TTEscrima

This goes to the heart of the matter, if you are training for combat, then do it, if you are training to fight and survive on the street or the battlefield, then do it. Don't start cluttering your mind with all sorts of nonsense in order to be a good competitor because it has nothing to do with any reality you will encounter on the street or battlefield, some martial arts are not very martial and they teach you the exact opposite and they CONDITION you to respond in a manner that will get you killed if you run into someone who is willing to escalate far beyond your own comprehension. If someone is willing to go all the way and you are not or you have been trained not to do certain things, then you are going to be in alot of trouble, very, very quickly.

NHB PPVs and Reality
So, because alot of martial arts, for years, have been promoted as a means of self-defense and so many people realized that was nonsense, what happened? Ahh...someone was very smart and made A LOT of money on it, that's what happened! The NHB (No Holds Barred, Pay Per View Events) happened, that's what. This was supposed to separate the posers from the fighters, and let's face it, in many ways it DID do just that. There were STILL those pesky rules, however, and any time you inject rules into fighting, you are going to have loopholes, you are handicapping some people. That's a fair and honest observation I believe.

In other words, you get a guy that drills eyes, throat, nuts and knees and uses the correct tools to attack each, over and over again, he will usually survive on the street if he keeps his wits about him. In a ring, again...not so good. These were never "No Techniques Barred" matches, they were, "No Holds Barred" matches, and yes, there IS a difference, all the difference in the World. What we learned from these matches is this, if you are facing one attacker that has no weapon(s) and you have a somewhat forgiving surface to fight on, various hybrids of jujitsu and wrestling (including both Brazilian and Roman-Greco wrestling) tend towards superiority within those parameters. I also think that is fair to say. I think it has been proven. That does not mean practitioners are invincible by any means. The grapplers are fond of saying, "most fights end up on the ground," or they will offer up a percentage of fights that end up on the ground, say, 80%. Where this statistic came from, no one knows! But it is out there, anyway, as Jim Grover pointed out, (and others have as well) sometimes fights end up on the ground because people don't know how to keep things from going to the ground (I'm paraphrasing here, but that is more or less the idea).

The Tripod of Superiority
Let's get back to the Superiority of Grappling. If you have watched some of these matches, something becomes immediately apparent, these guys are damned tough people! I'm not taking anything away from them at all, and I would get my ass kicked in that ring with them, that's not my turf. That's why, there is a lot to be said for being tough, but, this is still a match with rules.

I've had discussions with NHB Fighters, and some of them are involved in weapons-based arts, that is someone I don't want to run into! But some of them are ignorant as well as arrogant. And if they're not these things, they might be crazy, I don't know.

I know what I was taught in Jujitsu was, the ground, walls, tables, chairs and telephone poles, all were your friend because you could throw someone onto/into them and bust them up. You ever hear the old saying, "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end?" Well, that's the active, operational part. The throw or takedown does not hurt you, getting slammed with force and all of your body weight behind it has a tendency to damage you. To the grappler, the ground is his friend.

Yet, if you have watched some of these matches, you see these guys use the forgiving quality of the ring's surface and they EXPLOIT the fact that the surface in question will not hurt them. That surface will not rip their face off, concrete and blacktop can do that. Broken glass, debris, hell, used SYRINGES of all things! I've seen PLENTY of them in areas where you are LIKELY to have to defend yourself. I know all of the counters to what I am saying, I tried to inject some sanity into a discussion once and was told, "I'll fight on broken glass, I don't care!"

OK, so...(cough, cough), OK! You are willing to fight on broken glass. If I get knocked to the ground in an alley that has broken glass, I HAVE to fight there. Volunteering to do these things, to me, is just not my cup of tea. You want to tear yourself up like that just to prove how tough or bad you are? That's OK with me. I don't think it proves anything, but by all means, you are free to say it or even do it. I don't care. If you go to the ground in the real world, and you are used to exploiting a certain surface that is forgiving, don't be amazed if you seriously hurt yourself and possibly to the point of losing.

In the real world, away from the ring and the rules, one should endeavor to stay the hell OFF of the ground, that does NOT mean you should not learn how to fight on the ground either. By all means, you should be competent on the ground. You should also NOT go there by choice in a real fight. The ground is an unforgiving bastard. Use it as a weapon to smash someone with if you can, but it is also an unforgiving bastard if something goes wrong and you are the guy who thinks he has control of everything only to find out that you don't and you end up eating the High-Speed Pavement.

Now, this illustration is what I am talking about, I call it, The Tripod of Superiority. At the top we see the unarmed attacker (no weapons). At the bottom we see, the single attacker (no multiples) and, forgiving surface (compatibility).

The surface has to be forgiving, now, why not use concrete and blacktop in these matches? Anyway, I'm not going to argue this point with anyone in the future. If someone wants to go upside down on their face in order to get someone in a headlock with their legs, outside of Joe's Beer Joint and Funeral Parlor, hey, go for it! Tear your face off, break your own neck, smash your brainpan! Next, a single attacker, you add just one more guy, you don't want to be on the ground. Way too easy for someone else to stick a knife in your back, club you, choke you while you're choking their buddy or just stomp your guts out. Walk right up on your little Vale-Tudo reenactment and pop you in the head with a round of 9mm.

Finally, an unarmed Attacker, no weapons Involved. A diminutive Emerson/Perrin LaGriffe changes everything. A pencil can change everything. Why go into everything that can be done with weapons, it should be obvious. Any time one of these things in the tripod is missing, like any tripod, there is the possibility of failure of the structure, wobbling and teetering and then a fall, a failure.

