todays aggressors

hi nick,

i think you wrote once that in all the street fights youre been in or witnessed, youve never seen a straight right hand. ie its always haymakers. is that correct?

now that youve returned to the door, have you discovered that todays aggressor is any different than those you faced 20 yrs ago?
is the general public more skilled today? and if so, has your training changed accordingly?

thanks

Mate,

I've seen some straight rights...typically from boxers but yes, for the most part sloppy overhand and looping right handers are the order of the day.

Regarding a change...not really. I thought I might given the popularity of MMA stuff but so far I've been dealing with herds of the unwashed (and untrained)

We did have a crew in the other night who are all allegedly getting ready for the UFC next year that were bouncers from a large military town 2 hours from here. They'd talked to one of our crew earlier and told him they were Army Combatives trained i.e. the new grappling format and two of them were BIG boys.
They began tossing beers around and causing trouble and I went in to sort it out but arrived in time to see their ring leader apologizing to everyone who'd got hit by their clowing around.

I suppose I shouldn't say it but I was kind of hoping it would kick off so I could see how good their stuff is/was (from a purely academic standpoint of course ) but now I'll never know.

Good question by the way

Nick

This is something I wonder about myself. What is the most likely "weapon" someone will throw at you in a street scuffle and my instinct and limited experience has also come up with haymaker type punches. Therefore I have worked a few simple counters to these techniques should I not be the first one to strike in a confrontation. I still wouldn't want to be the first one to get hit mind you!

Nick, do you feel adding a couple, or even one, effective simple counter to haymanker punches is a necessary or good idea to add to your training routine?? I've found my counters to be pretty effective when I spar at both Muay Thai and Hapkido.

Obviously you can never train to counter everything, but it can't hurt to counter what the law of averages says probably will happen, can it?

Nobody,

Mate..one of the problems with training is that we train to beat other trained fighters. That can bring you undone when you come up against an untrained fighter who throws a move that you know is wrong by virtue of your training.

In other words if you spend years in a boxing ring dodging jabs, crosses, hooks and uppercuts a great big looping haymaker can catch you unawares, just as years spent blocking reverse punches and technically perfect kicks can bring you undone against a football kick and the same haymaker.

It's always good training to watch untrained yobbos fight and see what they do a lot of and train accordingly. As for percentage shots...sure. If the bulk of your time is done fighting right handers then spend the bulk of your time training against them.

Nick

Anyone know where i can find some drunk twats with piss stains one their jeans to train against?

Yep, any pub in any town in the UK on Friday or Sat night.

Nick

Hold on a minute i think the UK might have a bit of a reputation.

Nick its not just fri and sats anymore seems to be anytime of the day any day i refuse drunk and sometimes violent people at 0905 hrs (thats the record anyway)

I dispair

Nick,

Thanks for your reply.

I know precisely what you mean about training against other fighters when you spar. You random untrained yobbo may, will probably, do something completely out of the blue and technically incorrect, yet may be effective at it. I think I will stick with countering off haymakers and I have been watching a lot of scraps on Youtube and Comegetyousome and it would seem that both scrappers tend to go nuts with fairly wild punches, generally thrown with just the arms behind them, and when they get close tend to do some random grappling that usually involves a headlock and a funny wrestle on the ground. I don't know about anybody else but I learn quite a lot from watching those fights.

I agree.
Also i've realised that in America in many fights the kids use double leg tackles (which i guess comes from wrestling/american football culture),something rare to witness in a fight in Spain.
The haymaker (also pulling the jacket while they punch) and the old kick to the n*ts are 90 % of what it's used.

Nick Hughes wrote:Nobody,

Mate..one of the problems with training is that we train to beat other trained fighters. That can bring you undone when you come up against an untrained fighter who throws a move that you know is wrong by virtue of your training.

In other words if you spend years in a boxing ring dodging jabs, crosses, hooks and uppercuts a great big looping haymaker can catch you unawares, just as years spent blocking reverse punches and technically perfect kicks can bring you undone against a football kick and the same haymaker.

It's always good training to watch untrained yobbos fight and see what they do a lot of and train accordingly. As for percentage shots...sure. If the bulk of your time is done fighting right handers then spend the bulk of your time training against them.

Nick

Well said, Nick. It's tough when you're trying to teach a group of TMA practitioners realistic self-defense, and they want to attack in the way they were trained to attack, not in the way the average person would attack.

Spaniard, you're right as well. When American males spend 3-9 hours every Sunday during the fall and winter watching an aggressive sport in which the primary "attack" is a tackle, it's bound to work it's way into the mindset of a fight. I don't know why more self-protection people in the States don't train against it.

Nick, how do you train folks against such an attack? We usually do a standard sprawl, but the learning curve is hard for older folks or people with injuries.

Jeff,

I'll show you some stuff in June when I'm up

Nick

Here in Estonia the first move in about 98% of cases is a right haymaker or straight, 1% goes to grabbing the shoulder with the left and punching with the right, 1% to tackling, the latter always associated with drunks. A rough calculation, but about right, i think. Personally had one exeption of being attacked with CS by 3 punks about 15 years ago. Luckily got away without a scratch, just launched myself at and through them like a jet fighter on afterburners Nevertheless, it was still only luck, not skill, running away blinded.

I've been training a bit with wall defences as well as the haymaker recently. Pretty good for escaping when someone is pushing you aganist a wall and practical. I'm strating to think training for percentages isn't a bad idea.

I've been to Estonia Sven and it didn't strike me as a very violent place (I went to Tallin and Tartu). Where do you live and what's it like??

Mr Nobody wrote:I've been training a bit with wall defences as well as the haymaker recently. Pretty good for escaping when someone is pushing you aganist a wall and practical. I'm strating to think training for percentages isn't a bad idea.

I've been to Estonia Sven and it didn't strike me as a very violent place (I went to Tallin and Tartu). Where do you live and what's it like??

Not a very violent place indeed, luckily, but still more thugs than i'd like. Firts half of the nineties were much worse. Nevertheless had windows broken 3 times at the place i work, during this year. I live in Rakvere city, moving to Tartu soon, to live with my girlfriend. As you've been here, surely you noticed, that Estonian girls are prettiest in the world!

[quote="Sven"]

Mr Nobody wrote: As you've been here, surely you noticed, that Estonian girls are prettiest in the world!

Absolutely!

I've also been to quite a few of the other countries that make up Eastern Europe as well and to be honest almost everywhere you go you are drooling all over yourself. But yes, Estonia is a special place.

[quote="Sven"]

Mr Nobody wrote: As you've been here, surely you noticed, that Estonian girls are prettiest in the world!

Absolutely!

I've also been to quite a few of the other countries that make up Eastern Europe as well and to be honest almost everywhere you go you are drooling all over yourself. But yes, Estonia is a special place.

Brings to mind the old story of the trainer who gets clobbered by his student and says, "I didn't teach you to hit me like that , now hit me properly". I think its good to practice with beginners or folks from other styles for this reason alone. The wife / girlfriend can be a good partner, I know mine does the daftest strikes (mainly because she's not interested and simply helping me try a technique to shut me up) but hey its hard to defend.
Not everyone is trained even though it would seem so to listen to the chatter that abounds, if you ask me its a good thing they aren't.

It amazes me the amount of shit people say about self defence and MA's as well. Not too mention the "I would have done this..." brigade whenever someone talks about a confrontation they had.