Needle wrapped in cotton

Today more and more people talk about "needle wrapped in cotton". This means that more and more people are "cheating". Taiji must have elements of "cheating" but it relies on real power to win. We need to deceive our opponents but we won a fight with real abilities. Many masters cannot fight any real fight because they don't have real abilities like young athletes. This gives taiji a bad rap.
My own experience is that in a real fight I suffered consequences because of lack of real power. After that humiliation, I trained extra hard and come out with real gongfu. Some of the good masters that I know all had similar experiences.

Because of this, my own push hands has been harder on the outside than most so called "taiji masters". I don't want to spend my time learning how to cheat.
Source: https://practicalmethod.com/?p=26978