“A fighter with heart will almost always win out against a fighter with skill but no will.”
Chuck Liddell

“I’ve never found that getting physical is ever the best response in a bar. You just have to make sure you keep your distance, and if it gets to a point where it gets aggressive then the best thing to do is go get a bouncer and get the situation resolved intelligently.”
Chuck Liddell

Here is an interesting lesson in striking from former UFC Light Heavyweight Champ Chuck Liddell.

Liddell was one of the few strikers successful in that era of the UFC, when everyone was discovering the significant advantages of a good wrestling or BJJ game in the ring with the UFC rules.  Even now, if you have no ground game in the UFC, you are done.  Unless the opponent has a glass chin, they will eventually be able to drag you down.

Although, I must note in passing, in the recent UFC Championship bout between  Joanna Jędrzejczyk (Muay Thai) and Cláudia Gadelha (BJJ Black Belt),  Jędrzejczyk showed what can happen if the striker has a solid takedown defense and has the skills the survive on the ground, even if they don’t dominate there.

But in the real world, where we prefer to keep it standing up so we are not rolling around under tables and getting kicked in the head by our opponent’s friends, you want to learn how to strike hard.  Liddell’s advice doesn’t apply directly to the Wing Chun striking method, but its good to have a versatile bag of tricks (IMO) and to know what your opponent may bring.

What happen’s when you duck back (as he describes in the video) is also what happens when you back up in a straight line.  Each step is a frozen moment where you are stuck and a target.  This is why we Toi Ma (angle step).

Chuck-Liddell