whilst agreeing with you I will add this - “skilled” in holding on to a scared 140lb guy. For one of my grades in Japanese JJ I was required to pin and G&P an unskilled fighters. These were guys that volunteered from the kick boxing class that was held in the same school. I wasn’t allowed to make “heavy” contact. It was to demonstrate that I could exercise enough control over a layman. Let me tell you - these guys are FUCKING wild. It is hard to train to control that level of panic unless you have seen it before.
We can get so used to grappling people that know whats going on that we forget that 99% of people will just go stiff and fight every effort we make.
Fighting a smaller frightened person is not “harder” but requires experience.
But I will say this - I once grappled a Olympic Judo practitioner. She weighted in at sub 50kg. I was 105 ish and ungraded. I destroyed her. She competed at the London Olympics. And I took her apart in 2016. There not much a 45kg person can do to unbalance me. I’m legitimately 2 1/4 time heavier than her.
Anyone that is not is welcome to try and fight a Silver Back Gorilla.
I’ve always said Judo. Although @twojarslave BJJ class look a lot like Judo. So it does depend. Anything that teaches you throw people through the air and slam them onto the floor.
That and the right attitude. The best “figher” I ever knew was a skinny fellow. About 65kg. But he was the sort of guy that went off and would fight his way into and out of hell. His “style” could just be called violence. In tight spot - the best thing to remember is the harder I fight the more chance there is of me making it. Sure technique helps - especially if you are well practised. But killer instinct is key.
Not a fighter but wrestling is a cool, strangely enough I still remember how to do some moves even though that was like 5 or 6 years ago.
I still remember how to do a cement mixer, cross face cradle, single leg takedown, double leg takedown, and half nelson
Don’t regret wrestling at all, besides that was the reason I started lifting in the first place. Okay I’m rambling now I better stop.
Moves are definitely cool, but it’s more the abilities that I find useful. Kinesthetic awareness, aggression, escaping, scrambling, and understanding how all of that fits together. I may not remember how to do a gramby, but I can still “wrestle”.
However, there’s also something to be said about “negative training”. The aggression wrestling teaches is pretty awesome, as you basically learn how to be explosive for 6 minutes and violently impose your will on someone. It also requires you to be in incredibly shape.
But a crafty jits dude will see a wrestler coming and let them gas themselves out in those 6 minutes while they remain cool, calm and collected, and then gently put them to sleep.
Had it happen to me a few times. Learned about “controlled aggression”.
Buuuut if we turn our attention back to self-defense, if you’re in a fight that lasts longer than 6 minutes, something has gone SERIOUSLY wrong.
Or seriously right, if you’re a 42 year-old BJJ guy trying to subdue an athletic unit in his 20’s.
But yes, fights rarely last more than a minute. Most guys don’t even have that much gas in the tank. I’ve even felt bad for some of the guys who called my number in a misguided moment of inebriated judgement.
All that talk and you “Hey bro, HEY BRO IT’S COOL MAN” me when I spin you around and grab you like a child? Really? After all that lead-up you quit like that?
I still have fond memories of the guys who, misguided as they were, at least were ready to put up after acting like an asshole. The guys who start shit and then quit in seconds are just pathetic.
To add a bit more to this idea, these basic elements of athleticism and awareness of the other person are the essence of goon tactics. Obviously good training like wrestling or BJJ will elevate the effectiveness of goon tactics, but anyone who has managed to become big and strong enough to use goon tactics probably became that way through training of some kind.
I think you’re on to something with your now very-old recommendation to young trainees, both in absolute age and training age. This applies to fighting as much as pursuing strength training.
Play a sport.
Basketball is the only sport I played semi-seriously as a child, and I think it provides a great base of athleticism and coordinated movement. Plus it involves wrestling of sorts with post-up play. It gets you used to moving athletically and struggling against another person, often with major size and strength disparities.
It’s not the same as BJJ, but a decade of Indiana basketball and a fair bit of strength training is what allowed me to walk on to the mats and start “getting it” right away, just as it let me get away with bouncing for at least a good year before I ever took a martial arts class.
I was nothing but goon those first few encounters. Good times at the dive bar.
Very true. Whilst grappling is extremely effective for 1v1 scenarios (my buddy here who is purple belt in BJJ weighs 85kg but outgrappled another guy here in playful wrestling who weighs 130kg. My buddy wasn’t trying that hard, the other guy most certainly was). For multiple attackers striking gives you a fighters chance… but even then not really… better off running no matter the context.
You don’t know who is carrying a weapon, how violent the person you’re dealing with is etc. However with striking a very good striker can end a fight VERY quickly. With pure BJJ/grappling it can take 30 seconds - 1 minute + to end the fignt unless you can execute a throw onto concrete… but that might kill someone. Grappling works, but its also quite tiring/expends considerably more energy. 1 minute of grappling will likely be more tiring relative to 1 minute of striking… but the 1 minute of striking will hurt more if your opponents strikes are connecting.
