Real Self-Defence

In previous posts on this blog, we’ve taken a no bullshit attitude to self-defence, whether it be the right to bear arms, the use of force, or efficacy of martial arts, and you’ll be glad to know this post will be no different. The self-defence industry is dominated by untested and incompetent charlatans, fantasy merchants, wannabes and halfwits. There are over 4.8 million frequent martial art practitioners in America alone, and it’s a fair bet that most of them couldn’t fight their way out of wet paper bag. Most martial arts are less than useless in real combat. So this post is about real self-defence: what works and what doesn’t. If that offends anyone — good — you probably deserve to be offended.

This is obvious but I’ll say it anyway: I’d always prefer to be armed than unarmed and as Steph said in previous posts women’s self-defence is usually a complete waste of time. But if you’re unarmed then there are no better self-defence systems than boxing and wrestling. There are plenty of people, who’ve never boxed, who can throw a decent punch but nothing compares to boxing for punching power and the ability to land a decent shot without getting hit. There are people who will say what about MMA or kick boxing, but how many of them who don’t box, could out punch a semi decent boxer?

Just look at how many of those fighters get dropped trying to throw a right hook. How many orthodox boxers do you even see throwing right hooks?

As for all these open handed strikes, lets establish a fact here: punches are harder. So you might be able to bitch slap or palm strike quite hard but you can punch a lot harder. And the only time I would kick someone is when they’re on the deck. I’ve never seen anyone dropped with a kick in a street fight who didn’t get straight back up again but I’ve seen plenty of idiots get put on their arses trying to throw kicks.

But in my opinion, as useful as boxing is wrestling is better, and when I say wrestling, I mean Greco-Roman and freestyle, not submission wrestling. I’m not saying that submission holds don’t work but a decent throw on concrete will end a street fight outright, submission holds rarely end street fights. Also, more judo and sambo matches are won with throws than they are submissions — even most grappling matches don’t end in submission — there’s a reason for that. That’s why I rate judo and sambo and don’t rate Brazilian jiu-jitsu, because Brazilian jiu-jitsu is useless in a stand up fight and in my opinion: lying on your back with your legs open ain’t a good fighting strategy.

Having said that Japanese jujitsu, with its standing arm locks that don’t work is far worse, and so is aikido, which is one of the so-called “internal martial arts”, which might sound like a martial art for rapists, but really means it’s based on magic. But strangely enough there are gullible mugs, who think that this is a practical form of self-defence and that old Morihei Ueshiba, could really throw people about by magic like Hermonie Granger on the rag.

In previous posts, I mentioned krav maga, the Israeli self-defence system, is also a load of horseshit and is really just the H2H combat system taught by William Ewart Fairbairn, Eric Anthony Sykes, and Rex Applegate during WWII. The Fairbairn, Sykes and Applegate Defendu system proved to be abysmal in real combat and there’s no point pretending otherwise, their knife and gun defences might look good in Hollywood movies, but are suicidal in real life, as I’ve said before unarmed defences against knife attacks are a very good way to get yourself killed and unarmed defences against a gun only work if you’re close enough to seize the gun arm. If you are going to disarm someone with a gun or knife, you want to do it before or as they are drawing the weapon, not after. And if someone is pointing a gun at you it’s a fair bet they don’t intend to shoot you or they would have just done it.

But unarmed combat is the poor man’s self-defence. Weapons are the great equaliser: a 5okg girl can shoot a 100kg man dead with a gun or castrate him with a knife a lot more easily than she can throw him to the ground or spark him out. The golden rule of real self-defence, is wherever you have the right to carry a firearm: carry a firearm and be prepared to use it, and here I advocate Handgun Point-Shooting. This is where I do take Fairbairn, Sykes and Applegate seriously.

But assuming that your not going allowed or going to carry a firearm, as far as I’m concerned the next best weapon is an attack dog because a good attack dog is more than capable of taking down a geezer armed with a gun or knife, and for a girl they’re a great deterrent; a girl walking a big dog isn’t likely to be a target for a rapist or mugger. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to defend against attack dog but it’s not easy, and I train my dogs to fight alongside me.

I also recommended knife fighting as an effective form of self-defence because knives are the weapon of choice on the streets of Europe  – it’s bordering on pacifism for a young man not to carry one — and there are plenty of very effective knife fighting systems, that are a far more effective form of self-defence than any unarmed combat system.  I also mentioned TASERs and stun guns, I’m not a big fan, I prefer stun batons because if you can’t crack open some mug’s canister with two whacks, you ain’t trying hard enough. They’re a very effective tool for disarming someone without getting too close, crowd control, and also pretty good for getting Amie out of bed in the mornings.

Having said that, I prefer a Venetian cornoler and bastone corto (or short staff), good weapons to have in your motor, because they don’t look like weapons, and if you know how to use them, they are awesome weapons.  Very good to use with an attack dog, and if you’re walking a dog, no one is going to say anything about you walking around with a stick in your hand — think about it! And if you’re really pissed off with someone and want to take things a little bit further than reasonable force, beating the soles of their feet with a stick is a good way to inflict severe agony and leave no evidence. When we’re on the subject of stick fighting, we also mentioned Paranza, a great form of self-defence for goat herders, but not much good on the streets on London or Rome today.

Now this brings me on to improvised weapons. I would much rather take my chances and carry a genuine weapon than an improvised weapon but if you are going to carry one, the Italian housewives weapon of choice — salt — has to be favourite. If you grind salt into someones eye, it’s going to do some serious damage, but even throwing a fist full of salt in someone face at close range will probably end a fight. That’s what that tradition throwing salt over your left shoulder is all about: throwing salt in the Devil’s eye. But it’s a bit too hit or miss for my liking.