Who has actually done these techniches for real?

Hi,

I was reading a Self Protection manual by a respected Self Protection expert.

And seeing the usual fingers in eyes, ear clap, clavical break,(which as usual is said to be easy to break and something that renders that arm useless)? knee break, chop to the throat, biting of face, etc as responses and wondered who here has actually done these moves in a self protection situation?

I've read this stuff so much just wondered how much field testing have these moves been through?

tc

T

Finger jab to the eyes, fist to the groin - have used those. As for biting, I prefer my steaks throughly fried.

"fingers in eyes" and "biting of face" work fairly well...if applied with feeling

done fingers in eyes and under the eyes (could see my fingers under the flesh of his cheeks and it caused his face to swell like a balloon)

Ear slaps twice - once on a soldier in Melbourne as punishment. He and several of his mates jumped me...he was coming to at the end and sitting up so I hit him with it. He didn't look happy

Broke my sister's collar bone trying to teach her Rugby...she was 7, I was 9 and yes, it pretty much rendered her arm, and that side of her body useless.

Knee break no...though a black belt in Oz I know of did. Details not provided to protect the innocent/guilty. Watched my brother break an arm one night...way louder than I thought it would be.

Chop to throat - punched a Maori one night with about four chisel fists and he just looked at me like I was a bug.

Biting yes...taken the tip of a finger, the bottom of an ear and an eyebrow over the years. I wished they'd told me you have to floss afterwards.

The biting and eyes stuff are all what I call desperate measures. You're always going to use vanilla stuff such as palm heels, punches, elbows, knees and kicks etc but sometimes when you're wrapped up under a pile of a'holes you resort to stuff that gets them off you...at least so you can move again.

Nick

cant fault Nick's analysis there

Nick & Dave - what do you think of the effectiveness of a punch in the throat?

It was a staple of the bareknuckle era and I was wondering exactly how dangerous it might be in reality.

Dave,

Don't know if you have seen this already but the following link has some interesting bareknuckle fight commentary. They specifically look at the techniques used, the condition of the participants and the physical impact of the techniques.

The bout listed below specifically highlights the use of the throat punch. From this and some other very light research it seems like the throat punch was used to wear down the opponent, it certainly doesn't seem like a guaranteed fight winner (mind you, not much was with these guys!).

With all respect to the fact that we can't adequately judge application and context for the blows simply from the written word.

http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Tom_Cribb_vs._Tom_Molineaux_(1st_meeting)

I'd always been told it was a killing technique but clearly it didn't work that way on the Maori (who had a head the size of a portable tv set)

I was also hit there once during a fight and remember having difficulty swallowing for the next 3-4 days but death did not ensue.

Now...having said that there are cases I'm aware of where people have died from it...google should show you a few if you're so inclined to go hunting out details. Like any other strike there are going to be variables and nothing is cast in stone.

Nick

Chris wrote:Dave,

Don't know if you have seen this already but the following link has some interesting bareknuckle fight commentary. They specifically look at the techniques used, the condition of the participants and the physical impact of the techniques.

The bout listed below specifically highlights the use of the throat punch. From this and some other very light research it seems like the throat punch was used to wear down the opponent, it certainly doesn't seem like a guaranteed fight winner (mind you, not much was with these guys!).

With all respect to the fact that we can't adequately judge application and context for the blows simply from the written word.

http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Tom_Cribb_vs._Tom_Molineaux_(1st_meeting)

Thanks for that, Chris - but I can't seem to access the page, says it is not available.

Nick Hughes wrote:I'd always been told it was a killing technique but clearly it didn't work that way on the Maori (who had a head the size of a portable tv set)

I was also hit there once during a fight and remember having difficulty swallowing for the next 3-4 days but death did not ensue.

Now...having said that there are cases I'm aware of where people have died from it...google should show you a few if you're so inclined to go hunting out details. Like any other strike there are going to be variables and nothing is cast in stone.

Nick

Cheers, Nick. Your experience seems to be similar to the experience of about 150 years of nasty prize fighting. It was a standard target, potentially deadly (but aren't many things?) but no real recorded deaths from it. What did tend to kill quite a number of prize fighters (post fight) seems to have been internal injuries like ruptured internal organs from repeated bareknuckle body shots where they could use full power.

Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition...in fact those that do...

Amongst our weapons are fear, surprise, a ruthless devotion to the pulpit and...

