[noufalibrahim]

Very sceptical of such claims. It's quite easy to ascertain them too. You pressure test the system (or your variant of it) in a lab (ie. in a fighting ring). If it can hold up against fighters of a certain level of skill, you can, in a way, claim to be atleast as good as them. Otherwise, you're not.

The book "Professor in the Cage" goes into this distinction at length. It's an interesting thing to consider for people like me who are into martial arts.

[bobbruno]

There is a slight problem with that - it doesn't invalidate the idea of testing, but you do have to think about it. Taiji is not ring/cage wrestling, it was created as a fight art, and its most efficient applications usually will break bones, dislodge joints, generally do things that are outlawed in most fighting arenas nowadays. It also was not designed with a limited ring around it, which changes the dynamics of movement. So, just by putting the fighter in a ring and defining allowed/forbidden moves, you're biasing the experiment in favor of a modern contact sport practitioner.

[noufalibrahim]

Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that all bullshido practitioners say. "It's too deadly to use in a ring since I might break bones or kill the opponent" so I can't. Please note that I'm not saying that you are one. I'm just saying that you're using the same argument that charlatans do.

If Tai Chi is indeed so deadly, it must be possible to tone it down just a little to make it 75% as effective inside a ring. Just short stop of breaking bones or dislodging joins (submission holds) and still be useful. Good martial arts and artists are flexible enough to adapt. If Tai Chi were so deadly and a practitioner gets accosted in a narrow alley, it should be flexible enough to be useful. Otherwise, it's simply not effective as a fighting system. Either that or we can make the claim that it's not a fighting system. It's a set of exercises (like pilates etc.) that achieve certain outcomes and measure against those metrics. That's fine too.

The tendency has been parodied in countless media instances. e.g.The Bruce Lee appearance in "Once upon a time on Hollywood", the youtube channel "Master Ken", The instagram account "McDojo life" etc. Master Ken does this especially well with his "Ameri do te" which is so street lethal that it's impossible to even demo some of the techniques.