Martial Arts vs Street Fighting and Self Defense

 Examples of Street Fights

Examples of Martial Arts

Today's topic deals with the difference between Street Fighting and Martial Arts, I have already posted a topic on Street Fighting vs Self Defense. Now this is a long one, so get ready 'cause i'm gonna try and make it as detailed as possible.
Now, as you can see in the above images, there's a distinct difference between the two.
Question is which one of these actions in the above images would you be able to do if you were in a life threatening situation, had little time, a small space to move around, and no warning at all, the simple things(as shown in street fighting examples images) or the other things(that are done in dramatic way and with pads and protections with dancing and movie-like movements?)

Martial Arts-What does "Martial Arts" mean?

"Martial" means War. "Art" means well, Art.

Martial Arts today is a very delicate subject. People are confused between the reality of fighting and what MA's have to offer in it, in today's time of brutal and merciless violence. Why has this happened?

Well, first lets start with a little simple history and it's current state, Martial Arts as you know them today, weren't the same years ago, they were actually deadly arts, that were used by warriors and officers of the law in wars and real combats, that was about a 100+years ago and before the time when martial arts were popularized as sports for entertainment or recreation or money making schemes or whatever you wanna call it, this transformation happened a few years ago. Although there are MA's used as sports since the ancient roman times, i'm not saying that in those times all MA's were used only in real combat and not in sports, no, there were some that were used for entertainment in those times, but the rules then were not as you see the rules in tournaments today, they were much less safe and much more brutal, some even proved to be fatal, so you see, even when they were used for sports, they were effective enough to seriously injure or kill another person, don't you think that kind of thing would be useful in a real situation? Well, yes and no, in today's time the violence is much more different than violence in those times, today violence has the same principles, but it has become much more out of control, messy and ugly, it's reality is unbearable(so much so, that many people today, willingly choose to ignore it and the so called "violence" shown by the media doesn't help bring out the truth about violence either). Plus, there will always be consequences of using violence. Legal, Moral and Societal consequences that you can't take lightly.

So, anyway, back to my point, because of that, basically, the sports mentality will not help you in a real situation, like today's so called most "dangerous" and "deadly" sport MMA, yes i've heard someone call MMA deadly, i have no idea where that person got that "info", i guess it's from all the publicity. Anyway, let me tell you this and many people who know about the reality of combat and violence will tell you the same thing, the MMA you know, the ring Sport, is not even close to being deadly. There is nothing deadly about a combination of thai boxing and bjj, both of which are quite safe fighting sports, well, at least as safe as fighting can get.

Many so-called expert fighters don't even know how to handle a weapon wielding psycho or coke head who's coming at them full speed stabbing and slashing his way into their face, neck and guts. There are a very few mma fighters who cross train with 'reality based systems', and only then do they even understand the difference between their ring sport and basics of violence, but that's very rare.

Sport competitors have only one mentality, that is to win, not to survive, but to win, but many don't understand this, and i've said it before in my other post, that there is no winning without surviving it(violent situation/s)first.

Today you would not see any division of military or law enforcement training in katas or stuff like that, at max, they train a little in bjj and maybe some ju-jutsu, especially law enforcement train that because they need it in their jobs, as they deal with resistant perps on almost a daily basis, that cannot be restrained easily, they need to take them down so they can restrain them and put the handcuffs on and make the arrest and some fight back even after that, so, they, need these skills, even bouncers need these skills, to restrain angered drunk people who create trouble in clubs, etc. Military guys train in them because they have to be well-versed in every range of combat, as the situations they're in, especially in close combat and also to detain a possible target, you never know what you might need to do or who you might face, with what kind of weapon/s, in what kind of situation/s or terrain/s, so their grappling is quite a lot different than that of the law enforcement type and obviously completely different the sport one. But military personnel rarely ever need to use any sort of H2H or CQC methods, up until a few decades ago they didn't even give that much importance to H2H methods, most of the training consisted of things like firearms training, urban, jungle, guerrilla warfare, survival in different terrains, radio operations, explosives, interrogation techniques, sniper training and depending on what division of Military you were going for, the training would expand from there. Hand to hand combat was almost non-existent in Military training, even during WW2, H2H combat training was less than 2-3 days for the soldiers. It was not until the early late 90's and 2000's that H2H started getting some significant attention in Military training.

Now, back to my point, every line of work that involves violence in some way, has developed training systems specifically to fit the needs of their respective occupation/s. Of course the techniques are taken from many different martial arts, but those techniques are then modified so that they can be put to use effectively in live combat and violent situations they face on a regular basis.

