Knife Duels on the Street

This is largely a response to Metatron's video "Knife Fights - BEWARE OF LIES". First let's point out that Metatron's conclusions are more or less correct, it's his premises I have a problem with. What he gets right:

1. If you are concerned someone is going to stab you, body armor is the obvious solution.
2. People with no contact sports or martial arts training should probably run the at the first indication there is a weapon being deployed.
3. The flashlight is a really handy self defense tool for people who do have contact sports or martial arts training.
4. Most of the knife disarms in traditional martial arts (TMA) are not functional and won't work for most of the people who study them.

However the problems in Metatron's presentation also exist in numerous excuses for why people aren't training in weapons for self defense. Starting with #4 above, TMA technique teach principles that if practiced in Free Sparring can turn into real disarm skills. I pulled off a disarm against someone bigger and better than me in 2019 in the first few seconds of this video:

Metatron repeats this assertion that you can't see a knife coming before you are attacked by it. There are a few problems with this. First, to quote myself: 

"...carrying knives with civilians on the street is common because knives have very real utility outside of self defense. Knife duels are so common with civilians that one security-related team I was on broke up or investigated multiple knife duels over the course of a few years... in that public outdoor setting a one on one knife duel was more likely than one unarmed individual getting attacked by a knife.... it is often possible to deploy a knife as you see trouble coming, and that trouble's plan of attack very well may be trying to stab you... when emergent circumstances arise the average person is going to access a box cutter, kitchen knife or folder a hundred times faster than a firearm."

There are numerous cases of knife duels happening on the street, and knives being deployed in self defense and even home defense. For example: 

The second problem I have with this "you can't see the knife coming" assertion is that anytime you can't see what is in someone's hand, you know they potentially have a weapon, and the main thing to watch out for is hands in pockets. I have been taught this on the job several different times so I believe is is no secret to anyone. This is evident in the "Man pulls out knife and gets knocked form bouncer" video where a bouncer sees a knife even though his attacker is at close range, and KO's the attacker with a quick boxing combo once the attack escalates. Note that the bouncer could have easily deployed his own weapon if he had wanted to.

Metatron describes the approach that someone trying to shank you in prison takes, when you are being attacked with knife on the street. First no, they are much more likely to pull out the knife and try to intimidate you with it than they are going to be rushing in to stab you. But as Metatron asserts if they do it right they will put forward pressure with their lead arm while trying to reapeatedly stab you with the knife in their power hand. The problem he is Metatron's assertion that WE will just stand there and get stabbed as this happens. Someone with American Football, Rugby or Hockey training will likely shoulder check the attacker as he comes in, probably putting the attacker on the ground. A fencer, kumite point fighter, or other LARPer is likely to hop around sideways just out of the attacker's reach. A boxer or kickboxer will instinctively side step against that forward pressure and counter (see that bouncer video for how effective those counters are vs. knife.) Grapplers will naturally engage the forward pressure with a take down before they realize they are being shanked.

Metatron says that "it's hard to corner someone who has decided to run," and that he advises everyone to run from a knife fight. The problem is that if you do have decent self defense skills to handle someone with a knife, running becomes a more dangerous option because YOU ARE GIVING THE KNIFE ATTACKER YOUR BACK. Running from someone with a knife is much harder than Metatron thinks:

If you have decent self defense training you should be able to see the knife coming and handle that person with the knife. Most people aren't trained in athletics or martial arts, which is exactly why miscreants like knives in the first place. If you know you have decent self defense training unlike most people, you know you can probably out fight the knife wielding miscreant. But you do NOT know that you can outrun them:

And Metatron sights the fact that he lives in one of these Western European countries were people are basically not allowed to carry weapons. Too much self defense advice is coming from sheltered people who haven't actually ever been in a dangerous situation before, while the rest of the world outside of Australia and Western Europe are training to deal with real, life threatening violence. Just repeating the assertions of knife fighting naysayers doesn't make those assertions true, it just make those misconceptions more common.

Civilian vs Professional

It is absolutely 100% true that professionals (security, law enforcement and military,) often have a lot of experience putting their hands on people and thus have a very good sense of what techniques will actually work in a fight and which ones will not. However bad self defense advice begins when professionals forget the advantages they have over civilians.

Professional advantages:

1. Professionals have a legal responsibility to protect people or property, and do not have to justify their involvement because it is their job to be involved.
2. Professionals have an obligation to neutralize the problem causing individuals, usually by apprehending them.
3. Professionals have a set of tools and resources provided to them by their job descriptions and employers. This includes hand cuffs, tasers, pepper spray, guns, uniforms, established duties, training and legal protection.
4. Professionals have an established support team to help them.

