The Little Black Book of Violence

Taekwondo practitioners, on the other hand, are very good with their feet. If you’re a hand striker, tangling up in kicking range would be a recipe for disaster. That’s playing to the other guy’s strength. You’d need to get in close to take away his range advantage in order to do the most damage with your hand techniques. Similarly, judoka and jujitsu practitioners will want to go “ground and pound,” knocking you down and busting up your joints or choking you into submission. That’s their game, not yours. It’s very hard to throw an effective punch when you’re lying flat on your back with the wind knocked out of you. Watch just about any MMA match and you’ll see good examples of that.

No matter how big you are, there’s always somebody bigger. No matter how strong, there’s always somebody stronger. Play your game, not the other guy’s.

It’s foolhardy to think that you can overcome an adversary by doing what he’s best at. Play your game, not the other guy’s.

Don’t Use the Wrong Technique for the Situation

When Kane first began training in karate, he was frequently matched up with another practitioner named Mike. They took their training very seriously, often practicing late after class and/or on weekends. Working toward their green belt tests, they repeatedly performed a prearranged tandem sparring drill using techniques from one of the kata (forms) that they were supposed to know on the test. One of these sequences called for a front kick toward the groin from one partner, while the other guy turned his body to pull his family jewels off of the line of attack while simultaneously sweeping aside and deflecting the kick with his arm.

Kane and Mike worked this drill for several weeks, quickly reaching a point where they could perform it swiftly and well, or so they thought. One day in class, they had the opportunity to perform this drill with Scott, a visiting black belt. Kane went first. The first time Scott threw the front kick, Kane took a solid strike to the groin, a severely painful and thoroughly embarrassing incident.

He realized that during their friendly practice sessions, he and Mike had subconsciously aimed their kicks away from each other, eliminating the need to seriously block the techniques. Turning their bodies a little was all it took to avoid getting hit by these un-aimed strikes. Since the deflections were relatively unnecessary, they had not been training realistically even though they thought that they had been. The first properly aimed, full-speed blow clearly pointed out that shortcoming. Thankfully, it happened on the practice floor rather than in actual combat on the street.

Kane found out the hard way that there is a big difference between “honoring” your partner’s technique and simply letting him do what he wants to unhindered. You don’t want to squash your training partners yet if you are too nice you do just as great a disservice. Many martial artists, particularly newer ones, fall into this same trap of thinking that they are training realistically when they are not. Sadly, many discover their shortcomings for the first time when they try something out on the street—clearly not a good idea.

If you expect to do well in a fight, you must examine what you are doing through the lens of an opponent rather than a training partner. The other guy is going to be doing his damnedest to sabotage whatever it is that you want to do. And he wants to hurt you in the process.

Let’s say for a moment that you want to restrain him. You cannot just walk up to the other guy and apply a lock or a hold. Well, perhaps you can if he goes along with you, but certainly not if he is an unwilling adversary, so that’s the perspective you must take. Grappling techniques require very close proximity and a good set up. No matter how skilled you are, the other guy will smack you upside the head before you can get close enough to try your technique if you don’t have a good set-up first.

Throws work the same way. You must maneuver him into a position from which you can imbalance him and then apply the technique. Frequently that’s done by striking him to cause pain and disorientation. We oftentimes call this set-up the “blow before the throw,” borrowing from internationally renowned martial arts instructor Iain Abernethy who coined the term. This concept of striking to disrupt is critical to street-effective techniques. In fact, the goal ought to be to drop him with your initial blow, applying a lock or hold only when further control is required such as restraining the other guy until the police arrive.

Striking to disrupt and disrupting to strike is a very effective way of breaking through the other guy’s defenses in general, not just for facilitating control techniques. If you try to punch him in the face, for example, odds are pretty good that he will block it. Even untrained individuals are instinctively good at protecting their heads; it’s in the nature of the human beast. We cover up our “soft bits” instinctually. Stomping on his foot or kicking his ankle first, however, causes his head and hands to follow the pain. He involuntarily looks down and flinches inward. This usually opens up the head shot. So, you strike his foot, disrupting his stance and concentration, and then you use the disruption to gain the opportunity to attack his head.

In this fashion, you can work the other guy’s body—striking to disrupt, and then using the temporary disruption for an even better strike. Attacks to the feet, knees, or ankles; slaps to the ears; and assaults to the hands, wrists or elbows are all disruptive strikes that are much easier to achieve than starting off with the core where all his vital areas are. It’s really tough to get there directly. With a good disruption, you can follow up with shots to his eyes, throat, solar plexus, groin, and other painful, vital targets.

Notice that these are all striking techniques, the kind of stuff that boxers, taekwondo practitioners, and karateka like to employ. Hitting someone in a street fight is a good way to retain your mobility. When you are moving and striking, you are much safer than slugging it out in place or rolling around grappling. Although many locks and holds can be applied standing up if you have sufficient training, the majority are most effective when applied to an adversary on the ground. It is simply easier to control the guy’s movement or immobilize him that way. The problem is that if you go to the ground in a self-defense situation and your opponent has any friends around, you have put yourself in an extremely vulnerable position.

This means that locks, holds, and throws have limited utility in most street fights. They can certainly be used in the right situations, but by no means universally. Be very sure that the tactical situation warrants such applications before attempting them outside the tournament hall. It’s not just going to the ground or constricting your ability to move and escape that you need to worry about. If you have competed in tournaments, you undoubtedly know that many opponents will yield to submission techniques, tapping out before the lock damages their joint or the choke knocks them unconscious. Unfortunately, it rarely works that way on the street. Unlike the competitor who knows he’s going to be immediately revived if you choke him out, for example, the other guy will think that his life is on the line and fight for everything he’s worth. Consequently, if you attempt a strangulation technique on the street you need very good form and solid control. Expect a wild ride before he collapses or submits.

A black belt in judo, Wilder once tried to subdue a knife-wielding attacker using the classical hadaka jime technique from his sport. A so-called “naked” choke because it does not use the other guy’s uniform gi to strangle him with, this application can readily be applied on the street. While he was able to take the knife away from the bad guy, he simply couldn’t knock him out. As a black belt in karate too, he certainly could have pounded the guy yet he was trying to capture and hold him until the police could arrive.

Nevertheless, the bad guy fought like hell and was eventually able to wiggle free and get away. His determination to escape was probably fueled, in part, by an incident that occurred about a week earlier where a would-be car thief named Edward Zanassi was accidentally choked to death by the owner of the vehicle he was trying to steal when the good guy tried to restrain him. The guy Wilder fought may very well have had heard about Zanassi’s demise, since it was extensively covered in newspaper and television broadcasts. The news undoubtedly motivated him to fight even harder to break free.

Adrenaline robs you of fine motor coordination in a fight, so you have to keep things simple and direct. Finger locks, for example, are great parlor tricks. Imminently painful, you can latch onto a victim and really make him dance with one, yet they are virtually impossible to pull off in a real fight, particularly when sweat, blood, pepper spray, or other slippery substances are thrown into the mix. While precise grabbing movements are extraordinarily