So, dealing with violence on a regular basis is a job for the brave men and women of the law enforcement and the military, and they do it, to ensure our safety, so we can live our lives comfortably, peacefully and not have to deal with all that violence ourselves.

Of course, then there are the bouncers, guards who try and maintain the peace in places like clubs and bars etc. where a thing like peace cannot exist for even a mere second with all the angry drunk out of their minds people, who are always looking for trouble, and then there is the security, VIP protection and bodyguards who protect their clients lives with their own, who ensure their client's safety before their own.

But, unfortunately, for civilians, there is no one to protect us, when these above mentioned, are not around to fight for you and put their lives in danger for your safety.

So who's responsible when that happens?

IT'S YOU! and only you who's responsible for your own safety. First you try and deescalate, if that doesn't work, don't wait for the other guy to hit you first, because if he gets a shot in, believe me, you're not gonna be able to think, see or hear anything clearly, you'll be disoriented, blacked out or knocked out and the guy will be stomping on your head before you can take you next breath, there's your reality!

All you can do and all you should do is: Be First, Be Fast, Be Simple, Be Direct and Be Violent when you're in it, and you should know by that time, that you're not getting out without a fight, after you're finished with the guy, then you can escape.

Of course during the fight your primary goal should be survival, but since you can't survive without a fight, your main goal in that case should be bringing your attacker down first and then, escaping the situation.

I'm talking about the worst case scenario here, it's not always that you'll be fighting for your life, majority of times, fights can be deescalated verbally and you can get out with no trouble. In fact, like i've mentioned before, they can be avoided altogether.

One more point i want to mention is, many people say that you should keep the law in mind while you're in that situation, well, let me ask you this, when the guy won't stop beating you up to a bloody pulp, do you really think about the law? Do you even care? Does your attacker, 'cause let me say this, if he did, he wouldn't be attacking you in the first place, so if he's not thinking about the law, you probably should either, at least not till you know you're safe.

For Example:- Once you have used enough force to stop the assault on you and are able to escape, then you should escape, and not just stay there to kill him, now that would be considered murder, but if he got cut somewhere on his body while you two are struggling with his knife, which he was using to stab you, now that wouldn't be your fault, see where you should draw your line? Okay. Of course, if you see the attack coming beforehand, none of this ever has to happen, but sadly most people don't, so this applies to them.

Think about everything, including the law, before anything happens in the first place. Remember, 'Prevention is better than cure'.

Now, back to MA, see, when you're in MA and you're training in a class, you know you're safe and no one's trying to violently murder you or rape you or rob you or invade your home, you think you can fight cause you kicked your sparring partner's ass, but do you ever stop to think?

Was your partner actually a violent criminal who knew how to use violence?

Did he want something from you so bad that he was willing to do anything to get it from you?

Did he go full force on you and didn't stop and got back up even when you did successfully "beat him down"?

Did he attack you with a really sharp weapon that you didn't know he had it on him?

Did he even resist your attacks to his fullest extent or was he just a living and willing dummy for you to play on?

Did your instructor stop the fight or did you "end it"?

Were you ambushed in your training?





There won't be many people in a real situation, except the other guy's friends possibly.

If you're lucky, there is a chance that there might be some people around who'll intervene for you and/or help you in keeping the attacker down till the police shows up.

But what if there is no one and you did beat down the attacker, and the police shows up after that, you have no proof that you're not the attacker, since you're the one standing and he's the one who's down, you're gone, to jail that is.

Yes, it has happened, people have gone to jail for protecting themselves and/or others, at least until they proved it that it was self defense, or if they had a good expensive lawyer that did it for them.

These type of misunderstandings have occurred more than once.

In a street fight, people will just stand there and watch, rather than helping you, many will actually cheer and shout and encourage you to do stuff and their shouts just escalate things more and more, making you and the other guy more angry and pumped up to fight each other, and then it all goes down to hell from there.

There are instances in violent situations, where people have come to help, but those are one of very few instances, where that happened, the victim was lucky enough that there were people around, it's not always the case, even the case of intervention, the people who tried to help have been shot or stabbed.

Can you handle that? Can you handle someone getting stabbed or shot and taken to the hospital with severe injuries or to the morgue; dead, because they were trying to save you?

Especially because you'd realize later that you froze in the panic and were unable to act under pressure to help the guy who helped you.

There are always legal, moral and societal consequences to such things.

