shaowebb
Get your guns on. Sheriff is back.
INTRO
This thread is exactly what it sounds like and it will be long. Skip to the end for Bo Rai Cho if you want.
You see I'm a second degree brown belt in Shaolin Do kung fu. In this system you typically get parts of different systems at each belt level and move on to more advanced books of each system as you progress. However, they occasionally hold special seminars on very advanced black belt forms and for a large fee any belt rank can train in that system.
I managed to get trained in the first book of one of the 8 Immortals style of Drunken Boxing. Don't ask me how to spell it, but its pronounced "Chou Chi Koo" and its the acrobatic immortal portion of the system. I trained this form so much that I honestly started to neglect my official rank forms to get better at it and in general you spar how you train. I was one of the only guys we had who would spar in this style and while I was nothing amazing or anything I'd like to talk about Bo Rai Cho from my perspective since I know a bit about applicable Drunken Boxing and how it works.
BO RAI CHO WHAT HE DOES
Where to begin...for starters what he does isn't drunken boxing at all. From stance to strike he has it wrong. I understand he was essentially a joke on the system, but he is pretty closely tied to the monks in story and REAL drunken boxing is actually very flashy and fun for players to watch and use. He could become a fun character if they did him right.
Anyhow here is what he does.
What Bo Rai Cho does is pretty much wrong. Even the way he throws his backfist is wrong because he is essentially doing a normal backfist with his feet positioning and his hand positioning.
The easiest way to describe Drunken Boxing is it is the ONLY power style of pressure point fighting out there I know of. Mantis is about jabs and quick strikes and so are most of the other pressure point systems in Kung Fu. Drunken Boxing though is a power style through and through and it is coupled with a lot of dodging.
Think regular boxing. You spar and you train to be quick and good at dodging with your upper body. Same goes for Drunken. But what about its attacks? Simply put all that flopping around you see is actually a harpooning technique. EVERY attack you throw has your full body wait behind it. Thus all the lunging.
STRIKING
I throw a backfist in Drunken and unlike Bo Rai Cho who plants both feet I swing my full weight into it and allow actually lean so hard into my swing that I have to raise one of my legs. A lot of Drunken Boxing training for actual applicable fighting comes in recovering from the force of your own attacks as many leave you off balance. Often we simply practice rolls, flips or falling into other attacks as a useful way to go with the excess momentum of a strike should it whif.
If I backfist so hard I pivot and it hits its like a club and it severely hurts to even block it. Really bangs up your forearms. If I miss I am overbalanced so I open my hand and allow my own momentum to carry me into a cartwheel or spin into another attack.
EVERYTHING is full body in force. Its a harpooning style. Often if someone is on the ground we simply do a senton or Front Handspring so that either our back or both our feet come down in full force upon them. We obviously can't spar with that but its in the form practice and that is how it is meant to be applied.
FIST STYLES
Bo Rai Cho only on occassion uses one of the BIGGEST things in this system and that is its fist style. There are actually two fist styles in this system. One is the Man holding cup style which is great for throwing hooks, backfists, clawing, and grappling and the other is a cutting hands technique adapted into the system called a Phoenix Eye Fist used for penetrating pressure point striking.
CUP FIST
Cup Fist takes some explaining. It looks like a man holding a sake cup or shotglass and it is ONLY used in this system. Bo Rai Cho uses it some (even though he doesn't put anything into the strikes as I pointed out earlier).
Have you ever swung your arm wide when turning and had the back of the wrist bash into something? Usually hurts right? But occassionally you'll do this and by accident you dont' feel any pain at all. Why is that?
Because if the hand is bent you don't send the impact into your wrist carpals you send it into the tip of your forearm's bones and as we all know from palm strikes that spot takes no damage and feels no discomfort when throwing a palm strike. Same goes for the BACK of that bone as well.
You essentially swing your arm like a club with all your weight behind it as I mentioned before. You can't throw jabs like this though you can uppercut like a beast. You have to essentially throw nothing but rapid back fists or swinging back fists to use this kind of strike with any force. If you see any "jablike" attacks it is because it starts tucked and then extends outward in front of them and unlike a normal jab that is not coming from the shoulder. Its all arm and chest.
The best thing is if this attack is blocked you can claw or fishhook someone with your fingers and you do this often in form practice. Lots of the motions that look like your extending your arms just to act like you are offering a drink after an attack in application would be a follow through to an attack. Usually such motions are you ripping open the neck or inner arm near the arteries in a claw motion. For the record you have to train your wrists and fingers like mad. Wrist pushups, and fingertip pushups are a part of it. When I say guys can claw you open trust me when I say they can.