Yes mate...even shooting someone isn't guaranteed (unfortunately)

Nick

Seen a collar bone break and it does make the arm pretty much useless. This one did anyhow.

Thanks for that, especially nick, as I thought hardly any field testing of these techniques.

I mean logically you would think a leg break would F' you up.

But as to some of the alleged effects of things such as punches to the throat, clavicle breaks and eye gouges I'm not sure. Yet a lot of self protection books quote em as scientifically proven.

BTW. The throat has like an air bag behind it to cusion it from blows or so i'm told.

I've stuck my finger in 2 peoples eyes, one of them couldnt get his eye to look forward for a while the other just bent over and made noises.

Any one else done any of these moves?

I've been put down by an accidental eye poke and more or less unaffected by others.

Dave,

Strange, I'm having the same problem following the link, yet, when I google the fight Cribb and Molineaux and follow the links into boxing rec it works fine. Weird.

It's well worth taking the long way round to have a look at the write-ups. I'm sure you'll find them interesting. From what I can see, many of the "throat punches" listed seem to be a by-product of the puncher looking for another target and missing. They definitely seem to be either very difficult to land with reasonable accuracy or just not as effective as some would believe.

On the plus side, they certainly seem to have added to a "grinding" down effect and while I'm yet to see a clean finish from one there's not a lot which kept these guys on the ground so I don't know if we can use them as a bench-mark for effectiveness of any technique.

Chris...I know one of the reasons a lot of guys get glassed in the throat is that the attacker is actually trying for their face but as the guy rears his head back the throat gets it instead. I wonder if that might be the same reason there a by-product in the bare knuckle stuff.

Nick

Nick Hughes wrote:Chris...I know one of the reasons a lot of guys get glassed in the throat is that the attacker is actually trying for their face but as the guy rears his head back the throat gets it instead. I wonder if that might be the same reason there a by-product in the bare knuckle stuff.

Nick

As my understanding goes - partly gleaned from reading the contemporary accounts of the fights - the throat, along with a few other choice places, was a specific target. This was a time before the concept of 'boxing' knockouts via the chin and when pugilism was still making a transition from a vicious mixed martial art towards the sanitised form of modern boxing (for legal and financial reasons, in fact, mainly financial). So, it's more likely that you would hit the jaw actually as a byproduct of attempting to hit the throat. Pugilism was, IMO, very significantly different to boxing. As I sit here with a knackered hand from a bareknuckle training accident, it is clear from the original records that you must be very careful using the unprotected hand so softer targets, such as the throat, had a lot more relevance when it came to stopping people. The relative fragility of the bare fist when combined with the cutting power of the knuckles by nature lends itself to a more precise form of striking. This was manifest in the way fights could be won by striking to blind the opponent (occasionally literally and permanently) usually by specifically targeting knuckle impact around the eyes until they swelled shut and the opponent could no longer continue.

http://www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Tom_Cribb_vs._Tom_Molineaux_(1st_meeting)

Just remember to copy and paste the full line including the bracket (you nubs!).

Dave-

Interesting post, I am not knowledgeable about pugilism in the slightest but just a quick question-

If I'm understanding you right then the suggestion seems to be that in older pugilism they might have been trying to hit one another in the throat to garner an effective stoppage in a fight, and that hitting the jaw might have been a secondary effect of people defending this or people missing.

I'd wonder about the premise that hitting the throat is effective enough that these older competitors would have been actively trying for it as a preference. For a few reasons-

First off, it occurs the jaw gets hit accidentally *because* in almost any circumstances the throat is hard to hit outside of combatives DVDs with compliant partners. Lift your arms and tuck your chin and instantly it becomes the equivalent of trying to punch through a letterbox in some ways- and one that moves.

Out of curiosity- has anyone on the forum ever heard of someone having their throat crushed or otherwise bashed in in this fashion? I have seen people in training get hit hard there *accidentally* and shrug it off, but that's it. If anyone can link to any stories in the media along these lines I'd also be curious.

The jawline is still pretty hard to hit as well, in fact, but seems to me that people hitting the jaw has resulted in K.Os since the dawn of time. Professional fighters, amateurs, drunks, male, female ... It appears nearly hardwired into us to wind up and trying and dump alot of force into the head with blunt impact. In contrast to throat shots we all know many, many incidences where a shot along these lines has ended a fight and possibly resulted in someone dying or being disabled permanently one way or the other.

