Sweeping Up Broken Teeth & Pissing Blood

At the request of a very nice lady I am attempting to bring to you information about hand to hand combat. I am not an expert. I stray from the idea that what I write is some immutable fact. I have studied three martial arts* (Shaolinquan, Qi Gong, Muay Thai and a weird combatives system) for a combined nine years, mostly for funsies, and done a fair share of stupid shit. None of this is an endorsement to stand up to someone and decide to have a fair mono a mono match of fisticuffs; that is one of the dumbest things ever. Trust the guy who has spit out fragments of his own teeth before and tried not to cry when he pissed blood after doing something like that. The title was chosen as a reminder of the consequences of street fights.

But, thankfully, this is more about options your characters can pursue and ways of looking at martial arts to create a fuller, better dramatic scene.

A Fistful of Quick and Dirty Guidelines

1) Close combat is not rock-paper-scissors. Some people like to say things like, "Someone who focuses on grappling will always beat someone who focuses on striking," or, "Shaolinquan beats Taijiquan in three years, Taijiquan beats Shaolinquan in 10," or, "Llamas always beat monks," or similarly silly things like that. In my opinion all statements like that are patently untrue. A lot of those things arise from people who are trying to promote their system.

One of the common comments I've heard from MMA fighters who blend Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is that every time they go to the gym where they learn BJJ their instructor says, "90% of street fights end on the ground." Conversely, they go to gyms to learn Muay Thai and they hear, "90% of street fights end after a single blow." One of the things I heard a lot from my sensei when I was studying combatives was, "This art is the strongest because it uses linear movements," while my Qi Gong sifu said, "This is the strongest because it uses spiraling force."

I could talk about that all day long, instead, I'm going to show you some videos to explain more succinctly why everyone who says shit like that is a bullshitter. I'll use Brazilian Jiu Jitsu vs. Muay Thai as an example, mostly because those are really popular right now due to the large MMA market share and ergo have a shit ton of videos to draw on from the YouTube.

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ0HCXRgU5g&feature=related[/video]
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHlzOyktYbM&feature=related[/video]

2) Technical fighters are terrifying. As an extension, fighting strategically tends to end things quickly. You can take a lot more blows on the forearms or shins than you can in the mouth, kidneys, eyes, lymph nodes, genitals. A good shot to the gut when someone is not ready can fold someone over and drop them to their knees puking. You can bounce back surprisingly easy from being punched in the forehead, but if you get hit on the soft spot on the back of your head below the knobby bit you'll probably see lights. There's even the possibility you could go blind. If someone hits you in that soft, sensitive place in your armpit your arm goes numb to your fingers and your shoulder feels like fire.

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvShvdsnjfU&feature=related[/video]
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGZCQd2P5_g[/video]


3) Environment is significant. This has less to do with the study of a single or multiple systems of martial arts and is more geared towards a serendipitously both dramatic and pragmatic end. So, say you're the kid doing Muay Thai--we'll call him MT--who got pinned to the ground in like a minute flat in the second video under the first point. The kid pinning him doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu--we'll call him BJJ--was pretty committed in his position but, given that BJJ was apparently fairly skilled could have easily strangled MT to death, gouged out his eyeballs, knucklefucked him in the kidneys or whathaveyou.

If he wanted to. Good thing for MT that BJJ was more concerned about winning a trophy than permanently maiming or killing him. But, the question is, how would things have gone differently were MT and BJJ fighting each other in a different environment? Note that this is all speculative, I am not in fact the transcendentalist all-seeing-eye Ralph Waldo Emerson was so crazy about.

For the sake of getting to the point let us imagine that MT and BJJ were wearing sneakers, jeans, t-shirts and jackets and were engaged in the manly art of fisticuffs behind a dive bar at approximately 12:45 AM. A flickering light is bathing our favorite little pugilists' skin in a sallow yellow-orange flare occasionally, making it difficult to tell which flowing movement leads to the other while they angrily lurch from side to side, knuckles white and faces red with anger. It's a cold winter midnight and the air puffs out in clouds of icy condensation. There's a ring of also drunk men and women goading them on, pinning them between the dumpster and the wall while people crow about how goddamn cold it is and how they should just get on with it.

This is completely different from a fight in the relatively sanitary conditions of the ring with its somewhat springy surface. Here if you slip on a patch of ice you run the risk of cracking open your skull before the fight even starts. What if MT was serious business about the whole thing and smuggled a steak knife out of the bar with him? What if BJJ got MT up against a wall and decided to simultaneously pull a collar choke on his scrawny, vulnerable neck while repeatedly bashing his head against the wall? What if while BJJ had MT on the ground he managed to wrench an arm free whilst getting his kidneys battered into a pulp--ensuring an experience he will remember every time he undoes his fly and lets fly urine that is an eerily crimson color, or even orange if he is dehydrated--to reach out, grab hold of a discarded tie in and rearrange the back of BJJ's head with it? What if it was rainy? What if it was unbearably hot and they were both incredibly sweaty, making it hard for BJJ to keep a grip on MT?

