-xu-xiaodong/
Traditional medicine, ancient philosophy and traditional martial arts all received greater official promotion.
And around these traditions, an enormous commercial market developed.
Films were made.
Television programs were produced.
Martial arts were promoted through schools and tourism.
Merchandise appeared.
Thousands of academies opened, and millions of students began learning these arts.
And whenever a market becomes that large, you need advertising.
But advertising doesn’t always have to look like advertising.
Sometimes it can come through television personalities making extraordinary claims.
The more extreme the claim, the more attention it attracts.
And that is exactly what began happening.
Masters and grandmasters started appearing on television claiming they could use their internal energy to throw strong young men across a room.
Others demonstrated techniques where they supposedly caused unbearable pain by touching someone with a single finger.
Then they would supposedly cure the same person with another touch.
There was no reliable way for ordinary viewers to verify these demonstrations.https://unbiasedpollkhol.com/
Then, at the beginning of 2017, a young master named Wei Lei appeared on China’s state television network CCTV.
Wei Lei practiced his own version of Tai Chi, which he called Thunder Style.
He made two extraordinary claims.
First, he claimed that a pigeon sitting on his palm could not fly away because it was surrounded by an invisible field of energy.
Second, he claimed that he could turn the inside of a watermelon into pulp without opening, cutting or breaking the skin.
And one man watching all of this had finally had enough.
His name was Xu Xiaodong.
Xu ran a gym.
He was not a superstar fighter.
Sanda was one of the few Chinese martial arts that Xu believed deserved respect because its techniques were actually tested in combat under rules.
Then came MMA.
Mixed Martial Arts allowed fighters to punch, kick, grab, throw and continue fighting on the ground.
In 2002, he and two partners established Beijing’s first MMA team.
In 2003, he fought in a televised bout and lost.
Then, in 2004, while playing football, he tore a ligament in his knee.
He underwent surgery, but never completely recovered his original strength.
So he stopped fighting and concentrated on training.
He opened a gym in Beijing.
He considered himself an amateur level fighter and a coach.
But when he saw those extraordinary claims being made on state television, he couldn’t stay quiet. He began saying on his online program that what was being shown on television wasn’t real fighting.
According to him, many of these demonstrations were staged performances.
The participants rehearsed them.
Everything was predetermined.
In other words, he argued that some of these televised fights were essentially fake.
But Xu wasn’t attacking Kung Fu itself.
If you make extraordinary claims about a martial art, those claims should be tested in reality.
Then he saw Wei Lei’s pigeon demonstration.
And the watermelon claim.
Xu called Wei Lei a fraud.
And the argument became personal.
Wei Lei or someone associated with him obtained Xu’s address and phone number and posted them online.
Suddenly, anyone angry with Xu knew where he lived.
After weeks of insults and arguments, the two sides finally decided that talking wasn’t going to settle the matter.
They would fight.
The date was set:
April 27, 2017.
The fight took place in the basement of Wei Lei’s gym.
There was no professional ring.
bell rang.
Wei Lei raised both hands and slowly moved around.
He adopted a classic Tai Chi posture, similar to the White Crane Spreads Its Wings stance.
He moved slowly, almost as if challenging Xu.
Xu watched him for a couple of seconds.
Then he moved forward.
What happened next lasted only about ten to twenty seconds.
Xu began throwing punches directly at Wei Lei’s face.
One after another.
Wei Lei fell backward.
Xu climbed over him and continued striking.
Wei Lei tried to protect his face with his hands.
The referee eventually intervened and stopped the fight.
That was it.
The fight itself was over almost before it had begun.
But the real drama started the following day.
The video appeared online in China.
Millions of people watched it.
And suddenly, this was no longer just a fight between two men.
For millions of Chinese people, the man lying on that mat represented something they had been taught to be proud of since childhood.
Traditional Chinese martial arts were part of the country’s cultural identity.
People had grown up watching films where Kung Fu heroes defeated dozens of opponents single handedly.
But on an actual mat, the tradition had lasted barely ten seconds.
And the public anger didn’t fall on the people making the extraordinary claims.
It fell on Xu Xiaodong.
China’s Wushu organizations issued statements saying that the fight violated martial arts ethics and that Xu’s behavior was unacceptable.
Chinese state media attacked him as well. The fight had suddenly created an uncomfortable question
What are traditional Chinese martial arts actually capable of in a real fight?
Xu and his family began receiving death threats.
His social media accounts were shut down.
The pressure against him grew rapidly.
And then something even more extraordinary happened.
A businessman announced a huge reward for anyone who could defeat Xu Xiaodong.
The message was clear:
If you wanted to prove that traditional martial arts still had power, there was a target.
Xu Xiaodong.
And from here, Xu’s story was no longer simply about fighting Kung Fu masters.
It was about what happens when one man challenges an entire system built around tradition, reputation and national pride.
And Xu had no intention of backing down.
To be continued……………………..