Civilian disadvantages:

1. A civilian's primary objective is usually rapid escape, and they are more likely to be viewed as a trouble maker engaging in brawls than a hero doing their job the longer the fight continues.
2. The civilian's goal is survival and reduction of inconvenience, not capturing bad guys.
3. When a civilian employs any self defense tool he has no employer, uniform, established protocol or legal team to back him up in court. 
4. Civilians are usually on their own. When a civilian pins an attacker, it's just as likely more attackers will arrive as it is help will arrive first.

One example of fairly misguided advice I hear is "no one is getting in a one on one knife fight outside of Westside Story." This makes sense to professionals who either aren't allowed to carry a knife on the job themselves, OR who themselves carry a firearm on the job. From the professional perspective knife fights are most likely to happen in prison, with one person having a shank and the other person being assassinated, because the shank is the most likely weapon to be employed in that environment, and shanks are rare enough there that it is unlikely the defender will have one on hand. From the professional perspective there will only be one knife in the fight, never two, and it will be against someone with no weapon at all or someone with a gun. 

Yet carrying knives with civilians on the street is common because knives have very real utility outside of self defense. Knife duels are so common with civilians that one security-related team I was on broke up or investigated multiple knife duels over the course of a few years... in that public outdoor setting a one on one knife duel was more likely than one unarmed individual getting attacked by a knife. The street is not prison, it is often possible to deploy a knife as you see trouble coming, and that trouble's plan of attack very well may be trying to stab you. It is all fine and good to own guns, but when emergent circumstances arise the average person is going to access a box cutter, kitchen knife or folder a hundred times faster than a firearm.

The most important example however in this age of MMA, is the advice professionals are giving out about what martial arts to study. Grappling arts where the focus is on taking down and controlling the opponents are ideal for most professionals. The professional is being paid to be there all night anyways, and the assumption is going to be that the professional was doing the right thing. The professional has help coming so that the longer the physical confrontation lasts, the more likely it is to end in their favor. 

Grappling arts do not have this same appeal to civilians. The longer a civilian is entangled with an attacker on the ground, the more likely his whole night is going to be ruined by police reports, and the more likely he is to have to take time off of work to have to testify in court in the future. The longer the physical confrontation continues for the civilian, the more likely the attacker's friends are to show up and make the situation much worse for the civilian.

It is no wonder then why striking arts and weapon arts are more popular with civilians. The footwork practiced in almost every striking or weapon art is potentially evasive and can help the civilian escape faster. The clinch work practiced in most striking or weapon arts focus on the civilian trying to stay on their feet and mobile. The civilian wants to KO, slow, and/or outrun the attacker rather than apprehend or submit the attacker. 

There is a certain subset of grappling that is extremely valuable to civilians, but as far as I can tell is not widely available to civilians. In MMA this type of grappling is the sprawls and getting up to your feet as practiced by Sprawl & Brawl fighters. Most grappling arts practice techniques that can potentially be used for this strategy, but they never practice this strategy, and without practice that strategy will not materialize in a real self defense situation.

MMA Escalation

On one hand MMA is one of the best combat sports to train in to gain fighting skills related to self defense because of the well rounded range of techniques practiced in free sparring, BUT on the other hand MMA's basic strategy for winning and protecting yourself is generally not viable for real self defense situations. We have 4 "Self Defense Situation Roles" and 4 "MMA phases of escalation" to understand, so we can look at what happens with each role in each phase.

Self Defense Situation Roles:

1. Attacker: this is the person initiating the violent confrontation.
2. Friend: most of the time my attackers have had at least one friend with them, and sometimes it wasn't clear who the friend was until AFTER I was already being attacked.
3. Bystander: besides the hostile Friend there is often another witness, OR video footage, OR a cop who deduces what happened after the fact. The bystander is rarely knowledgeable about martial arts, self defense, or trying to remain unbiased in their observations.
4. Defender: this is the person whom the violent confrontation is being initiated upon. (People training MMA are usually not soldiers, law enforcement or security, so they usually have no mandate to retain someone who attacks them.)

