I could never take a class. I'm far too shy . . . or, rather, I was when the classes would have been worth the price of admission.

A gentleman I went to high school with taught me a lot of stuff for about three years. I have no idea where he learned. He went by the name of Savage, but that wasn't the name his mother gave him. Anyway, he showed me a series of moves one day and then bullied me into practicing with him for about ten hours. I did it because I knew if I didn't Savage would make pudding of me. [gods but I miss being in the shape I was then]

Anyway, he never put me through it again. I practiced it for about another year and then went back to more basic stuff. And a lot of practice and workouts with nunchucks [sometimes numb-chucks, especially when you slip and bean yourself]. About six years later I saw a guy doing the same routine as Savage - at a Karate exhibition; it was the kata for an advanced black belt rating. The kata was a good exercise, but not worth a lump in a fight. Void, actually. Unless you can coreograph, which is rarely if ever the case in a bar brawl, mugging, or riot.

I really need to get another set of nunchucks. We made our own back in 1980, but they were long ago lost. They were really great for a workout. I'll have to slip over to martialartsmart-dot-com and order some. Their Master Weapon Kits are pretty awesome. I picked up the Bagua Sword kit a while back.

And I can certainly agree that there is a pandemic of need-a-bitch-slap out there. Ocassionaly think it might be a good idea to stop at the table for a buck's worth of what I need

MT is a sport, and Dave said did so to be fair--but Mike is right in many ways, sure. Now the ability to throw fifteen or thirty round house kicks with a reinforced shin in a minute and clinch and pound with elbows is a pretty good skill set to have in a real fight, it translates well. As does the conditioning. I mean, you can have mad skills and technique but if a fear adrenaline dump leaves you gassed in under 3 minutes then a kid with half your skills but twice your stamina is going to school you.

And there are seperate needs. The needs of competetion. The needs of "honor" fights. The needs of hand to hand combat.

There are a handful of crippling moves--many taught to women in rape prevention courses--that will put you down, put anyone down. A lot of military courses are distilled versions of similiar things: "here's a basic snap kick. Follow it with a basic shoulder or hip throw. Now stomp temple or throat of downed man. Repeat if neccessary."

Now. If you're minding your own business in a nice public lounge on a saturday night and the town bully just insulted your date I would not recomend kill moves. But you might still have to fight.

In which case the link between "honor" fighting and sporting events is closer. You might head butt which is a wonderful thing, but not allowed in most competetions, but basically if you see it in a mma match on TV it translates well to that honor fight being a mistomeaner rather than a felony.

In a slight veer to my point but related to it, this is why I think the UFC and the rise of mma was as important to fighting styles evolution as when martial arts first left India and went to China and then left China and went to Japan.

There is a reason Boxing, Wrestling, Jujitsu, and Muay Tai emerged as the "big 4" foundations of mma. But some of this is because the best moves of some of the arts that don't get a lot of respect (TKD springing to mind but Kung Fu forms have been ignored and dissed in mma circles as well) is because some of their best moves are useless in competetion and honor fighting--but are still good in hand-to-hand. 

That certainly describes my own handgun experience. Mine is so locked up and put away at this point it's utterly useless.

The early days of the UFC were completely telling about the direction arts were taking by being true to themselves. People thought punching down or low kicks were all they needed to defend against takedowns. Judo throws and wrestling tackles were laughed at by striking arts.

And then there was Joyce Gracie.

And he showed that a takedown could be executed not only as fast as a person could kick, but indeed as fast as many people could punch and the humiliation of art after art continued to fall before BJJ. Then wrestlers showed up--defended against BJJ takedowns and scrambled out of holds but had no finishing moves.

But the evolution then continued. A puncher with an excellant escape and sprawl ability but no submission skill could force the BJJ and wrestler to stand--to their doom.

The utter destruction (in those days) of the stand up arts drove many old school hard style strikers insane. But really once they learned to sprawl-and-brawl it got a little more even--the only lesson being that TKD and numerous hard style karates and kung fu's hadn't thought to put anti-grappling moves into their styles. They though admonishments of "just don't go to the ground--dance" would help them against athletic grapplers.

Now with the blending of styles and acknowledgement of what BJJ proved in those early days its much more about the fighter themselves then the fighting style.

Still the point that going to the ground in an outnumbered situation is well taken. Also I've noticed in "honor" fights bystanders are liable to break up a game that's gone to the ground if the person is a submission fighter but less so if the guy is a ground-and-pound fighter.

Basically 'cause the average people watching a barfight don't know what it is they're seeing in submission manuevers unless the person blackout quickly, and two will do anything to keep the amusement level (for them) of two guys going toe-to-toe and battering each other.

Of course the fact that two tough guys can batter the hell out of each for FOREVER was always one of the things that made me grappling-sympathetic. A submission hold or a choke ends a situation (except for the rare standing KO) much more efficently time wise than a marathon session of skilled, tough strikers pounding each other with feet and fists. In my own anecdotal witness anyway.

Much better to just stay home and watch coreographed circus acrobatics performed by Jackie Chan on DVD, IMO. But I'm old. At twenty-two I just felt differently about a whole host of things.