First Fight Thoughts
This is another article which was sent to me that I wish to share NOT AS MY OWN OF COURSE.
This article was written by David Pereira Greditzer
Please remember that in this case, these are NOT my words, it’s just that there are some interesting points made here and also a lot of Wing Chun relevance. Forgive me if you do not agree with some of the language used but I am not going to tamper with another persons work, I have to either use it as it is, or do not use it at all.
Thank you.
‘What’s the most important thing to do in your very first one-on-one street fight?”
The first thing you the first thing you need to do is run away very fast.
Almost all fights are due to alcohol. The first strategy about street fights is to not be where they take place.
If you do not want to get in a fight, do not go where people gather and drink alcohol. If you do this your chance of getting in a fight in your adult lifetime are very very small .
Where there is alcohol the fights are primarily over real estate. A bar stool, a parking space, or personal space. Generally, the rest are due to social status seeking or social status protecting. You want to look tough in front of a girl. You want to defend your honor in front of a girl and or your peers.
Dumb, dumb dumb.
Before you get into a fight, you need to to exhaust all avenues of escape. This includes negotiating , pleading , begging , charm, humor, and if all else fails, running.
You must also learn the difference between Social Violence, usually over real estate like a parking place or a bar stool or personal space, and Asocial violence. The latter is practiced by professional fighters and killers, like the ex-convict in the story I share below.
There is no reason to be in a street fight unless your life or the life of your loved ones, family or innocent civilians are in danger, and there is no possible escape for you or any of them.
If you get in a fight you where you have done the “monkey dance”, you will be arrested. This is mutual combat.
If he tells you to shut the fuck up, and you push him, and do the monkey dance, you will be arrested because you could have just shut the fuck up.
The law has no tolerance for your pride or your ego. And it ain’t going to get any bigger by getting in a fight, and I’m not talking about your ego.
The monkey dance is the thing that guys do when they push each other puff up their chests and talk smack until somebody takes a wild looping over hand telegraphed right swing.
This punch is so telegraphed that you can actually hear the dots and dashes. Sorry. That was a Morse Code joke.
This happens in 98% of all fights. Be ready for it.
And in the other 2%, the guy turns around as if to walk away, and comes back with a wild looping overhand right swing.
Almost all fights quickly devolve into a ground game as they did in elementary school, as that is the last fight that most men have been in.
You will be charged with assault, disturbing the peace, and depending on the outcome of the other combatant , you might be charged with felony assault with Great Bodily Harm (GBH, AKA Grievous Bodily Harm).
Having said this, I assume that the only reason you’re going to be in a street fight is that your life is in danger.
In this case there are no rules.
Well…I take that back.
The number one rule is that you must live and he must die.
This is a fight for your life.
Make no mistake about it. Even if you’re punched once and you hit your head on the sidewalk, you could end up with a stroke or dead.
If he starts taking damage he might pull a knife or a gun.
So you must be prepared to do great bodily harm including and up to maiming and or killing him.
For this reason you must be prepared to tell the arresting officers, the detectives who investigate, the district attorney who’s filing charges against you, your criminal defense attorney who’s going to cost you a minimum of $400 an hour, the jury, your kids, your family, the press, and everyone you know for the rest of your life why you had to maim or kill this person.
And every night when you go to sleep, you will see his face.
You have seen this on TV and believe me it’s true.
Every time you close your eyes, you will see him in the state you left him in.
You will recall the cries of his family, his kids, his wife, his girlfriend, his brothers and sisters and his parents.
There is no reason to get in a street fight.
Now that the lecture is over, you must be prepared to immediately inflict massive damage upon him.
To do this you must be trained.
And when I’m talking about training I’m not talking about MMA, karate, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, etc etc etc.
While these are all wonderful disciplines and can make you a great fighter, a street fight it is all or nothing.
You will take damage.
Even if you are very proficient, you will. I have been stabbed 8 times and partially eviscerted one night, and another night was struck from behind, knocked out and hit my head on the sidewalk , giving me a fractured skull and a TBI.
If your life is truly in danger, do NOT let him throw the first punch! 95 percent of all fights are won by the guy who lands the first blow.
As Mike Tyson says, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”.
Once your nose is broken, unless you have actually trained to fight the way fights are fought, that is unless you regularly get hit and kicked at 80 percent and punched in the face at 60 percent, you do NOT KNOW HOW TO FIGHT! This is why martial arts are basically useless in a street fight.
Now before you all blow me up, let me qualify that.
I have over 40 years of Japanese and Korean martial arts experience, and 6 years of Thai fighting (Muay Thai).
There are endless advantages to martial arts and there are numerous techniques that can be used very effectively.
The thing is, in a real fight, 90 percent of all blackbelts I have trained lose all composure when they get hit hard in the face outside of the Dojo.
Let me tell you a true story from my life.
I had a guy named Blake who I hired at a big bar where I was the security manager.
He was the California State Tae Kwan Do sparring champion.
He was a terror in the Dojo and in competition. Lightning fast feet.
I told him the three rules for working in a bar where there are 3–6 fights every single night:
1. Never go outside the bar alone while working.
2. Do not get hurt and do not hurt the customers. They are drunk and they are like children. Do not abuse your advantage.
And the most important rule, number
3. NEVER ever kick a guy above the waist in a fight.
One night we were closing the bar and clearing the three hundred or so peeps from the bar. I looked out the window and saw a small crowd gathering, and I knew what this was.
I looked around and had eyes on 7 out of my 8 guys. Blake was missing.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I called for help.
Four of us ran over to the other side of the street where the parking lot and dumpsters were.
He had taken out the trash and I could see him ready to fight this little guy.
