Wing Chun is all about countering attacks, locating an opening and then pummelling the opponent down to the ground while keeping its arms and legs away from you. I have to say that it's the most pragmatic fighting style I've ever known yet.
Wing chun is a very specific body mechanic. It's not really a fighting style. It's more like...the art of fighting somebody bolted to the ground 18 inches away from you while both of you are paralyzed from the waist down. It's like western boxing in the sense that it's a very small window into an extremely limited aspect of fighting and it only really works if the person you're fighting agrees to also use only that aspect.
Here's a wing chun practice session:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zLH3c37QBAYou'll notice that the participants spend the entire time standing squared off to one another about two feet away, and they barely move their feet the entire time.
Now, here's a guy with 17 years of wing chun fighting against a kickboxer with 6 years experience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH0cjMNVbfsYou'll immediately notice a couple things. First, the wing chun guy is obviously totally clueless and has no idea what to do. His training is just not relevant, so he spends most of his time standing there getting kicked. And when he finally does manage to get close enough to "do wing chun" he basically just slaps the guy ineffectually. Second...very obviously by comparing this and the previous video, you'll see that what they're doing is
totally different. Despite having 17 years of wing chun experience, if it weren't for the fact the video is labeled, you probably wouldn't even know he was a wing chun fighter from watching him. All of that wing chun training he did was basically not useful, and it was so obviously not useful that most of the fight he wasn't doing any wing chun.
Incidentally, this is a huge failing of karate styles too.
Here's a basic shotokan video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeNQ5fhK6EAThat's ippon kumite. It's a fighting pratice. This is specificlly what shotokan fighters to do train for sparing.
Now...here's a video of shotokan sparring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEprW3db2kEThey're doing totally different hings. The stances are different. The weight distributino is different. The hands are open instead of in fists. They're parrying instead of blocking. They're not doing all the "bring your fist to your waist" nonsense.
It's totally different.
This is a major failling of many martial arts. The
training is a highly stylized form of body movement, that
bears no relation whatsoever to fighting. This is generally acknowledged even
within the schools that these styles are taught. You might spend
years learning to hold and move your body in a certain way...and yet if you ask they'll tell you right away that "yeah, you'd never actually do this in a fight."
Wing chun has some basically good ideas, but they don't stand well on their own and they're typically taught in ways that aren't useful, and can be extremely counterproductive. Imagine if you trained all your life to fight while walking on a tightrope. Sure, it would be difficult. It would look good. It would require balance. But all of your training would be designed to protect and attack an opponent from exclusively one direction. So the moment you try to apply that training to somebody who's able to take a simple 20 degree step to one side...your training is now working against you because you've applied limits to yourself that your opponent isn't also limiting himself with.