MMA Phases of Escalation:

1. Level Change: the plan A in MMA for when someone is trying to attack is to take the attacker down and control them. This is what makes MMA not boxing. The usual first step to take someone down is for the Defender to bend their knees, to get their head out of the way of the Attacker's punch and to spring forward to take down the attacker. 
2. Throw: Typically this goes from the Defender with his head low and his knees bent to shooting forward to grab the Attackers legs, tackling the Attacker to the ground. There are lots of other throws but they usually start from a lower center of gravity.
3. Ground and Pound: once the Defender has the Attacker on the ground, the Defender uses positioning and strikes to get into "mount" on top of his attacker. From here the Defender can beat Attacker unconscious or open the Attacker up for a submission hold.
4. Submission: the most common and effective submissions are potentially lethal chokes, but there are plenty of arm bars and leg locks that can cripple the Attacker.

Now let us go through the encounter phase by phase and see what happens with each role. You will notice that the MMA strategy works well at first but becomes more problematic as we move to later phases.

In Phase 1, verbal deescalation has failed, and the fight begins.

ATTACKER: throws a big right hook at the Defender.

FRIEND: "Yeah, get him!"

BYSTANDER: hears a commotion and looks over to see what is going on.

DEFENDER: changes level to duck the punch and set up a throw.

In phase 2 the fight escalates so that both defender and attacker are now mutual combatants.

DEFENDER: plows into the legs of the Attacker, smashing the Attacker into the ground.

ATTACKER: gasps for air after feeling his back ribs crash into the floor.

FRIEND: realizes he may need to jump in to help the Attacker.

BYSTANDER: realizes there is a hostile fight going on between two people.

In phase 3 the Defender becomes the aggressor and the hunter (Attacker) becomes the hunted.

DEFENDER: passes from side control to mount with elbows and punches to the Attacker's face.

ATTACKER: squirms and bleeds.

FRIEND: positions himself to kick the Defender in the head.

BYSTANDER: concludes this brutal assault is clearly the fault of the Defender.

In phase 4 the Defender loses the confrontation in every possible way.

ATTACKER: desperately turns over onto his stomach to try to crawl away from the barrage of strikes disfiguring his face.

DEFENDER: locks in a choke as the Attacker turns his back.

BYSTANDER: calls 911 to try to stop an attempted murder in progress.

FRIEND: kicks Defender in the head as Defender's arms are occupied choking the Attacker.

I have ran through this scenario a few different times when training with friends, and each time it has come out like my description above. Almost any martial art has a preferable strategy for self defense to MMA, because MMA's strategy is legally problematic and is poorly suited for multiple opponents. I am glad I learned to fight in a kickboxing ring rather than an MMA cage, or the situations where I was attacked on the street would have turned out differently for me.

A Kick By Any Other Name

There is a whole lot of back kicking going on in the name of side kicking these days. First let's start with the definition of a back kick:

Now let us define the side kick; you connect with the heel of your foot, your foot turned sideways or with the toes turned slightly towards the floor, and your shoulders NOT facing more than 90 degrees from your opponent, so that you can maintain your stance:

From Royce Gracie to Jon Jones, the vast majority of the time a side kick will do very little to the fighter's stance and they will basically remain in their fighting stance as they would with any other strike, as is seen most often with side kicks in Muay Thai. In other words:

The issue at hand is almost every YouTube video presenting side kicks seem to actually be doing back kicks. One of the best kicking experts on YouTube is Kwon Kicker, but his "side kick" looks like a back kick:

Bruce Lee prided himself in his stepping side kick above all other techniques, but that was a back kick as well. In Bruce Lee's defense in some of the different Kung Fu styles Lee was exposed to, kicks are put into more general categories, so that round kicks and crescent kicks might be called the same thing, front kicks, oblique kicks and low Jon Jones style side kicks might be considered generally the same thing, and highly chambered side kicks and back kicks might be considered "tiger tail kicks":

Here Ramsey Dewey can only can show significant difference between side kick and back kick by keeping his nose pointed 180 degrees away from his opponent when he presents his mythical back kick. But he always looks at his opponents when he back kicks in free sparring, proving that contrary to his presentation here there is no difference between the two kicks:

Here Sensei Seth gets together with a respected TKD instructor to accidentally demonstrate absolutely no meaningful difference between a spinning side kick and a spinning back kick whatsoever:

And back to Wonderboy, in the following video we can see that he chambers his lead leg side kick almost identically to how most strikers chamber their back kicks, to exactly the same effect:

My conclusion is that as a side-stance hater I see little difference between the side stance and turning your back to your opponent anyways, so there isn't any meaningful difference to me between "side kick" and "back kick." However it seems that the vast majority of side kicks on YouTube are actually back kicks!