As I ran toward him, I saw him throw a nearly perfect, fast and powerful left inward crescent kick.
He had knocked me out cold with this kick sparring.
I saw the little guy calmly take a half step back, lean back a little, and punch Blake in the chest very casually.
Blake dropped.
I knew from having been stabbed 8 times and partially eviscerated in a fight that you do not drop from being stabbed unless…it is a cardiac hit.
Here is a pic of a couple of my scars.
The horizontal one is where he slashed me.
The vertical one is the incision the surgeons made from my solar plexus to my pubic bone.
The horizontal cut is right in between where the abs are so when I am ripped, it is harder to see.
Blake died in my arms in 7 seconds as he bled out from a lacerated aorta.
You must learn the following techniques to be able to do them from muscle memory.
In order to accomplish this you must do them each at least a thousand times at full speed, a thousand times at half speed, and a thousand times at slow speed with a partner.
You must be able to do these things in your sleep without thinking in rapid succession.
You must do them with all of your might while retaining enough strength to do them again and again and again if you need to.
The man who runs out of breath first in a fight is the loser. That is if you let it go on that long.
The techniques I am talking about are a chop to the trachea or a punch to the trachea to collapse it.
Gouging out the eyes. Ridge hand to the temple. Open palm to the ear.
Chop to the collarbone. Knee to the testicles. Fist to the solar plexus.
Front kick to the thigh driving the knee back into its joint and destroying it.
Sidekick to the front or side of the knee breaking the knee and tearing all the tendons and ligaments.
Stomping down on the top of the foot with your heel.
Base of the palm to the nose, not hitting the nose but putting the base of your palm two feet behind his nose, being careful not to break your wrist. These techniques are designed to kill and maim. DO NOT use them unless your life is in danger.
If you do, the DA will pull your internet history and see that you read this reply and you will have a very hard time convincing a jury that you acted in self defense., True story bros and broettes.
Each strike must not be to the target but two feet beyond the target. Put your belt buckle through his belt buckle.
Step through him.
When you slap his ear with your palm open don’t do it with your arm, do it with your whole body falling through his head.
His is eardrum will rupture, the fluid will drain out, and he will fall down throwing up.
Each of the techniques I mentioned are to the body’s off switches.
These are injuries so severe that the combatant has no choice physiologically but to break contact because the whole body will put all of its energy and all of its attention to the injury.
There is no way to train around this.
You can be Bruce Lee, Conor McGregor, Navy SEAL, Delta Force, the baddest man in the whole damn town and you will immediately be entirely unable to fight.
When your eyeball is hanging out by your optic nerve, you are no longer able to fight.
When your trachea is collapsed and you’re no longer able to breathe, you are no longer able to fight. When you have a skull fracture on your temple and your brain is bleeding, you’re no longer able to fight.
When your collarbone is broken and you can’t move your arm, you are no longer able to fight.
When your feet are broken, your testicles are up in your stomach, you have the wind knocked out of you, your knee is broken and you can’t put any weight on it, you are done. Period. End of story.
You MUST learn to do these techniques with overwhelming force, deadly accuracy, and dizzying speed.
You must must must be able to execute any or all of these in rapid succession from muscle memory multiple times.
This means that you don’t have to think about it. The half second you take thinking about how you are going to attack me will cost you your life.
You START at psycho, but you MUST retain your composure and do not GET ANGRY!
When you are angry you are out of control.
When you are out of control you are sloppy.
The only way to do this is to practice with a partner.
Of course you are not going to disable, maim or kill your partner. You must learn control.
You must deliver these techniques with accuracy and with devastating force. If you half-ass them you will end up in big trouble.
But please do not do this unless your life is in danger.
You must use all attempts to escape first. Scream for help. Run away. Admit that you’re a pussy.
You must do anything to avoid the fight. The only way you will be not legally liable and have a chance in the civil suit that is undoubtedly going to follow is if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your life was in danger and you exhausted all reasonable attempts to appease, negotiate and escape.
What is most important here – the lesson here – is that you must do everything in your power to avoid the fight.
There is no dishonor in walking away, or running away.
IF you TRULY have no escape and you TRULY fear for your life, you MUST prevail. If it is him or you, I want it to be you.
Be careful. Don’t be a hot head. Don’t be a tough guy and do not engage unless your life is in danger.
I promise you if you do your life will change forever. If you have a job you will lose it. If you have a family you will probably lose that as well.
You will have to hire a criminal defense attorney, a civil attorney, and you will spend hundreds of hours dealing with this including the incarceration time.
Here is one more caveat:
You can legally, in most places, only use that force which is enough to get you out of the contact.
So you may only need to use one technique. This is a dangerous fine line.
If you start taking damage you can legally use more Force. Personally I don’t want to wait and start taking damage.
This is why you must be absolutely certain when you engage that your life is in danger.
You are legally allowed to only use that amount of force to escape the contact.
This is vital legally and morally. You must NEVER go beyond what you must do to protect your life.
This may seem to contradict what I have just told you. But keep in mind that not every attack will be effective.
In fact, a lot of them will miss or be blocked, even if you are an expert, and he ain’t gonna just stand there like your “sparring” partner does in Karate class.
If you want to learn how to have a real stand up fight, take Muay Thai. It’s the most effective and brutal art I have ever studied.
While I do not think of my years in traditional styles a waste of my time, well…maybe a few of them might have been.
But I learned discipline and respect and I learned how to control my body. But you can learn these things in Muay Thai, get ripped, have fun, learn how to really take a punch to the face and a devastating body kick, and you will be a serious threat to bad guys.
Be like water. Go with the flow.
And if the flow is obstructed, be a wave and crash down upon that which obstructs you.
Again, this article was written by David Pereira Greditzer