These type of things in life are not at all easy on anyone and neither is violence, it's scary, messy and nothing like you'd imagine, martial arts can only help you so much, you know as the saying goes, 'It's better to have something than to have nothing', even if it is not that much effective at least you would have something to defend yourself with. But the best thing to have to defend yourself is you, your brain, your intuition.

That being said, remember, sometimes, having the wrong thing, just makes bad things worse. So don't rely on them, they still lack the necessary training prep you need to survive real violence.

Also, you need to understand that, there are much worse things that can happen to you than just death.

Note- I realize that many will criticize me and hate me for saying those things about MAs and MMA. Well, to them all i can say, is calm down and think rationally for a second, let go of all that blind rage and bias, and just try to see the point i'm making here.

Again, i'm not saying they're not effective, i'm saying each and everything has a purpose and it's particular elements that it's the most effective in, it's up to you to know what suits best where.

It's up to you to make something effective for himself/herself.

I'm not saying don't do this and that or do this and that, you can do whatever the hell you want, it's your life, who am i to tell you what to do? No one, that's who.
This is just me trying to clear up some misconceptions, trying to open up some eyes, that have been shut by all the propaganda, promotions and all of the movies today, just open your minds for a bit, let go of that hate, rage and bias and you'll realize that there is a point to this and quite a good one too, one that just might save your life some day, if you ever get into one of those type of situations as a result of failing to avoid it.

Anyway, i said whatever that needed to be said and that's about it, if you don't agree, well, hey! Everyone's entitled to their opinion.

There is a saying by Thomas Jefferson to P.H. Wendover, i don't remember the whole thing, but i do remember the first part of it, and it goes like this;

"Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry to truth, and that i am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us both".

So take from it and do with it what you will.

Well, Thanks for reading, i told you this'll be a long one. I hope this helped though, as i tried my best to do so and make it as clear and detailed as possible.

(I do not own any pictures, they were public domain, taken from wikipedia).

What's the most important thing you need in a fight?

There are many things, many factors to consider when it comes to a street fight, like for example, the possibility of multiple opponents or whether the opponent is carrying one or more weapon/s or his height, size/weight, the terrain you're in, as in wet slippery ground, or ground covered in debris, or as i stated in my previous post, unhygienic, disease covered ground, also traffic, and many more things too.

Now as for my topic on what's the most important thing to have in a fight? well, there are many answers,
1-Skills.
2-Abilities.
3-Weapons.
4-Friends/Back-up.
5-Presence of mind.
6-Calm, Clear Mind.
7-Techniques and Principles.

..and the list goes on..

But along with these things, the most important are three things, 1-Perfect Violent Intent 2-Psychological and Physical Training 3-Preparation.

Now, what is a Violent Intent? lets break it up, shall we?
Violent- Using physical force to hurt, damage or kill someone or something.
Intent- Aim, Intention or Purpose.

Now, why did i say you need to have a Violent Intent?

It's because your attacker has the same thing, he has an indiscriminate violent intent, and he's going to use it to scare, intimidate, hurt or even kill you or anyone to get whatever he wants from you, and to protect yourself, you're going to have to do the same, its the way that you're going to use it, that'll differ from him.

Unlike him, you should be able to turn it on and off whenever you want/need it to, in your life you can be the most kind and caring person, but when it comes to fighting, you should be the most cruel, brutal and violent person you can be and do everything necessary when it comes to protecting yourself and your loved ones, don't spare anything in protecting yourself and your loved ones.

Now we all know what i mean by physical training, it contains physical fitness, capabilities and capacity and fighting skills and abilities.

What do i mean by psychological training and preparation?

Well, psych training is important in real and sport fighting training, but both mentalities differ from each other greatly.

Sport mentality also can be seen two ways, i.e in competition sport fighting, like karate tournaments and MMA(cage fight, especially the modern MMA). They're not that different but not exactly the same either.

Anyways both have the mentality of scoring points basically and winning, MMA is more full contact than other tournaments you see and more injuries occur, like in sport boxing, but sometimes even more as they use all of the 8 human weapons, including grappling and not just punches.

See, sport competitors have just one thing to worry about, as in, just their one opponent, they don't have to worry about multiple opponents, weapons, different terrains, and their opponent is not trying to kill them, he just wants to win, either by K.O or Submission.

Their mentality is more focused on winning than surviving, but in a real fight you can't focus on winning, there's only surviving, without it, there is no winning.

