One Tuesday night back in the late 1970’s I was working out at the school when a couple of Korean Stylists came in and spoke to my instructor (Dick Willett) about doing some sparring. Dick asked me to spar with these guys and I agreed as they seemed to be respectful. I believe that I had my fighting black belt at the time.
In our system, one could do an abbreviated test to wear a black belt early before the official test. The only problem with this strategy was one had to fight 10 black belts in a row and do ok against them to get the fighting black belt. I did it as I wanted to start fighting tournaments as a black belt early. I did later achieve my traditional black belt and beyond.
I fought the guy about my size and did well against him but the other big guy (I’m about 6 foot and this guy was about 6′ 4″) kept saying “Poor Form” as I was kicking his friend. You see I had been fighting lots of tournaments and had the timing down. The first guy I was fighting had some beautiful kicks but they were not connecting like mine were. You see I did not care about form at all… only if my kick or punch connected.
More about these fights later but in this post I will talk about kicking form versus substance and does it really matter? I mean what are the pros and cons of adhering to some long dead master’s view of how to throw a proper kick (no disrespect intended). I’ll finish my recollection of my fights that day in the late 70’s and the surprising (to them) outcome! Here is one video of some of the best karate kicks.
A man on vacation at a bar finds himself in middle of a fight and as so often happens – it is hard to discern the good guys from the bad. Well he puts some distance between the fight and his wife and scans for exits. One of the fighters notice and comes right at him! The vacationer side-steps the rusher and give him a little push into the table – grabs his wife and makes for the exit.
I don’t know about you but I’ve been in this type of situation before and it is a little scary if you have the family with you. This website has often evaluated different types of fighting styles and self defense but why does self defense work? I mean most bad guys can fight – right? If they can fight then why can some minimal self-defense training carry the day?
In this post I will delve into the question of why self defense works and what I think are some good ways to go about learning how to fight. Let me be clear that self defense is learning how to fight. More on that in a bit but first I’d like to show you the average caliber of fighters you have to prepare for in case you ever have to defend yourself. Take a peek at this video of a street fight – there are some weapons but no one seems to get hurt too badly.
I learned how to fight as a kid out of necessity but I did not really think of girls fighting. I mean that it did not happen when I was a kid. Girls were the weaker sex and they were too nice. Girls did not seem to have the ‘killer instinct’ boys did to do whatever it took to win, or even fight!
As I grew up I was exposed to the idea of women fighting. Yes girls were weaker than boys but with karate or judo, a few fighting tricks, I reasoned could even up the score.
In this post I am going to explore the idea of women having the ‘fighting spirit’ necessary to win a fight, I will also look back a bit to the fabled Women Amazon Warriors and then comment about some of today’s women fighters. To get this started here is probably one of my first exposures of a woman warrior – Wonder Woman!
WEC 49 had some interesting bouts (June 20th) as did Strikeforce Fedor vs. Werdum (June 26th). I’ll just highlight a couple of the fights and link to some results for each. But let me just say they were worth watching!
The main WEC fight was a battle between Jamie Varner and Kamal Shalorus that was marred by Shalorus kicking Varners family jewels three times. Kamal lost one point. If you get a chance to watch this fight you’ll see Varner getting the best of Shalorus in most clashes but Shalorus has a good chin. Even without the penalty point taken away from Shalorus I had Varner ahead on points easily. The fight went the distance and much to my surprise two judges were split with the third calling for a draw! Results here.
Here is a video of Fedor vs Werdum (don’t know how long it will be up).
I was not really that surprised by this result as while Fedor is a great fighter – he has pulled out some surprising wins at times. But wow – Werdum really pulled off the win while Fedor was trying to pummel him on the ground! Results here.
The fight I really enjoyed on this ticket was Scott Smith vs Cung Le rematch. Le fought this bout better than I’ve seen him so far by choosing his shots and fighting a bit more defensively. Le easily out classed Smith this time and found a home for his decisive spinning rear kick that Smith had so much trouble with in the last fight. Here is a video of this match up.