As far as cuts and stoppages via blinding goes- this I can understand as we still see the same strategy, essentially, in muay thai and some MMA promotions where a fighter will cut opponents with his elbows abow the browline in the hope that a ref will stop the fight. In MMA we see people rub and grind on open cuts on the ground in the hope of widening them and doing the same thing.

From my own limited research into pugilism et al very few ofthe punches were actually straight so the throat and/or jaw wasnt a primary target.. the straight left was a lean-in very heavy forward punch with a semi-vertical fist
The HEAD was the target, not really any specific part of the head either..
most punches were to the sides of the face and head as well as the ribs and kidneys/spleen/liver
also many punches were of the swinging variety, so again the throat wouldnt have been too easy a target

the throat did tend to get hit, but remember the JAB hadnt been devised in the pugilism days, but the stances were a lot more vertical anyway

my take on all this is similar to Nick's .. there are NO absolutes in real fights FULL STOP

you can tell people what the potential outcome could be, but never what a guaranteed outcome WILL be.

If anyone can link to any stories in the media along these lines I'd also be curious.

Then why not use google and find them?

Man involved in fight at Beer Fest is brain dead

Last Update: 4/29/2008 7:23 pm

A Bakersfield man has been declared brain dead after he was punched in the throat at the Festival of Beers over the weekend, according to police.

Trent McCleary underwent an emergency tracheotomy and was fighting for his life last night at a Montreal hospital after being struck in the throat ...

A fifth-grade boy from Oregon died on Tuesday after he was struck in the throat by a football while blocking a punt during recess

Man Dies of Blow to Throat From Quarrel Bystander
By GEOFF BOUCHER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
June 19, 1997

SANTA ANA — A 19-year-old Huntington Beach man who crumpled to the street after a stranger punched him once in the throat was taken off life support Thursday and pronounced dead, police said.

Robert Lee Gonzales died about 1:45 a.m. at UCI Medical Center in Orange, and the attack on him is being investigated as a homicide, according to Santa Ana Police Sgt. Dennis Sebastianelli.

Police said witnesses told them that Gonzales was arguing with his girlfriend when a stranger intervened, leading to a curbside confrontation. The stranger punched Gonzales once, perhaps crushing his windpipe, police speculated.
An autopsy will be performed today, Police Lt. Hugh Mooney said.

Nick

As background, my views are based on reading contemporary accounts, contemporary training manuals and works based on the original sources (e.g Pancratia, Pugilistica and the full version of Boxiana). Despite their illegal nature (very much like illegal Rave parties in the 90's) all the top bareknuckle prize fighting matches had press reports. That gives us something to go on. What we don't really have is interviews with the combatants on exactly what they were intending/tactics.

To address Rory's point (and there are no definitive answers since the relevant people have been dead nearly 200 years) -

First of all I think we are misdirected by our natural assumptions from the boxing we know. No one has seen a real LPR fight to know exactly the techniques; we have to reconstruct things but - as above - we do have some decent information. As I mentioned, it is my opinion from the above sources, streetfighting experience and common sense, that LPR era techniques were significantly different from modern day boxing. This, IMHO, comes down to the fundamental difference made by using an artificially supported fist. I won't go into tedious detail and reasoning at length, but the basic point is that with wraps and padded fists you can effectively blast away with an overwhelmingly reduced risk of injury in comparison (Borne out also, if you understand the ins and outs of it, by the occasionally enormous weight disparities in heavyweight championship bouts). This leads to different body mechanics and approach and thus tactics. Having said that, for example, punching to knock out from the chin can easily be re-engineered back to bareknuckle. So, although you can do that bareknuckle - and arguably you damn well should - it could be a 'hindsight' sort of thing coming from the experience of striking with artificially supported fists rather than bareknuckle. At least one biographer of Jem Mace attributes the knockout blow to the chin to his development of boxing style, significantly influenced by using gloves rather than barefists.

