It doesn't matter what you think about the linearity fetish of what you claim is real wing chun, my statement was about the run of the mill wing chun that you tend to see in the vast majority of schools.
And who actually gives a damn about run of the mill hobbyist WC? We have already established that 90% don't spar and would do poorly against people who do. We are talking about the real thing.
People with a more cynical view of the chun might attribute this purely to the chun, you may not, but the reality is the image of chun propogated by the wing chun community (making it their responsibility largely) is that of a chain punch, tippy tappy trapping obsessed art.
This is a weakness of the way it was taught. You only learn the straight punch in the first form, the uppercut in the second form after maybe a year and the hook in the third form after maybe three or four years.
There may be various historical reasons for this and they lead to the proliferation of low level 'first form straight puncj WC'.
It's easily corrected by teaching the straight, uppercut and hook from the beginning while keeping the progressive structure in place.
As I've discussed, the evidence that the chun was always purposely meant to look like what orr does and that he doesn't take from boxing is poor and the claim its meant to support seems silly. Wing chun has more than just totally straight punches, and some would go as far to argue it has some more circular, not just diagonal, punching but that doesn't mean the shots it has are as close to boxing in the way they are thrown as what orr teaches or "hooks" in the modern sense.
It has hooks. It doesn't matter if the technique is a bit different than boxing they are short circular KO punches rotating the body to generate power. Hook punches.
What Orr does is going to look different because it is an application of the system to a new setting. It's still fully legit as it is technically and principles consistent with WC. If some overlaps with boxing have been also developed that's an independent path to some convergence.
Just as MMA 'boxing' looks absolutely nothing like Mike Tyson.
I'd say what you call "stereotypes" about wing chun are at least partly true, even if not as exaggerated as they might be in the worse examples. You even said that chun is all about a shot trying to be as direct as it possibly can be (I. E even it a punch is circular to fit a gap, it should be kept as tight as possible). Well I think the chun is generally obsessed with this to an overly robotic theoretical degree and that even if we account for the alleged neglected chun strikes, its still clear that chun is mostly very linear strike based.
Yes, the low level WC you have seen is.
If it did this in a slightly less cringey pseudo scientific, often unrealistic robotic way this would be fine (it's nice to have arts that lean more towards one thing as another principle wise, regardless of what one thinks of the chuns execution of these principles, as it creates specialist knowledge and gives people who want to fight more towards that way a home).
But even if the chun did appeal execute all of this well, it would still need to be aware of the flaws of being too dogmatic about this and that the straight line stuff can be beaten by looping over it with distance, footwork, head movement etc. Linearity in theory is great but sometimes it's good to sacrifice that a bit and even load up on strikes. Hitting first isn't neccesarily a win and even when it's not primarily about that, sacrificing the power of a shot to throw something you might not get a chance to land again and put someone out with just to hit that half a second or even second faster but put them out isn't worth it.
Theres also all sorts of things you can do to land telegraphed stirkes (which is not to say there isn't a lot of over telegraphing that is bad full stop in certain or most situations) or even hide their loading through distraction.
Yes I don't disagree and thats the advantage of boxing as a sport. There have been literally tens of thousands of fights and it evolves with various styles of doing it and refinement.
However MMA exposed many of the flaws of boxing. It was a complete reset.
WC is actually far more suited to MMA than boxing if trained correctly.
Some argue you can outdo WC at it's own game by training boxing, MT and Greco.
Maybe that's an alternate path to a similar approach but a WC guy can likewise enhance his game with some Greco or Judo. It works both ways.
As said the chun to me, seems, if we assume tales of its historical use are true, like it was a simplified striking system largely focused on volume, close range and straight punching/kicking.
Essentially a minimalistic approach which was basically a more arm punching, volume based, slappy, Chinese flavoured equivilant of classical pugilism, with basic street savateish kicks and without the same refinement under a punching focused ruleset handwise. Its use was possiblly originally geared, either initially or over time, more towards smaller ethnic Han Chinese men, and especially, women (regardless of the veracity of the folklore surrounding its founding by, or originally for women, which is largely poor) trying to fight similarly sized people or overwhelm the bigger ones with pure volume and aggression.
No this is just nonsense.
It was and is an extremely dangerous weapon, that's all. And not 'arm punching' but famous for close range tendon power.
Regardless of whether you think it can adapt well outside of its original confines, especially with cross training or not, wing chun probably wasn't designed to fight against people who knew how to wrestle, especially in the more freestyle sense. It's grappling from what I've seen is mostly, kind like point karate throws, based on being set up by flurries and other distractions and, unlike those karate throws, t's pretty rudimentary and sort of forceful apart from the odd subtle reap (some of it is literally tearing and yanking people by the head to the ground with only a little technique)
The grappling it was likely exposed to was some upright standing trips, sweeps and similar throws and untrained/shitty tackles not powerful refined double and singles or more refined judo equivilants of its throws.
As a result, just like the pugilism of the London prize ring rules that allowed upright hip throws like the cross buttock throw but not much else, wing chun takes an upright stance with similar details to LPR bareknuckle fighting and was probably always pretty vulnerable to double legs.
This is all irrelevant. Boxing and MT was not designed for coping with NCAA freestyle either.
Any sensible person will cross train a good grappling art nowadays and many are widely available. I happen to have Judo so it's very difficult to take me down by the average person who's not got a good background in wrestling or Judo, and I recommend any WC guy to have this also.
The upright stance is similar yes and maybe suited to BK. It can be adapted as need be there is no artificial rigidity. If boxing tried to be exactly how it is in boxing matches when used in mma it would have little use.
This combined with a different mechanics rooted in the equipment, training method's, martial heritage and inspirations (animals etc.) of the time is why it's doubtful that the chun looked like what orr does. Combine this with its focused approach and I don't think it was really much of a style it kickboxing in the modern sense. More like an older, mechanically different form of Chinese fisticuffs with some dirty boxing and elbows and very basic low attacks with the lower extremities, mostly straight fencing stuff rather than modern roundhouses and power kicks.
Whatever you want to conceptualize it as is up to you. We can adapt newer training methods. We also cross train and have learned what is happening from the MMA revolution. The result is an even more devastating and effective combat system.