What if? What if? What if? If we consider, as part of the environment, whether or not MT is in a position of authority that could change everything. Maybe the crowd wants MT to lose and will be belittling him or even becoming involved. At which point MT is pretty much dead or, at the very least, going to get a rather severe thrashing. What if MT is a Kurdish woman and BJJ is a Turkish police officer beating her to death in a racist raid against her community with a baton? But I digress. I am beginning to get dangerously close to straying from the point.

In summation: involving the surroundings is important for making a more interesting fight and at the same time simple differences in social status, intent, and other intangible elements to that fight can be just as or even more important to the outcome of the fight.

On yet another side note, I thought about including videos but the only good ones I could find so far seemed to focus on police of some stripe or another brutalizing someone in a minority group with a thinly veiled rationale.

4) The dumbest thing in the world is a "fair" fight. It's also really only useful for one thing when it comes to characterization: proving that the protagonist is an allegedly good person. If you really want to win, then do something dirty, mean and unnecessarily violent. Like, say, I dunno, bringing thirty of your closest friends to grind three people into the ground. It's super effective. A good way to create minor story arcs or parallel story lines is by going through the motions of gathering everything for your confrontation.

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G02fyEx7wH8[/video]

5) Tactical fighters are boss. Though similar to the second point, the difference does deserve close scrutiny. The difference between technical and tactical fighting is the difference between knowing where and how to place the blow and knowing when it is best to place the blow as well as how it is best to move in your environment and exploit that environment. The following video displays this perfectly, I think.

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iDlzL7zrNU&NR=1[/video]

Anything you want me to add? Anything you want to add? More information about different kinds of martial arts? Disagree with me about something and need to have your voice heard? Want to add addendum and caveats ad nauseum? Literary tools for flow of action? Ask and ye shall receive in due time.

I sooooooooo <33333 you for this! I love it! And thanks for adding it! It's definitely a big help!!!

Man, when I was helping my friend in his brown belt test for Atemi Ryu Jujitsu, he tagged me in the back of the head, and then had to grab my collar to keep me from falling on my face, unconscious. It was only for a couple of seconds, but man, that's disconcerting.

Friend of mine had an idea that Japanese martial arts were superior to all others. But you gotta think: what's the skill level? What's the environment? What's the experience levels? Too many variables to give a straight determination. He never seemed to listen to me when I explained that, though.

Unexpected lack of consciousness is always disconcerting. It's like being switched off without any warning. Pretty much a general reminder of how soft we really are. Also, getting knocked in the back of the head pretty much sucks. No matter what, you're at least seeing stars.

If you really want to drive the point home you could point to the renaissance within the last fifteen years that's taken place--especially among jiu jitsu forms like Atemi Ryu--to try and renovate their outmoded standing grappling. Namely the reason Brazilian Jiu Jutsu took off was as a response to that. When you train in those older styles that sort of institutionalized around the introduction of judo you often get a situation where it's like, "I'm gonna do this thing to you while you stand still," versus Fyusen Ryu and BJJ where it's a more active interaction in training with a greater emphasis on ground grappling.

Not saying that standing joint locks and throws aren't completely legit, but the way they're taught is a lot of the time passive. Again, my opinion, I am not the third person in the narrative of life. That is one of the complaints I've heard about forms of jujitsu that focus around standing grappling and striking--which I can only assume about your friend's form of study, given the name.

It's been at least a decade since I was last in a dojo. But Atemi Ryu was a more recent form, more active. Very much locks and throws, no kicks above knee level, that sort of thing, but it was also about taking down an attacker with minimal energy and time and keeping your awareness up for other attackers. Not passive, not any moreso than most learning forms; the subject does move slower, not react so much, when you're learning the move, but we did sparring, and it was never expected that the real-life instance would be stationary. Very much a pragmatic philosophy, at least with my sensei.

I just always remember what my T'ai Chi Chuan sifu told us: "In here, there is honor. You are here to learn. Outside this building there is no honor. Do ANYTHING it takes to survive. Bite, claw, kick their genitals, bash them with a brick, hit them in the back, and run away. It is not about winning; it is about living." That is pretty much the most solid advice I have ever heard a martial arts teacher say. Yes, we didn't do that nor really practice it inside the dojo, but she was tough. I always respected her for that.