I get that China had gunpowder a lot earlier than most other civilizations but I'm really curious if there were any boxers or martial artists around that went toe to toe with knights and ranged weapon users?
were any boxers or martial artists around that went toe to toe with knights and ranged weapon users?
The knights and archers were martial artists. That is, they trained in techniques for combat.
This leads to 3 main points:
Battlefield martial arts were armed martial arts. From antiquity, the most important martial art on the Chinese battlefield was archery, followed by the use of spear, sword, and horse. Unarmed martial arts could be useful, but were secondary to armed martial arts.
When "martial arts monks" fought on the battlefield (as they did on occasion in China and Japan), they used weapons. In one Chinese account, at least one of the monks fought with a staff, using it effectively as a lethal weapon. In other cases, the monks fought with the typical military weapons of the time.
Unarmed martial arts were more useful in duels rather than on the battlefield. In a one-on-one duel, with assistance from others prohibited, what can you do if you drop your weapon, or your weapon breaks? Rather than just stand there and die, trying to fight while unarmed will often be a better option. For example,
Especially when armour was worn, wrestling wasn't used to end the fight directly, but to get into position to use that most excellent anti-armour weapon, the dagger:
On the ancient battlefield, wrestling can be dangerous - your opponent's comrades are likely to spear you while you are wrestling. Similarly, if your weapon breaks, move back into your formation, and get a new weapon. Fighting on the battlefield wasn't one-on-one, but formation versus formation. Generally, military skills (i.e., martial arts) are useful on the battlefield, but not as essential as in a one-on-one fight - other things like discipline and maintaining formation matter a lot. For more on this, see my answer to
(and others have posted similar things - hopefully one of our excellent FAQ-finders can provide some links).
Unarmed martial arts tend to be civilian martial arts or police martial arts. Civilians and police (whether the police are civilians or military) tend to be much less armed than soldiers on the battlefield, even if they carry weapons. They are much more likely to fight against unarmed opponents than soldiers on the battlefield are. Even with this, the most effective civilian martial arts in fighting were armed martial arts (often sword or staff, rather than bow or spear). Weapons work, and can work very well. Also, skill with weapons can make them work much better in a fight. Thus, training in the use of weapons could be important, even for civilians. For civilians in high-risk occupations, such as bodyguards, civilian police, etc., unarmed martial arts might be important, but armed martial arts were also very important.
Further reading:
Shahar, Meir. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008
Peter Lorge, Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge University Press, 2012: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Nzjv0uPqUyMC