Remove one leg and the tripod is not so strong, is it? You lay out the rules for the NHB event, and within those parameters, grapplers usually win, not always, but usually they will be the victor. That means that those arts tend to be superior in that environment and that is ALL it means. The little knife that you did not see might kill you. The friend of the guy you are fighting, the one you did not know about, he might kill you. The lowly, nasty .25 caliber Raven semi-auto handgun that you never knew about and you would never own because it is not really a quality weapon...if the guy dumps the whole magazine into you, that might kill you too.

Don't go to the ground on purpose. Know what you are doing on the ground in case you land there. Learn to get the hell back up off the ground and on your feet. If someone wants to take you to the ground and pound on you, break some of your bones, curb your teeth, or choke you to death...remember The tripod of superiority and utilize whatever weapon you can. The real world is full of hard/sharp surfaces, multiple attackers and alot of weapons, guns, knives, clubs...all sorts of things.

The Negativity
I know some people might not like what I have had to say about some martial arts, aikido, TKD and NHB Folks are obviously groups that might not like what I have had to say this far. I can understand that and I think I already addressed why they would be angry. It is not that I revel in being negative and spouting off about things, I wish everything was cool and everyone was being honest and everyone had their head on straight when it comes to these things. Even more than that, I wish we all lived in a world where having to know certain things was not necessary, unfortunately, that is never going to be a reality.

Please try to keep in mind that I am only talking about things that are specifically marketed as being arts of self-defense. Try to keep that in perspective and try to keep in mind that I'm critiquing these things only in that realm. If you intended to get involved in these arts with an eye towards self-defense, I'm just giving you a different view into various things. There are some serious deficiencies in some Arts and some of them should never, ever, be marketed as self-defense methods.

The Knife Defense Controversy
This continues to be a Hot Button Issue with many people. I'm on record as saying that if you do not know how to use a knife, and you are teaching knife defenses, you are more or less a driving instructor who does not know how to drive a car. I've also said that is fraud and I stand by that as well. Again, I know that is incredibly unpopular with some people and the people that it is unpopular with have nothing to respond with that is solid and logical...The reason it is unpopular is faith. It is like arguing religion with some people; most things having to do with religion are faith-based. People invest alot of time and money, as I said before, in their Art they have decided to practice and to have someone say that someone is doing something that is detrimental to their students is immediately taken as insult. "Oh, you don't know shit about our Art, why don't you shut your mouth?"

Well, I may or may not, but it is pretty clear from alot of the knife defenses that I have seen that most martial artists "don't know shit about how to use a knife" either...so...where does that leave us? I know for a fact from some of the demos of techniques I have seen and have been taught from Instructors and Students in various Systems, that they are suicidal unless you are fighting a moron. So, if my intent is to try to save someone out there who might read some of the stuff I write, I have to say certain things. Some people have no idea whatsoever how a knife moves in skilled hands, or in semi-skilled hands either. Now there is a problem... What about people that aren't skilled and have a knife? Well, they're dangerous as all hell too because you don't know what in the hell they're going to do! They might do something so unorthodox and so stupid, but because it is something so insane, it gets in there and you get cut or stabbed anyway. Knife defenses in most martial arts fall apart unless they are a part of that system's recipe. The pre-conceived notions and the easily telegraphed movements that have to be done in order for the knife defense to work in the first place, that is the recipe.

Let's make another "Tripod."
Here are the three concerns with the knife defenses in most mainstream martial arts: 1. Telegraphed Attacks:
You see this ALL THE TIME. While some people will telegraph, most knife defenses rely on that element, and that element may or may not be present. Someone who really knows how to use a knife might deliberately telegraph a move in order to get you to respond a certain way, and then they will instantly change direction and/or level and cut you and once they have entered, you usually get cut and/or stabbed more than once, in fact-multiple times, in about ONE SECOND. Yes, it can happen that fast.

2. Paralyzed Body (compliant):
This means two things; first, if you use your other hand, elbows, head-butt, knees or feet to free the knife that someone is trying to defend against, a lot of Martial arts Instructors get frustrated and tell you to stop that. Why do they do that? Very simply, because the defense they are teaching falls apart and they can't have that. They will make up every excuse under the sun. People won't do that, yeah, OK, what if the guy DOES actively fight to retain or regain control of the weapon? What then? Well, I guess you die then. The second part of this is, the arm is held out there for the defender to execute the disarm and while this has to be done in the beginning in order to learn a principle, you still see the same element involved in advanced level knife defenses. These are both of the paralyzed body points I wanted to make.

3. Committed Attacks:
This is intrinsically linked to #1 and #2; the non-telegraphed strike retracts and then cuts on withdrawal at times. See the problem and the link to the other two? When the attack is a non-committed attack, problems occur because the person and the weapon are not where you expected them to be when you expected them to be there. One leg of the tripod is missing, the tripod teeters and it is weak, just as before. Understand where I'm coming from?

When an Instructor teaches a knife defense that relies on these things, they are setting a stage and then acting on that particular it with those set rules and the defense is a success because it is a pre-arranged success and anything that enters to prohibit the defense is shunned by the Instructor because the defense then falls apart. This is like having an internal combustion engine, you start it up and it runs just fine. Drive the car into a lake and see how the engine runs then. In one environment, the engine works, the environment it is designed to operate in. Under the water, it doesn't work so well.

The analogy is direct and applicable, you lift many of the popular knife defenses out of their dojo environment and they fail and drown. You take them out of the environment that they have been formulated to excel in (the recipe) and put them in another where there are no rules and no recipe or formula is present and they fail.