There is no winning in a street fight, because it's highly unpredictable and you never know what, where, who or when you might face a life threatening assault.

In a ring you know who and where your opponent is, when the fight is, not to mention you have preparation time for the fight, in a real situation you will not see your opponent until he's right in front of you or worse, behind you, ready to attack, it's sudden, swift, fast and it quickly ends, unlike sport fights which last till 30-40+ minutes, a real fight is no more than 10-20 seconds at max, everything happens simultaneously and almost instantaneously, and you won't have any prep time for it either, you'll just have your gross motor skills, if you trained them constantly that is, as all your fine motor skills will be forgotten and fly out the window in that panic filled, violent situation.

As i said, in any real fight, Surviving is Winning, and to survive, you need to prepare yourself not just physically but mentally too, not with sport mentality, but a truly alert, aware, prepared and a violent mentality, a street fighter's mentality, a criminal's mentality, but with complete control over it.

How do you train for it? you train for it in 2 ways;

1- By actually training in things that occur in real situations.
Or
2- By actually getting into these type of situations on a regular basis and get yourself used to them.

I don't recommend the 2nd option for civilians though, unless your job requires that sort of thing, for eg: A Law Enforcement Official, or Military personnel, or a Bouncer, Bodyguard, etc.

So to review, along with the things i mentioned the most important things you need are:
1- Perfect Violent Intent.
2- Psychological and Physical Training.
3- Preparation(which comes with the training and experience/s).

That's about it today.

I'll be posting on more topics in the future and even go into more details on different subjects.

Thanks for reading.

Grappling and going to the ground in street fights vs in sport fight tournaments

Okay, so i'm going to post today about why it's not advisable to get into a wrestling match and ground grappling in a street fight.

Now i know many people will say many things, criticize me, etc. on this and some will even say the most commonly used phrase used by the bjj guys, that "maximum of all the street fights end up on the ground".

Let me first clear two things up, first, i myself have trained in jiu-jitsu, judo, dumog(filipino wrestling), and some bjj, so i know more than quite a few things about grappling standing up and on the ground.

Second, is when people say that most fights end up on the ground, well i don't know what kinds of fights they've been in, no offense to them, but the majority of fights that i've been in and seen happen, didn't last long enough to go to the ground, they ended with one of them standing and the other guy knocked the F out.

Now there is a different case in competition matches, like judo, bjj, mma tournaments, there those guys do go to the ground.

The only real instance where the majority of confrontations go to the ground is when a police officer is arresting a perpetrator and even that, if the guy resists arrests, so to restrain him they have to take him down. This is a fact and it's that fact that has been propagated in a way that has lead to many misconceptions. Those statistics came from LAPD arrests in the 1980's when Gracies taught them arrest and subdue tactics. They're not real violence statistics.

Now, to my point of why it's not only dangerous, but plain stupid to go to the ground in a real fight, especially if it's on purpose.

1- Your opponent may have weapon/s, that you won't be able to see because you're distracted trying to take him down, you'd have limited visibility being too close to your opponent to see the concealed weapon/s, and yes, some people don't remove their weapon/s until they absolutely need them or they just don't want to show them to you at first, so he might not have the weapon/s already out before the fight, but might take it out, during the fight, as a desperate measure, in a mugging scenario of course, he'll have the weapon out from the beginning, you might not see it though, but that's a completely different thing than what we're discussing here.

2- There are also chances of multiple opponents, you always have to assume, that your opponent has friends close by in case he needs back-up and you won't see them until it's too late to do anything about it.
Again, if you're grappling, the already low chances of you seeing his friends become even lower.

3- Another reason it's a bad idea, there will be limited to no options left for you to escape, when you're grappling, the opponent will be striking and grappling with you back, resisting your efforts, if he's holding you down, grabbing your t-shirt or whatever, you wouldn't be able to escape as efficiently as you would if you weren't being held by someone.

4- Grappling takes much more time to learn and understand it's mechanics, there's simply just too much to learn, what if you were attacked today, after your first grappling session, would you be able to do the things you did in the safety of your training environment on the hard, rough concrete, with all sorts of debris lying around and with all the panic and adrenaline rush going through you? I can guarantee that you'll forget everything, as they're your fine motor skills that are difficult to develop, not your gross motor skills that are your natural reflexes that are quite easy to develop.

5- Your opponent's size is another factor, it's pretty obvious that if the opponent is stronger than you, taller than you, then he would have the advantage in grappling more than you do. For one, he has a better reach than you, more strength to hold you down, even lift you up and throw you down on the concrete like a rag doll, while you're attempting to apply joint lock/s, holds, or take-down/s.

