Wong Shun Leung: “I once took on ten guys carrying knives!  And they never cut me once!”
Student: “How did you do it, Sifu?”
Wong Sifu mimes the action of running like hell.
paraphrased from WSL interview with Bey Logan

Mark, one of my kung fu brothers shared an interesting article with us recently from a website called Urbanfitandfearless (thanks Mark).

Caution – this article has truly horrifying videos of cold-blooded murder with knives.  But if you are serious about standing a chance, you might need to understand how bad it is.

As I’ve pointed out HERE, you do not want to mess around with someone wielding a knife.  They say in a knife fight, one goes to the hospital, the other goes to the morgue.  That’s where they both have knives that have been deployed.  If it’s empty hand vs a knife in the hand, this jumps mostly to the empty hand person going to either the hospital or the morgue.

As my teacher has pointed out in the training of the knife, in WIng Chun we put a lot of effort into training structure so our punches are a useful weapon.  A knife requires zero training.  As this article points out, knives are usually concealed until deployed and then its usually a blitz attack from close range.  A sociopathic 10 year old can take out a master fighter with this strategy.  Remember that Wild Bill Hickock was back shot by a nobody with no skills but sneakiness.

Points from the article:

Most knife attacks are ambushes, not duels

In 80% of the cases, the knife is kept hidden until the very last moment.

Typically, the victim is 1) distracted, 2) cornered, and 3) the attack is launched at close quarters.

70% of knife attacks start at conversation range.

Watch out!

The best way to avoid a knife attack is to avoid the sort of areas people hang out in who carry knives – you know where they are.  Bars, clubs, alleys, parks at night, etc.

If you find yourself in a confrontation, watch your distance.  The further away you are, the better your chances.  Don’t try disarms unless you can’t run.  Disarms (in my opinion) are for when you’ve already been stabbed and you’ve managed to get a grip on the knife or the wrist.  Disarms are easy to do in the dojo and not so easy when the weapon is slippery with blood and the opponent is going all out.

“At the beginning of any battle, there are no choices but these three initiatives. Since it is a matter of gaining victory quickly by preemption, therefore preemption is the foremost concern in martial arts….preemption from a state of waiting, preemption form a state of mutual confrontation, and preemption from a state of suspension.”
Miyamoto Musashi, The Fire Scroll, The Book of Five Rings

“[On the intimidating effect of aggressive posturing, when someone really gets in your face…the guys screams…]I don’t give a f*** that you’re a black belt. I’m gonna come round your house when you’re having tea with your Mum and I’m going to bite your nose off and spit it down you f***** throat!…That terror of this guy not caring…that immediate confrontation of (his) posturing, it triggers the flight instinct in us. That flight instinct is so powerful that I’ve watched legends run away from fights…We prepared people by dealing with the most difficult thing, which was posturing…the reality of close range…maybe you’ve got 18 inches…preemption is the only constant. It’s the only thing that works all the time….Just to hit first.  Hit first and use artifice.  Even Musashi only had three preemptions…hit them before they think of hitting you, hit them as they think of hitting you, hit them when they twitch.”
Geoff Thompson”

I think anyone who wants to be prepared for a street fight needs to read and listen to Geoff Thompson.  No one doubts his credentials as a man who not only survived but dominated hundreds of fights, including arranged no-rules bare knuckle matches,  life and death street fights, and many “bum rush” incidents in his job as a bouncer in Coventry.  He also has top notch credentials as a classically-trained martial artist (he’s an ABA Boxing Instructor, a Greco-Roman wrestling coach, holds a 1st Dan in Judo, and an 8th Dan in Shotokan Karate).

I’ve written about him before and I expect I will again!

I especially admire his arc from extremely violent man (driven, from his own admission, by fear) through his career as a bouncer, then on to being a internationally-known martial arts instructor.  He is particularly known for his application of street realism in his training, such as his infamous Animal Days.  And recently, he has reinvented himself again as an advocate for non-violence!  I appreciate his very honest self-analysis and his discussions of the roots of violence in our psychology.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Sun Tzu

But meanwhile, Thompson is also a first-rate source for those of us who are into fight training but don’t have the hard-won street experience.  The best way to learn hard lessons is to let other people learn them for you!  Its true that experience is irreplaceable, but listening to experienced and wise people is the next best thing, and a lot easier on your dental work.

“The thing you can do in a real fight is go to the floor…even strangers come round and…I’ve seem people literally jump on other people’s heads. They’re not even involved…if you’re in the mount, people just assume you’re the bully and you get your jaw broke or you get hoofed in the head…or you get stabbed. I’ve seen loads of people get stabbed by the girlfriends…the mothers.”
Geoff Thompson

His best books (in my opinion) to help you benefit from his street experience: Three Second Fighter: The Sniper Option, Animal Day – Pressure Testing the Martial Arts, and the classic (and worth its weight in gold) The Fence.

The great thing is that his ideas, dragged straight from violent altercations with the worst and most dangerous and unpredictable people you can imagine, are in perfect agreement with the fundamental principles we find in the Wing Chun Keun Kuit, the ideas which make up our system.

Be quick to end the fight.

Make the first move to have control. Attack according to timing.

A strong attitude and posture gives an advantage over your opponent.

To win in an instant is a superior achievement.

Our system was developed by experienced fighters like Thompson, who developed a system that works best in the conditions Thompson describes.  Very close.  Hands up.  Explosive attacks.  This is why we train reflexes, because many fights are over before your conscious brain even knows what happened.

“(In) people for whom violence ‘doesn’t happen’ or they haven’t been in a physical conflict since they were kids, there is huge denial factor…Overwhelming shock and confusion…They’re going waste time trying to find a palatable way out of having to use violence…. One, you’re going to freeze. Two, you’re going to walk right into it. Three, you’re going to get flattened while trying to find some way not to fight.”
Marc MacYoung, No-nonsense Self Defence

Something I like to dwell on here is the reality of fighting.

Its easy to get sucked into a gym/dojo/kwan bubble and play a lot of “if you do this, I would do that” games based on very speculative assumptions.

In real life, violence plays out differently than we typically imagine.  The consequences are often counter-intuitive.  We see too many movies and so our perspectives get skewed.

For one thing, we don’t really understand just how much damage can occur from one punch.

A 2007 article in The Situationist told the story of Brian Walsh, who now has metal plates in his face and suffers headaches resulting from one punch to the face.

Walsh got annoyed by some young guys speeding by his house while he was barbecuing in the yard.   Then a lieutenant and Navy pilot at Coronado, he sprayed one of the cars with his garden hose.  The driver stopped, got out, walked up to Walsh and punched him in the face, shattering his left eye socket and crushing his sinus cavity.  Plus he could no longer fly, as he lost about 40 percent of vision in that eye.

This is  why its so important to understand how easy it is to avoid fighting!

Marc MacYoung has a lot of material on his site about this subject, but the Cliff’s Notes are:

• In a confrontation, always understand you can usually deescalate and walk away.  It’s never too late.
• Give the other person a way out without stinging their pride (face is very important with the sort of people who are often picking the fight) – don’t give in to the impulse to shoot off your mouth.
• You don’t want to get injured and you don’t want to injure others!  Hospital bills and legal fees and possibly incarceration are not worth that last one-up comment.
• Awareness is king – if you keep your eyes and ears open, you can usually spot trouble coming a mile away – head in the other direction!