The evidence for the throat being a specific target is that a) it's in the match reports as being an intended target b) it's less risky than punching other areas with an unprotected hand and c) - this is a less obvious but key one - look at the hand positions they adopted. They used a low guard for very sensible reasons I won't digress into. This means you are punching upwards. This is of practical significance because you are positioned to punch to softer targets such as the throat and face rather than the head. (As Mick Coup has said, the flesh of the face acts as something of a shock-absorber. Ideal when bareknuckle but irrelevant if you already had padding on your fist) Compare this to moden boxing stances and guard positions - they inevitably punch on a more horizontal linear line from the guard. This is fine with protected hands. LPR punched in a more upward line. One of the key reasons for this is - as documented - I might not be able to out-box you due to your skill, but I can sure as fuck break your hand by an unsportsmanlike duck of the head as you punch my face. You break your hand - and, in that more heroic age, not give in but carry on - and I now have a massive advantage.

As Rory rightly points out, hitting the throat is not the easiest of targets to hit. However, if you are punching upwards from an LPR guard, for example, it is more accessible than from a more horizontal modern boxing guard. Plus, don't forget they didn't just throw one punch at a time! I can feint or lunge for your face with my left and - as you move your head back to defend (something in various manuals as a defence) I can strike to your throat with my following right.

As to the 'deadliness' of a punch in the throat - well, it was a specific target and technique and no doubt can kill. However, under what exact circumstances it will kill...well, who knows? As Dave T's says, in a real fight there are no guarantees.

As to Dave T's points:
IMHO, yes, the head was a major target - but I suggest not in the same way that modern boxing attacks it due to the protected hands. (Lets not also forget the 'mark', i.e. the solar plexus, just as an important a target as a fight stopper and hence influenced the guard position fundamentally) Bareknuckle strikes to the head are just a lot more risky due to the skull damaging the hands. (For example, I am sat here with a potential hairline fracture to a metacarpal at the wrist end from the shock induced by a mistaken impact at the knuckle end. And my hand was wrapped with a long Mexican-style boxing wrap. That will teach me to pay fucking attention!)
There's ample evidence to suggest they were specific in their targets, partly as a blinding tactic as I mentioned previously, and partly down to there being fighters with specific strikes attributed to them, e.g to certain parts of the neck.
But, as Dave mentions, there's lots of other juicy targets too like the kidneys and the back of the head. Look at Mendoza's 'Chopper'' as a strike to the eyes to blind, for example.

When it comes to 'swinging' blows I suggest it depends on when you look at the timeline of techniques. A number of the manuals tutor towards purely straight blows as being the ideal because 'round' or swinging blows were seen as not 'scientific', old-fashonioned and vulnerable to the simple intercept of a straight line strike being the shortest distance between two points.
('When' you view the techniques also explains the development of the jab too. Originally there would have been no point risking a punch unless you were going to get a decent return on the risk. However, the development of betting on 'first blood' altered the tactics such that a relatively light blow which drew blood from the eye or lip could earn you (and your financial backers) significant amounts of money - hence it now made sense to jab rather than risk a full lunging punch. Later on the jab became more useful because in the early boxing (i.e. gloved) days they introduced the points system to produce a result in a bout with no knock out. So jabbing got you points which could win you the bout).

Now, just to complicate the matter, there were specific 'round blows' to key targets but they are an addition to the general tenet of straight, piston-like punching if you go by the general principles in the contemporary manuals. From reading the accounts of actual fights I can't remember much that were ended with a knockout - that has been suggested by some historians as being more common with boxing than pugilism. This might also be borne out by the length of some pugilistic bouts - the longest in England lasted an impressive 6hrs 15 minutes!

(There are, IMHO, some fairly fundamental and key points to be made about the origins of the whole pugilistic approach which explains a great deal but I won't digress into that here)

Dave...great post mate...well thought out and very logical.

Nick

This appears to be a punch to the throat

http://www.break.com/index/strange-neck-knockout-at-irish-mma.html

Difficult to see whether or not the jaw has been struck also. Seemed to have a good effect though.

In this day of the smaller MMA gloves, and less protected hands, maybe the throat could be the target again?

Brian S wrote:This appears to be a punch to the throat

http://www.break.com/index/strange-neck-knockout-at-irish-mma.html

Difficult to see whether or not the jaw has been struck also. Seemed to have a good effect though.

In this day of the smaller MMA gloves, and less protected hands, maybe the throat could be the target again?

Good find, Bri. There's a few LPR fights I've read about where they punched to the neck specifically, I imagine for just such an effect. I would guess it is the punch equivalent of an axe-hand to the neck.

Doubt MMA would allow it as a technique though - potentially too dangerous and nasty looking.