5e Monks Should Have Martial Weapons

This post is about the game Dungeons and Dragons, and is not meant in any way to be making any point about real-life martial arts. This post is related to the 5th Edition (5e) Monk class being under powered, but it is more specifically about my problem with this class's choice of weapons. On the 5th Edition weapon's list we see that the only difference between a short sword and a scimitar is that a short sword is primarily a piercing weapon and the scimitar is primarily a slashing weapon. The 5e Monk class allows the Monks to use Short Swords but not Scimitars. This is shockingly out of place with every Monk cinematic or literary archetype I am aware of, as monks are universally more likely to use slashing swords than piercing swords as is the case in the following Shoulin monk sword demonstration:

And the straight swords used by Wudang monks are long bladed, highly agile swashbuckling weapons more like rapiers than short swords:

Shoulin and Wudang martial arts also have all of the rest of the martial weapons on the Martial Weapons list, including numerous flails:

Asian martial arts monks have battle axes:

And great axes:

Great Swords and Glaives:

And halberds:

And pikes/lances:

And long swords:

And morning stars:

And tridents:

And war picks:

Maces and War Hammers:

And whips:

It is also a shame to forget the longbow archery of Zen monks:

And advanced crossbows in their culture wouldn't have even been considered martial weapons anyways:

I will stop short of an argument for their use of shields (which I could easily make) because I think the over all lack of armor is justifiable for monks. But it's clear to me that 5e needs to allow Monks to use martial weapons.

Gay Was Good Enough

I believe that feminism has been watered down with an abundance of competing interests, and as a result of feminism's loss of potency, we are now going to see women lose reproductive rights. In addition, I believe the Gay movement has been watered down, and as with feminism losing political gains, the Gays are going to loose Gay Marriage in the USA. The supreme court does not have to respect impotent movements.

Feminism has always been first and foremost about establishing the rights of women. This is largely about protecting them from males who have access to them. That is primarily protecting women who can become pregnant against their will. Reproductive rights doesn't much apply to women who don't get pregnant. Feminism is primarily about "people who menstruate."

Feminism somehow began to mean women who never had any intention of having children (most lesbians) and women who never under any circumstances would get pregnant (transgender.) Along with these additions to feminism came a whole new vocabulary, the LGBT(F)QIA, even bordering on polyandry. This vocabulary divorced itself from mainstream use of words, such saying "trans girls are girls," when in reality mainstream society does not see "trans girls as girls." Whenever a movement's ability to project it's message is compromised, the strength of that movement is compromised. 

The low point of the movement was in 2015 and 2016. Two issues were blowing up at around this time:

1. After the scorched earth victory of the US Supreme Court declaring Gay Marriage to be the law of the land, the LBGT(F)QIA movement allowed themselves to get distracted by politics around who-can-use-what-public-restrooms. Feminism was completely blind to the fact that Hetero Males were already very uncomfortable using public restrooms, and instead of focusing on getting more single-toilet bathrooms established, allowed themselves to get dragged into a conversation about what bathrooms trans women (but somehow not trans men) should be allowed to use in public. This was a problem because again it muddled feminism's message, and continued to divorce their vocabulary from mainstream English. 
2. Trans women in sports started to create divisions within feminism. On one hand Feminism was supposed to protect people who menstruate from people who don't, and on the other hand Feminism had expanded its mission to protect everyone who identifies as a woman. To really appreciate WHY people want separate sports divisions for women and men, you must take heterosexual reproduction into consideration. In men's sports we can evaluate the fitness of men for carrying on genes forward into the next generation, as sports not only evaluate natural physical talent, but also both the natural mental ability to focus in short term emergent circumstances and long term work ethic focused on a singular goal. Why then female sports? BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS TWO PARENTS, you get your genes from you mom and your dad. This is why the general public can never be expected to accept trans women in women's sports, is it defeats the purpose for having female sports in the first place.

And in 2016 a presidential candidate famous for saying he just likes to "grab women by the pussy" was elected. He chose as his vice president the main culprit behind dragging feminism into the above mentioned bathroom trans politics. This president then spent the next 4 years of his life doing everything he possibly could to make sure people who menstruate would be forced to give birth against their will.

And the same mechanism being used to trample female reproductive rights, that supreme court, will trample gay marriage soon enough. But let's look a little closer at how the Gay movement was watered down itself. Looking at the letters, with each additional letter we see a weakening of the movement: G was the original for "Gay": men or women called gay had same-sex attraction, clear definition, solid, still exists today in the phrase "Gay Pride." L was for Lesbian, and here we see the Gay movement being conflated with feminist issues. B was for Bi, highly problematic for three reasons: 1) it falsely suggested that most Gay and Lesbian had absolutely zero opposite sex attraction in addition to their same sex attraction, 2) so-called Bi's had an easy time of passing as heterosexual in mainstream society and in so far as they ever were oppressed it was only for their Gayness, and 3) Bi's quickly became the problem children of the Gay and Lesbian movement as they developed a reputation for swinging and home wrecking, disrupting what domestic stability the Ls & Gs were able to establish. 

