In May, legendary tai chi master Ma Baoguo was handily defeated by an amateur kickboxer.
The fight was far from a first, with MMA vs. kung fu challenge matches gaining attention in China after Xu “Mad Dog” Xiaodong began his mission to expose “kung fu fakery.” This one lasted just thirty seconds, with Ma managing to get knocked down twice, before being struck a third time and laid out cold.
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Naturally, the internet jumped on the footage, and Ma began to trend as the butt of a viral joke. But eventually, the internet forgot about it and moved on… or so we thought.
On the six month anniversary of the viral clip, users began to crank out edits and spoofs of the original video, causing Ma Baoguo to trend once more. In one video, Ma replaces Marlon Brando in a scene from The Godfather. In another, Ma’s beating is compared to the beating the German football team received at the hands of Spain in the UEFA Nations League last weekend. Even Ke Jie, the 23-year-old Chinese Go world champion, made a video spoofing Ma.
The Bilibili videos have been viewed more than 100 million times.
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The renewed teasing, it seems, was too much for Ma — the martial artist’s official Weibo account broke its silence to post that, “Ma has returned to a peaceful life, away from the martial arts circle of right and wrong. I hope everyone can understand it.”
Many of the videos featured viral Ma Baoguo catchphrases, such as “rat tail juice” and “young people do not speak martial arts.” In addition to the spoof videos, Ma was battling false accounts operating under his identity.
The retreat comes after official bodies in China prohibited martial artists from using the title of “master,” in response to a string of embarrassing defeats at the hands of MMA fighters.
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