6- The added weight of anything you have with you, not to mention the street clothes that you're wearing at the time, in which you're not used to training. I mean, you train in a comfortable environment with comfortable clothes or shorts or gi, but in real life, what do you wear? Pants? Jeans? Normal shirt? T-Shirt? Are you used to fighting in those types clothes?

7- Another major reason is the diseases you might catch from your opponent's bites, scratches and from the ground itself that you're rolling around on.

You don't worry about those things because you train in an environment that is kept clean, the floors are regularly cleaned, there's air-conditioning, you wear gloves and your training partner isn't actually trying to kill you.

In competitions they don't worry about these things because biting, etc. can get you disqualified.

They fight in their own weight classes and they always have a physical before the competition.

Not to mention, if even little blood is spilled the matches are stopped, unlike in a real fight where if the blood is spilled, the opponent will not stop, he doesn't care about those things like you do.

In fact he'll do more damage in his increasingly insane rage.

If you take him to the ground and start hitting, it's called "ground and pound" a truly violent and angry attacker who doesn't want to give up, won't just take it, he might take out a concealed weapon, which you might not see, because you are too busy hitting him all over, and he can stab you anywhere with it, and in case you don't realize, he won't have the blade sterilized for stabbing you, he might have used that same blade on someone with a disease or he could have kept in a place that is unhygienic and his blade might have some microbes on it, that on contact, can infect you.

Now what if he stabs you in the liver, kidney or spleen?
Well, death is going to happen for sure, but if you're extremely lucky, and get to the hospital in time, chances of which are really low, why? Because there might not be anyone there to help you, or you might not reach hospital in time.

As a result of many factors such as traffic or hospital might be far from the scene of attack or you might be in an isolated parking lot at night with no one to help you up let alone get you to a hospital.

When/If you do reach there, you'd still be contracting the disease from the blade used by your assailant and complications could occur, that is if you survive, it's in your bloodstream.

If stabbed in the spleen, death occurs within few seconds due to rapid and major blood loss, other organs like liver, you start to bleed black blood and once that happens, especially if the stab is deep enough, you're dead in less than 10-15(max) minutes.

I know the details are graphic, but it's not something that everyone will tell you, and therefore people live in a fantasy world where they think taking opponent to the ground or trying to grapple with him or trying to disarm him, will help them "win" their fight/s, without realizing that there is no winner as far as real violence is concerned, it's violence, an Assault on your LIFE, there's only Surviving.

8- Another one is that these people on the street are not all trained, they just use what they've learned from years of experiences of what does and doesn't work. They won't always try to grapple you and try to take you down, they'll just be striking you or doing everything to hurt you, that's all.
Even if they try to do it, it'll look something like this or this if he's successful.

You see, this is one of my street fighting sessions, these two are my students who i train for a street fight, like a street fight. You know the saying- 'Fight like you Train, Train like you Fight'.

9- There's also the point where you wear gloves in a tournament, while in a real fight, you go bare knuckled.
Plus in tournaments, you'll have your coach guiding you on what to do and what not to do and he'll find an opening for you, whereas in a street fight there's no one to guide you or try to stop the fight, like the referee in a tournament.

Again, let me clarify that i'm not saying these techniques are ineffective, as in they won't hurt, maim or even kill your opponent, which they definitely will, depending on the user and the victim, but only if you do get the hit on your opponent perfectly, like you do in your training sessions, which is the highly improbable part and that's why it's ineffective.

You won't have enough time to perform those complicated advanced techniques, that is, if you have trained in and practiced them for a long time on a regular basis and perfected them completely, which by the way, doesn't happen in a day, and when you're in that panicky and adrenaline filled environment, where your opponent is resisting and countering all of your efforts, you'd tire out soon trying to perform those techniques on him and he will gain the upper hand and you don't want that, do you? These techniques are best suited to stay in the ring.

Street Fights are Unpredictable and Unfair, just like Life.

Remember, Striking takes much less effort and energy to do than any grappling would.

These are just few of the many more reasons, of why standing and ground grappling is a really bad idea in any real fight.

So even if the circumstances take you down to the ground, try and get up as quick as possible.

That's why i'm not saying don't train in ground fighting, do train in it, so you can learn to get out and get up as quickly as possible.

Remember, Train in everything but Use only what's Needed and is the most Effective for you!

Thanks for reading.