T for Trans? Trans isn't even a sexual attraction issue in the first place, it is a totally different issue, and is not relevant to the original issue of Gay: rights for people with same-sex attraction. Q is for questioning and is only there because of the stigma against Bis in the Gay community. I is for intersex which is a legitimate medical condition which could be grouped with Trans identity, but again not a sexual attraction issue. Asexual is by definition 100% irrelevant to same-sex attraction issues.

What has happened here is the Gay and Feminism movements allowed themselves to be diluted, primarily by being allowed to be driven together into a single vulnerable herd to be culled. In no way should the movement meant to protect people who menstruate be lumped into the same category as the movement meant to protect people with same sex attraction. This is a classic problem of what I call "Solidarity = Autonomy," where when groups fail to define themselves, the natural consequence is impotency.

The fearsome hydra that is Feminism + LGBT(F)QIA is now only bark with zero bite. Trump's supreme court is putting a quick end to it. Trump has put the movement to the wall and had his way with them, because they allowed their movement to be diluted and weakened to the point where it could no longer stand up for itself.

Clinch Crisis

From my perspective as a martial arts consumer advocate, one of the biggest problems in martial arts instruction today is what I call the "Clinch Crisis." There are two parts to the Clinch Crisis:

1. For self defense purposes (and injury prevention purposes,) it is best to train to remain standing when you trip or throw someone, because when you are attacked on the street the attacker is likely to have an accomplice near by. 
2. For self defense purposes (and ergonomic purposes,) it is best to train to get up from the ground when you are ground fighting.

These are two sides of the same coin, because if you train to avoid going to the ground then you aren't training to escape from the ground, and vice versa. The one art that attempts to do both is called Combat Glima (Viking Wrestling) and it is missing a lot of self defense aspects you would expect to see in other martial arts:

And that's the best case scenario. "But doesn't Judo cover standing throws rather extensively?" ONLY IN THEIR KATA. Most of the time in sparring, and much more of the time in competition, they are going to the ground when they throw or trip, regardless of what Judo was like 30 years ago. Judo also doesn't cover clinch striking. Kudo, Combat Sambo and to a lesser degree MMA add significant clinch striking to Judo but are still slamming their full body weight down on their opponent in hopes of maximizing the effect of the throw, failing to stay on their feet for techniques designed for self defense.

Likewise Muay Thai doesn't cover sprawling against single and double leg takedowns, even though gets a lot right Judo does not, with lots of standing throws and trips and clinch striking. Beyond a lack of sprawling, Muay Thai's limited clinch time is a significant problem. 

And the two second clinch time is also where Sanda fails at this, though they are one of two arts that combine clinch striking with single and double leg take downs while trying to remain on their feet, unlike MMA and other Judo based combat sports. But what grappling options are there if the sport isn't historically rooted in Judo? American folkstyle wrestling has a very high emphasis on training escaping from the ground to their feet, even though they are generally unconcerned with staying standing while throwing or any sort of striking:

Maybe the best clinch option is Sumo, as they try not to go to the ground when they throw, and include head buts, palm strikes and forearm (think elbow) strikes in the clinch, and have unlimited clinch time. Best of luck to you if you want to go train Sumo casually for self defense purposes, because the closest you are going to get is full contact Tai Chi if you can even find that:

But the part of the clinch crisis is the effect this all has on the ground game. Again the only arts that are serious about getting back on their feet from the ground are Combat Glima and American Folkstyle Wrestling. The problem with both of these arts for self defense reasons is they train these escapes while facing absolutely zero threat of submissions, or far more importantly striking attacks. 

Escaping to the feet has become a more popular strategy that is now studied and practiced in MMA gyms. However this is not going to be emphasized to beginners over the striking, take down defense and basic submissions. Furthermore most casual self defense students do not have access to MMA training.

No one is teaching appropriate grappling for self defense to beginners when they walk in the door. Casual self defense students should not be expected to have to participate in a cage fight before learning the self defense appropriate grappling they showed up to learn in the first place. This lack of access to adequate self defense grappling for casual students is what I call the "Clinch Crisis."