I understand you admitting this would probably mean you've been learning a sorry excuse for a martial art for however long you've been doing it, but hey... looks like you won't be convinced until I give you a very specific examples. This is going to take a while, but hey... it'll help. I like helping.

Here's why Asians, (Not chinese people mind you, noo... they think their #### is the bomb, regardless of any amount of evidence that proves otherwise.) think chinese martial arts is a 'joke'.

While I was in Korea I followed the Asian martial arts tournaments cause occasionally they'd show tournaments in the Dojang, or there would be articles posted on the walls.
In every major 'unlimited' martial arts tourament since like the 1980s, No form of traditional chinese martial artist won a tournament. Not once. That's 20 years of not winning a single tournament. Boxers have, Kickboxers have. People who did Karate, Taekwondo have. But not a single person learned in a traditional chinese martial art. In fact, most of the time the people trained in nothing but traditional chinese martial arts were all disqualified in the qualifying rounds. Now, if you're going to tell me the halfassed #### you can learn here is somehow 'different' that it's somehow 'better' then what you can learn in mainland China, well, good luck, I wish you the best with your 'training'.

Want more? Here's a couple of matches I've seen with my own eyes.
The ones pitting a chinese 'master' vs someone trained in a more actual combat oriented art like 'guk-jin' karate or even kickboxing.. .it's sad.
I saw one match where a chinese guy learned in 'Charyuk' demonstrated how he could shatter a rock with his bare hands, but then proceeded to get knocked out within 3 minutes of getting into the ring by a kickboxer, another where a guy that learned some kind of 'kung-fu' started doing some fancy footwork in front of a guy that learned 'guk-jin' karate. The other guy just stared at him in disbelief for a moment then kicked him once in the stomach breaking right through his defense as he was doing some fancy move, followed by a right hook to the side of his head. He went down like a sack of potatoes. The other guy didn't even bother waiting for him to get up and just got out of the ring. A little while later the announcer reported that that guy went up to the judges and complained that he was there for a serious competition, not to participate in a 'chicken dance', and told them that they needed to be more selective about the quality of their contestants.

And you wonder why we think Chinese martial arts is a joke? Chinese martial arts is flashy. That's about all there is to it.
Hitting buckets full of pebbles? Please, there's a big difference between intentionally trying to make the damn scars so you won't bleed and getting it naturally from pounding a punching bag a couple of thousand times a day.
If having hard knuckles made you a better martial artist having a pair of brass knuckles would do.
Maybe if you've trained in Chinese martial arts for 10~20 years you somehow reach a higher plane of 'self awareness' that really does let you be a 'super martial artist' but from what I've seen, if you want to get down to the meat and potatos of it, being able to learn something useful before your body gets too old, and out of your prime, Chinese martial arts is not something you want to learn.

I've seen one of those UFC things, and frankly, they're a step above wrestling. Put those guys in a real Asian tournament, and they'd be ripped to shreds. The speed these guys move at are at two entirely different levels.

Oh yes.. Judo, I don't know what you've been drinking, but it's all about 'balance'? Where'd you get that? So you know more about Judo then the guys on the Olympics board? Cause that's a direct quote from one of the judges presiding over the '88 Olympics.
Last year when I was in Korea on one show as a kind of a farce they pitted the Korean Women's Judo team against a group of 5 actors. (None had any martial arts training I might add) This is the gold medalist team by the way. You know how that went? 3-2. Actors win. Granted, one of the guys looked like he hit the gym 3 times a week, but the rest of them were either scrawny or fat. OLYMPICS GOLD medalists can't beat a group of NORMAL guys.
If you can toss someone who weighs a 100 pounds more than you do, quit your day job now, cause you obviously can do something no one else in the world can. You belong on the US olympics team.
.....
Please, for christ's sake don't compare your 'playfighting' that you do with your friends with an actual competition or a real situation. By the way, you should have outgrown that years ago.

And yes.. finally... the last thing I wanted to tell you.. Chuck Norris.
Do you know 'exactly' what Chuck Norris learned?
He learned 'Gook-sul'. He's like the big 'celebrity' guy for that particular school of martial arts. Supposedly it's getting a big following in Texas. He has a second degree black belt in 'Gook-sul'.
That's a neo-korean martial art that some korean dude made before he came over to the states. He basically went around and sparred with a bunch of korean 'masters' when he was young, formulated his own system of a martial art, came to the states, created a new martial art named 'Gook-sul' and gave himself a 9th degree black belt.

.......... yeah.
No seriously, you're allowed to do that when you're making something new.