Another thing is if you are blocked Drunken Boxing is ALL about controlling your body's weight and the same goes for your opponent...it is a heavy grappling style of locks, joint breaks and throws. This is a POWER STYLE like I said. Any blocked attack or counter is a joint lock or throw that generally ends with your full body weight coming down upon the targeted limb. Ever seen someone do an armbar and then arch their back? Well this system does that as a basic counter where you FALL with all your weight into that position instantly breaking the arm.
All strikes, locks and counters are full on power style. One of the forms is even an offshoot of Iron Body and Pa Kwa sticky hands technique grappling (aikido uses some of this).
PHOENIX EYE FIST
This is a cutting hand technique adopted into the system late in its history. Its easy to sum up.
Throw a punch and the force is spread across all the knuckles. Throw a punch with a knuckle extended further and all the force of the blow is concentrated into a singular point allowing it to penetrate things. I use this technique at work to open boxes. Try it sometime on a box. First punch the box and watch it do nothing but dent. Then do this and watch as your finger cuts through the box gauging a hole in it. Aim for a spot 3 foot behind the box next time and you will put your arm through it entirely using this fist style.
Consider this...how tough is a raw steak to gauge a finger through? We are all just meat. This fist penetrates flesh easily and is known to cause severe trauma DO NOT USE IT ON PEOPLE CASUALLY.
That said in Drunken Boxing it is used in conjunction with pressure point strikes and since this is a full body harpooning system of attacking ALL the practitioners power and weight is behind each Phoenix Eye Fist used. In other words they sever nerves with these strikes and penetrate flesh. If someone was hit full force by any of these shots that are a part of this system they couldn't use that limb to fight with guaranteed. Likely in some cases permanent trauma or death could result from it.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO BO RAI CHO
The big problem with animating him is he is hampered by his cane leaning. He is stiffly putting his weight all on that cane and then just wobbling.
I understand he was meant more as a joke about Drunken Boxing with the puking and fatguy body splash fatality and all that but he has real potential to showcase something cool so bear with me here.
Remove the cane leaning if he must have it and have him just hold it without leaning on it if he must. The basic stance generally is an arms down pose or both arms up in a double cup fisted pose and both generally have you wobbling around. For sparring you don't play it up with the wobbling or you wont be able to recover from dancing around like an idiot in time to do anything. You are just trying to stay loose and get yourself in the mode of doing torso dodging like a boxer.
Boxers lean around and Bo Rai Cho should too. Its a game though and like Hollywood he can play this up as much as he needs to. Just dont have him putting all his weight on a cane or he is in no way staying loose enough to do the form at all.
HOW BO RAI CHO SHOULD PLAY
Power striker with lots of counters and grabs and a few odd hitboxes to showcase the unorthodox angles of some of the attacks we use.
Think Clark or Shen Woo from KoF combined with Fox's dodging from Tekken.
Moves from a Drunken Boxer are punishable on whif in real life. We have LOTS of recovery needed on our strikes unless we follow them up with other stuff. So some of his moves should need to be made safe if followed up with another action like a dodge or another attack. Others though would require COMPLETE commitment so he cant always be safe.
Bo Rai Cho should be a very high reward in and out character with odd angles of attacks. However on block or whif he would be in serious trouble...thus the need for one or two ways to make a move safe and the odd hitboxes like strange overheads. Heavily loaded with counters perhaps with followup options on them and a command grab. Essentially he is a new kind of power style counter character just waiting to use.
And the puke...its sort of a staple to him. I know you can't remove it. I'd prefer it was just a wine spit or something, but this is MK so throw it in if you must. Just remember the rest of what I said on how the playstyle works.
TYPES OF ATTACKS
Essentially a lot of movements like Brad Wong from DOA who is the most accurate portrayal of the system ever done in a fighting game so far.
This thread is exactly what it sounds like and it will be long. Skip to the end for Bo Rai Cho if you want.
You see I'm a second degree brown belt in Shaolin Do kung fu. In this system you typically get parts of different systems at each belt level and move on to more advanced books of each system as you progress. However, they occasionally hold special seminars on very advanced black belt forms and for a large fee any belt rank can train in that system.
I managed to get trained in the first book of one of the 8 Immortals style of Drunken Boxing. Don't ask me how to spell it, but its pronounced "Chou Chi Koo" and its the acrobatic immortal portion of the system. I trained this form so much that I honestly started to neglect my official rank forms to get better at it and in general you spar how you train. I was one of the only guys we had who would spar in this style and while I was nothing amazing or anything I'd like to talk about Bo Rai Cho from my perspective since I know a bit about applicable Drunken Boxing and how it works.
BO RAI CHO WHAT HE DOES
Where to begin...for starters what he does isn't drunken boxing at all. From stance to strike he has it wrong. I understand he was essentially a joke on the system, but he is pretty closely tied to the monks in story and REAL drunken boxing is actually very flashy and fun for players to watch and use. He could become a fun character if they did him right.
