Archive for November, 2008

Many of you that have learned karate remember the side kick? In sparring you can keep someone off of you but the kick would mostly encounter elbows and not be truly effective. Has anyone won lots of matches or fights with the side kick? Well yes… have you heard of Joe Lewis? He was famous for his strong, lightening fast, side kick.

The video I found below is of Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris in a point karate match. You will notice they only cared about the first point and do not really cover up much past the clash. Both Joe and Chuck were good at side kicks. I will speak about the mechanics of the side kick and then how to use this kick effectively for self-defense.

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Perhaps this should not be a big surprise but Faber was readily dispatched by Brown in the first round. It is kind of funny to hear all of the talk before the fights and the analysis but in this case the former champ made a big error in judgement.  First watch a clip of the fight.

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I have found a couple of good examples of girls (10 and 15 years old) waiting until the oppertune momement and kicking guys in the nuts to escape! The first story is of a girl being forced to walk with a guy (he had a gun) and then being partially undressed by this pig. The girl then kicked the guy in the nuts and got away. A passing motorist helped the girl get away.

The guy was 6’1″ tall and I don’t know from this story if he was caught. The interesting thing about stories like this is young girls can really hurt bad men if they keep their wits about them. In this case the girl apparently waited until guy did not have the gun and she had a good chance at kicking the nuts. Other good targets include eye pokes, half-fists to the throat, maybe an elbow to the face and such. The great thing about the kick was it put the guy in enough pain for the girl to get away (the goal of any defense)!

My only critique here (although this girl was great!) might have been for the girl to run when the guy first showed her the gun if there were cars and people nearby. My thinking is that most attackers will not shoot and the ones that do will probably miss. The alternative is usually not good for the victim (going with the asiliant). Before I talk about the next situation I found this video (on other self-defense blogs) of a Spanish girl kneeing another student.

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This is just a quick post about one of my favorite fighters in the WEC, Urijah Faber’s fight with Mike Brown tonight.

Also fighting tonight is

Jens Pulver Vs. Leonard Garcia

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I found an article on BestJudo.com that piqued my interest. You see I have just taken my first grappling class and my mind has been trying to wrap itself around the concept of why Jui Jitsu is seemingly the main ground fighting martial art of choice. The article make several good points (from my limited understanding of each martial art) and frames the argument with these opening statements.

 A comment recently made was “…that judo’s biggest weakness in newaza is the lack of attention paid to positional grappling.”  I think that virtually everyone who trains in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu can agree with this statement.  Unfortunately, it’s wrong.

An equivalent statement by Judoka might be “BJJ’s biggest weakness is their ‘standup’ game…”  And although most Judoka would probably subscribe to it, that statement is just as wrong.

Read the article in the above link but paraphrasing, he makes the point that the two martial arts have different strategies and tactics in part because of the rules. Judo is heavily involved with getting an oppoenent to the ground where BJJ assumes most fights will end up on the ground. This article is interesting. Here is a couple videos of Judo vs BJJ.

As you can see with this very limited view of the maritalarts, they each seemed to find advantages in situations. I mentioned I took a grappling class over the weekend and will talk about that experience but will not have an answer as to what is better. I don’t think one martial art is better than another because you can always find workable techniques in any martial art. It is more a matter of preference I believe.

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One of my friends,  Joseph Scarafone sent me a video of a fighter he is helping sponsor the other day and I was amazed by this fight and his novel escape. Kyle Mc Laughlin (white trunks) had an uphill fight. Here is the video.

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