How do I know this? My dad was a consul for the Korean Consulate, and I had a chance to meet this guy in Houston while my dad was stationed there.
My dad made me go to one of the 'Gook-sul' schools in Houston after I met him. I went there for two weeks before I finally came home and just told my dad that I wasn't going to that place anymore. I gotta say, when I first met him I thought it was amazing how good of a shape he was in for someone in his 60s? Or even later, I forgot exactly how old he was but I remember thinking he looked at least 20 years younger than he was.
Unfortunately, the Dojang I went to was like one big farce.

The 'master' had a third degree black belt. I don't know what the whole system with that particular school was but In Korea you can't run your own 'Do-jang' until you at least have a fifth, which usually takes anywhere from 7 to 10 years. It showed. This guy was not that good. This was a thoroughly 'americanized' institution. They emphasised 'taking it slow', 'do things at your own pace'. There was no sparring. (Which would have made sense. Half the people there were under 10, the other half was over 40.)
One of the forms actually had the Karate kid stance. You know.. the one where the kid stands on one foot? I've seen that movie some 3 times over the course of my life, every time I see it I shake my head in disbelief at what passed for 'martial arts' in the states back in the 80s. I never thought I'd actually see that #### in a real Dojang.

That's your Chuck Norris buddy. Ooooh, scary huh?
Face it, Chuck Norris is an 80s hero that learned something you could pass off as a martial arts to someone who's never likely seen anything 'real' before. Apparently, guys like you.

Guys like him would never have been able to call himself a martial artist in Korea, there were likely at least 5 kids in every 8th grade class that were better at Karate then he was, and I was one of them.

And as for your grappling bit... You grew up in New York City huh? Yeah.. that's real nice. I had to grow up in Korea. Know why I had to learn martial arts?
When I was in second grade (This was right after I first came back from the states) My mom noticed I was coming home crying all the time, saying that some kid was beating me up in school. She dragged me to the nearest Taekwondo Dojang.

That's the thing about bullies, they're usually bigger and stronger than you. If you look like you'd put up a good fight, they wont pick a fight with you. That's the premise of learning a martial art. It lets you handle opponents who are bigger and stronger than you are. If they're your size or smaller, you don't even need it to begin with. Grappling techniques only work if you bring him down first of all, and anyone learned well enough in a 'real' martial art isn't going to just sit there looking pretty while you try to grab him. Even if you bring him down.. what then?
I was a kid that went back and forth between Korea and the States. This is my third time here. And regardless of how tough you think your big city kiddies were, you don't hold a candle to how nasty Korean kids can get, cause they didn't have to worry about the guy they were beating on going crazy and blowing their brains out with a gun.
Kids in Korea don't like anyone who seem 'different', and they definately don't like Americans. Meaning they don't like Korean kids who've been to America. I remember after moving a few times I just started pretending I'd never been to the states, intentionally getting a few questions wrong on the English tests, pronouncing things wrong when the teacher called on me to read a passage etc. I got into more than my share of fights, much more than I would have had to get into were I just like the 'other kids'. Usually against the class bullies that were about twice my size, and sometimes they didn't try it alone.
And in a school, running and avoiding the fight, which most of the time is always the best choice, isn't an option. I've won my share of those fights, probably more than I deserved to win due to the time limit, (10 minutes between classes) and I've lost more than I'd care to remember, but I didn't have the same bully trying to get me twice once they realized beating me up usually ended in them getting at least a little bit hurt as well.
And from those fights I can tell you, if you're on the ground you'd better ####ing hope you're stronger than him cause if you're both on the ground and he's stronger than you, regardless of how much Karate you've learned you're #### outta luck.
I hope you'll never have to deal with this kind of ####, but you'll realize exactly how useless martial arts is if you're both on the ground, he managed to press you down with his weight and start pounding your face for 3 minutes until the class bell rings. He was pissed because he didn't manage to catch me for the first few minutes while I was hitting him as much as I could. Once he grabbed me though that was it. Despite what you may believe about 'balance', if a guy who's that much stronger and bigger than you manages to get a good grip on you, you're done.

No real martial artist will ever tell you that you should bring someone to the ground and fight him there. Any responsible martial artist knows that you only fight if you have to, and even then, only until you can get away. How are you going to get away if you're lying on top of him trying to pound the #### out of him? The moment you cross that threshhold you're not a martial artist, you're a bully.

And frankly, judging from your posturing you haven't taken martial arts for any length of time, not to mention your adoration of Chuck Norris, who frankly even without knowing his background in martial arts, just looking at him in TV, everything about him from his stances to the way he moves screams 'amateur'.

There, that was the 'long' version.
I hope you're happy. Took me almost 30 minutes to type out, I hope this will convince you to stop wasting time and actually learn something useful.

If not, just stay out of trouble. You don't want to learn the hard way how exactly useful what you learned is.