Anyhow here is what he does.
- A couple of back fists
- the puke...oh god the puke
- body splashes because he is fat
- lots of walking stick stuff that honestly is not anything kung fu. Its just an old man's cane
What Bo Rai Cho does is pretty much wrong. Even the way he throws his backfist is wrong because he is essentially doing a normal backfist with his feet positioning and his hand positioning.
The easiest way to describe Drunken Boxing is it is the ONLY power style of pressure point fighting out there I know of. Mantis is about jabs and quick strikes and so are most of the other pressure point systems in Kung Fu. Drunken Boxing though is a power style through and through and it is coupled with a lot of dodging.
Think regular boxing. You spar and you train to be quick and good at dodging with your upper body. Same goes for Drunken. But what about its attacks? Simply put all that flopping around you see is actually a harpooning technique. EVERY attack you throw has your full body wait behind it. Thus all the lunging.
STRIKING
I throw a backfist in Drunken and unlike Bo Rai Cho who plants both feet I swing my full weight into it and allow actually lean so hard into my swing that I have to raise one of my legs. A lot of Drunken Boxing training for actual applicable fighting comes in recovering from the force of your own attacks as many leave you off balance. Often we simply practice rolls, flips or falling into other attacks as a useful way to go with the excess momentum of a strike should it whif.
If I backfist so hard I pivot and it hits its like a club and it severely hurts to even block it. Really bangs up your forearms. If I miss I am overbalanced so I open my hand and allow my own momentum to carry me into a cartwheel or spin into another attack.
EVERYTHING is full body in force. Its a harpooning style. Often if someone is on the ground we simply do a senton or Front Handspring so that either our back or both our feet come down in full force upon them. We obviously can't spar with that but its in the form practice and that is how it is meant to be applied.
FIST STYLES
Bo Rai Cho only on occassion uses one of the BIGGEST things in this system and that is its fist style. There are actually two fist styles in this system. One is the Man holding cup style which is great for throwing hooks, backfists, clawing, and grappling and the other is a cutting hands technique adapted into the system called a Phoenix Eye Fist used for penetrating pressure point striking.
CUP FIST
Cup Fist takes some explaining. It looks like a man holding a sake cup or shotglass and it is ONLY used in this system. Bo Rai Cho uses it some (even though he doesn't put anything into the strikes as I pointed out earlier).
Have you ever swung your arm wide when turning and had the back of the wrist bash into something? Usually hurts right? But occassionally you'll do this and by accident you dont' feel any pain at all. Why is that?
Because if the hand is bent you don't send the impact into your wrist carpals you send it into the tip of your forearm's bones and as we all know from palm strikes that spot takes no damage and feels no discomfort when throwing a palm strike. Same goes for the BACK of that bone as well.
You essentially swing your arm like a club with all your weight behind it as I mentioned before. You can't throw jabs like this though you can uppercut like a beast. You have to essentially throw nothing but rapid back fists or swinging back fists to use this kind of strike with any force. If you see any "jablike" attacks it is because it starts tucked and then extends outward in front of them and unlike a normal jab that is not coming from the shoulder. Its all arm and chest.
The best thing is if this attack is blocked you can claw or fishhook someone with your fingers and you do this often in form practice. Lots of the motions that look like your extending your arms just to act like you are offering a drink after an attack in application would be a follow through to an attack. Usually such motions are you ripping open the neck or inner arm near the arteries in a claw motion. For the record you have to train your wrists and fingers like mad. Wrist pushups, and fingertip pushups are a part of it. When I say guys can claw you open trust me when I say they can.
Another thing is if you are blocked Drunken Boxing is ALL about controlling your body's weight and the same goes for your opponent...it is a heavy grappling style of locks, joint breaks and throws. This is a POWER STYLE like I said. Any blocked attack or counter is a joint lock or throw that generally ends with your full body weight coming down upon the targeted limb. Ever seen someone do an armbar and then arch their back? Well this system does that as a basic counter where you FALL with all your weight into that position instantly breaking the arm.
All strikes, locks and counters are full on power style. One of the forms is even an offshoot of Iron Body and Pa Kwa sticky hands technique grappling (aikido uses some of this).
PHOENIX EYE FIST
This is a cutting hand technique adopted into the system late in its history. Its easy to sum up.
Throw a punch and the force is spread across all the knuckles. Throw a punch with a knuckle extended further and all the force of the blow is concentrated into a singular point allowing it to penetrate things. I use this technique at work to open boxes. Try it sometime on a box. First punch the box and watch it do nothing but dent. Then do this and watch as your finger cuts through the box gauging a hole in it. Aim for a spot 3 foot behind the box next time and you will put your arm through it entirely using this fist style.