This has been a good month for MMA fights. There were some other really interesting match ups but I wanted to highlight the Smith vs Le as my favorite. What was your favorite this month?
My wife (Sly) recently had an experience witnessing road rage that has mademe revisit this issue. Sly was driving in a 35 mph zone behind on car when another come up on the side and tried to cut in front of her suddenly! Sly stomped on her brakes and the guy waived to her and swerved back out. The guy then sped up past the car in front and cut him off and stopped suddenly! Sly again stomped on her brakes and came to a stop. Both cars doors ahead flew open and the guys ran towards each other screaming. Sly drove around when she could to escape the madness!
While I don’t know what ended up happening in this case, it did upset me because my wife almost hit a car twice inside of a minute due to aggressive drivers. I previously posted about, “Road Rage!” and “Road Rage! What About Sticks and Stones?” but I think aggressive driving legitimately has a place in the context of self defense because one never knows if it will lead to an attack.
In this post I am going to focus on how to stay safe if you find yourself in the middle of a road rage incident. While I do not want to make lite of this issue – I thought I would demonstrate the mentality (or lack thereof) of the participants in an aggressive driving or road rage situation in this video to set the stage.
Is it ok for a boy or man to cat call to a hot babe walking down the street? In this day and age it seems weird to be asking this question but many if not most women have heard cat calls or rude comments by men and boys. Young men and women learning about social interactions are a bit awkward about it in their teens and often think behaviour like this is ok. While there is no excuse for poor manners hopefully they soon learn that women feel harassed by the unwanted advances.
In this post I will attempt to talk a bit about sexual harassment on the streets and what I think of behaviour like this. I will also attempt to put this into the proper context from the greater self defense perspective. To get this conversation started – take a look at this video I found at the Strategic Living Blog about Miss Washington D.C.’s experiences.
When I was a kid I was bullied a bit in grade school. My dad had to show me the old one – two (jab – cross) combo and told me that if someone attacks me – I had to fight back. He proceeded to teach me the basics of fighting in the living room.
I soon caught on to this and became a bit aggressive if anyone messed with me to the point of challenging the duke of the school to fisticuffs after school. Well let me must say that losing that fight brought me back down to reality.
Last night in our neighborhood there was a party raging on with seemingly a life of its own? During the daytime there were the usually girls parading about in summer attire – giggling hysterically at seemingly nothing. Along with the girls there were plenty of guys. During the night, as the hour grew later, the party spewed out into the streets. I’ll get to the punch line (pun intended) later but suffice it to say there was a lot of beer muscle and drama into the wee hours in the morning.
In this post I’d like to discuss the notion that anytime someone messes with you – irrespective of the circumstances, one has to respond to a provocation. Specifically at a party and what makes sense. Take a look at this video I found on youtube of young people partying and the obligatory fight before I start the discussion.
WARNING – there is a liberal use of profanity in this video – seem to go hand in hand with partying, youth and beer.
Here are a couple of stories about girls fighting back and getting away! To set the stage, girls and women are mostly attacked by big boys or men (at lease bigger then they are) who want to rob or rape them. The reason I bring up this point is it must be very unnerving to a girl to have a big man attack her.
A girl has some choices but if she finds herself in an attack her only choices are to run if possible, fight back or give in. I like the first two choices because it give the girl the best chance at survival but if a girl give in – she is putting her life in the hands of a bad guy.
Who knows the outcome. I’d argue in most cases it makes more sense to fight overwhelming odds than get into a vehicle with a bad man. But I understand this is a tough call to make as many women survive bad situations.
Before we get started with these stories, I’d like to show you video of the John Gardner victim who got away (struck him in the nose). Candice Moncayo got a reaction of anger from Gardner when she mentioned the strike in open court. Candice Moncayo fared better then Chelsea King or Amber Dubois by fighting back. I don’t know if Chelsea or Amber were able to put up a fight against this big bad monster of a man.
Subscribe to Feed