Using time to gas out the opponent is a strategy a much smaller, skilled guy might use to subdue or beat a bigger “goon”. Run circles around the guy, hope you don’t get smashed in the time it takes for the big guy to gas out, then go for a submission or something.
However when it comes to the streets… time is extremely important. You want the fight over as quickly as possible so you can run away. I can’t stress that enough… you don’t know who has a weapon, are your opponents buddies right around the corner?
Its probably best to execute a combo of striking and grappling. Execute a quick combo before shooting for a takedown/throw… immediately get back up on your feet and run.
Im no expert on street fights btw. The majority of physical altercations I’ve been in ended almost as fast as they started… as in one well placed or vicious strike and the fight was over (i.e headbutt leading to the other guy backing off)
I always felt like this argument spoke more towards how CRITICAL it was to be a skilled grappler vs a skilled striker.
If the ground is the last place you want to end up in a multiple attacker scenario…then you better know how to get the f**k back up if you end up there! A guy who knows how to sprawl and scramble is going to stand a chance to survive when things get messy.
But man, if I’m fighting multiple people, I f**ked up.
My best time would be about five seconds after first contact. Arm-drag to rear naked choke. (Video of technique in original post). That fight was over very fast and if he didn’t quit he was going to sleep.
Anyone can throw a punch, granted a solid boxers punch is much harder than an untrained individuals punch… however you’ve always got punchers chance.
Grappling isn’t intuitive, if you grapple someone to the ground and you’ve got a decent ground game (and its actually 1v1 or you can pull off a quick submission, choke or throw) your opponent is fucked… they won’t have the slightest clue re how to defend themselves. They’ll thrash around, all you need to do is hold them down til they calm down or pull a submission to inflict damage or put the opponent to sleep
Most chokes applied properly will put someone to sleep in 5-10 seconds or so.
In that case, yes. This is, after all, the thread where we discuss knocking on the front door first. Nearly everyone dumb enough to fight the bouncer has no real training.
I’ve also arm dragged a 400lb former college wrestler and all sorts of grapplers in training. There’s a reason it is in my list here in the goon thread.
He wasn’t hafthor, but he was a very big, very strong man who could move very well for a guy that size. I competed against him too in a sub-only tournament. Worst side control pressure I’ve ever experienced, also the most satisfying escapes I’ve ever made.
He was the only person I ever arm dragged myself around their body.
Here’s a tip. Don’t start fights with 400 lb dudes.
Keeping with the spirit of this thread, here’s a picture of four handsome goons who formed an elite force of dive bar bouncers several years ago. That’s little old me in the brown hoodie, standing at a scant 6’00" 280-ish in that photo. Intimidating by my looks and presence, I was not. Reputation adds up over time, however…
The shorter guy next to me could squat 405 for 15+ at the time of this photo. I was only at 405 for 9 at the time. The big guy on the left was a coke-addled, mean-spirited pervert who bounced for all of the wrong reasons and couldn’t fight for shit. I got him fired and banned from the bar.
The guy to the far right was a 400 lb dude in his early 40’s at the time of this photo. He was strong, but he’s never lifted a weight in his life. He’s also never trained anything except what training you receive on-the-job as a doorman, which was his main source of income for nearly 20 years.
He completely and totally rag-dolled a violent NEF (New England Fights, a UFC/Bellator feeder-league) amateur title belt holder out of the bar like a child.
Like a child.
You won’t find many people who will advocate for the effectiveness of BJJ more than me, but it isn’t a super-power. I know a LOT of purple, brown and even black belts that would not beat anyone in this picture up. I know plenty that will, too.
At a certain point it becomes a nearly unsolvable physics problem unless you’ve got some really good game to bring and enough attributes to get it done.
For the record, I lost all but one takedown in competition with that 400lb former college wrestler. He was HARD to put down. Even the times (in just training) that I arm-dragged him I only got him down once. The other time he just crudely hip-tossed me with his massive frame as I was trying to wrap him up.
If you’ll excuse a side-rant in my own thread, this is where @carlbm had (in other threads) some very valid criticisms against certain schools flying the flag of “BJJ” who do not impart the ability to take people down to their students. Nothing but rolling from the knees, etc.
Judo addresses this well. I haven’t trained with a lot of judokas, but they’re all handfuls on their feet, which is the most important part of most fights.
Most of the BJJ purple belts I’ve trained with from the school my instructor trains at would have a good shot against most of the guys in the picture above. Just about all of the browns would probably whoop us all. Every black belt would present nearly unsolvable problems for all of us, unless we got really lucky with a knockout strike. But that’s an actual Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, instructed by a group of very capable instructors who actually know Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Most of the BJJ purple belts and above from most of the other schools in my area would not, or at least not easily and/or decisively. Most would not even begin to know how to put any of us on the ground. Go ahead and try pulling guard.