Consider this...how tough is a raw steak to gauge a finger through? We are all just meat. This fist penetrates flesh easily and is known to cause severe trauma DO NOT USE IT ON PEOPLE CASUALLY.
That said in Drunken Boxing it is used in conjunction with pressure point strikes and since this is a full body harpooning system of attacking ALL the practitioners power and weight is behind each Phoenix Eye Fist used. In other words they sever nerves with these strikes and penetrate flesh. If someone was hit full force by any of these shots that are a part of this system they couldn't use that limb to fight with guaranteed. Likely in some cases permanent trauma or death could result from it.
HOW THIS APPLIES TO BO RAI CHO
The big problem with animating him is he is hampered by his cane leaning. He is stiffly putting his weight all on that cane and then just wobbling.
I understand he was meant more as a joke about Drunken Boxing with the puking and fatguy body splash fatality and all that but he has real potential to showcase something cool so bear with me here.
Remove the cane leaning if he must have it and have him just hold it without leaning on it if he must. The basic stance generally is an arms down pose or both arms up in a double cup fisted pose and both generally have you wobbling around. For sparring you don't play it up with the wobbling or you wont be able to recover from dancing around like an idiot in time to do anything. You are just trying to stay loose and get yourself in the mode of doing torso dodging like a boxer.
Boxers lean around and Bo Rai Cho should too. Its a game though and like Hollywood he can play this up as much as he needs to. Just dont have him putting all his weight on a cane or he is in no way staying loose enough to do the form at all.
HOW BO RAI CHO SHOULD PLAY
Power striker with lots of counters and grabs and a few odd hitboxes to showcase the unorthodox angles of some of the attacks we use.
Think Clark or Shen Woo from KoF combined with Fox's dodging from Tekken.
Moves from a Drunken Boxer are punishable on whif in real life. We have LOTS of recovery needed on our strikes unless we follow them up with other stuff. So some of his moves should need to be made safe if followed up with another action like a dodge or another attack. Others though would require COMPLETE commitment so he cant always be safe.
Bo Rai Cho should be a very high reward in and out character with odd angles of attacks. However on block or whif he would be in serious trouble...thus the need for one or two ways to make a move safe and the odd hitboxes like strange overheads. Heavily loaded with counters perhaps with followup options on them and a command grab. Essentially he is a new kind of power style counter character just waiting to use.
And the puke...its sort of a staple to him. I know you can't remove it. I'd prefer it was just a wine spit or something, but this is MK so throw it in if you must. Just remember the rest of what I said on how the playstyle works.
TYPES OF ATTACKS
Essentially a lot of movements like Brad Wong from DOA who is the most accurate portrayal of the system ever done in a fighting game so far.
- LOTS of leaning and attacking with his back facing the opponent. We look over our shoulders a lot and back flexibility is a staple of the style for its dodging and offense. The whole system is about giving false opportunities to the enemy and punishing them. I'd even go so far as to start him facing the opposite way and have him looking over his shoulder as his stance.
- At least one counter should result in rolling across the opponents body somehow. I usually would tuck an opponents arm under my own and roll behind them back to back. This would lock their arm and do a really nasty reverse armdrag that would land them into an armbar. Its good visually is all I'm saying. He could simply roll behind a guy and spin into the famous diving headbutt of Jackie Chan.
- Phoenix Eye Fist strike. This would cause some kind of major damage in real life so a power shot, a crumple, a stun state...whatever. It should be included though
- Cup fist. Lots of swinging back fists and this time pivot and put your weight into Bo Rai Cho. Planting both feet is not done in Drunken Boxing for this. You windmill that thing.
- Throat claw. Drunken boxers claw like crazy and many practice their pinching strength. One pinch on a dude's throat from a cup fist up close and they could crush his throat. Bo Rai Cho should go for this or at least claw a carotid.
- Kick Counters. We practice a LOT of footwork and one we are know for is simply stopping a kick by kicking any moving leg in the shin. Turn around, bend your leg as if to say "tee hee" and that is literally how we back kick to trap a leg. We also do this facing people but instead of kicking with our front leg we literally make a figure four pose with our back leg bent behind our front leg and kick. Some form of low kick or counter to a kick where he kicks a shin in such a bent legged back kick fashion works.
- Single leg flares. These are a very noticeable thing in drunken boxing where you perform multiple sweeps doing a single leg flare. Brad Wong uses them a lot in the video above. Around 3:16
All this pretty much sells him visually as a drunken boxer and allows for him to accurately portray the style.
I dont know if anyone read all this since its a lot, but I don't contribute much to the MK side of TYM and I thought my unique perspective on this character might be interesting to some of you. Have fun and keep playing MK.
