This article is part of a larger effort by MixedMartialArts.com to understand what methods work best, not by looking at bouts in the arena, but by looking at what happens outside the arena, on the streets. If you enjoyed it, check out more stories on:
•Taekwondo
•Martial Arts on The Street
•Mutual Combat
When analyzing the use of martial arts on the street, it’s useful to understand that it typically falls into several fairly distinct categories:
•Self Defense: Use of force to protect against an unprovoked attack that objectively threatens imminent injury.
•Mutual Combat: Two people agree to fight, typically with some degree of understanding about rules, either explicit or implied.
•Informal: Holding combat sports-type events, at least loosely hewing to rules, without a formal overseeing body. It’s the fight equivalent of playing volleyball on the beach with friends..
The video below is Mutual Combat. In these cases, there is typically two participants – or in Russia sometimes dozens of them. In addition, unfortunately, there often seems to be some fool egging the action on, without actually stepping up himself. In this case, he can be heard repeatedly shouting, “It’s going down.” One participant is wearing a shirt, the other is skins.
What Happened
The two circle, with Skins in a pantomime of combat sports. If you tell someone untrained to put their hands up, they typically bring their hands up to around the chin, with elbows flared out. This protects nothing. Skins isn’t covering his face well at all, and eventually gives up, dropping his hands entirely.
Shirts is protecting himself not with his hands, but with distance management, from a nearly fully bladed (sideways) stance. This is typical of Taekwondo, or Karate Point Fighting. The stance came to martial arts from fencing, and was popularized by Bruce Lee. Based on the technique used to finish the fight, a Turning Side Kick (or in Korean, Momdollyo Yopchagi), it is very likely that Shirts is a Taekwondo adept.
Shirts feints in and out, faking a lead hand strike, all the while getting reads on his opponent’s footwork, reflexes, etc. It is not known whether Shirts saw an opening for the Rear Leg Round Kick (or in Korean, Dollyeo Chagi), or if he was playing a longer game. The kick is thrown and causes no damage, but it set up damage. And setups are everything. Executing a martial arts technique without a setup is the polar opposite of fighting, as it is setting yourself up for a counter.
Skins starts to circle towards Shirts’ back, and it is almost over. A prescient voice can be heard saying, “No, lo va a matar” (Spanish for “Oh no, he is going to kill him”). As Skins steps fully towards Shirts’ back, the setup is complete, and the turning kick is thrown, landing perfectly on the liver. There is a slight pause, which is typical of a liver shot landing. And then …
… on a scale from …
6. Bullet Ant Sting
7. Kidney Stones
8. Child Birth
9. Third Degree Burns
10. Dying of Rabies
… being hit in the liver is approximately a 15.
Skins folds.
The coat holder can be head shouting, “That’s it? That’s it?”
Skins can only offer a one word reply – “yah.”
Shirts won via one of the cleanest Taekwondo techniques landed in a Mutual Combat ever caught on video.
The Lesson
Taekwondo is often criticized for being ineffective, and so commercialized that Take Your Dough would be more apt. However, the disapproval is not all warranted. The Korean martial art has served as the earliest style learned by several world-class fighters, including Bas Rutten, Benson Henderson, and Anthony Pettis. Taught properly, the practice can impart significant, effective skills, as you can see.
There is a special category of LARPer, who label themselves combatives experts, or similar verbiage. 99 out of 100 have never verifiably used martial arts to protect themselves against someone intent on hurting them. And yet they spew endless rules of the street that, relative to this story, include:
Never kick on the street;
Never kick above the waist on the street; and,
Never try a turning kick on the street.
Shirts never got that memo, and is the better for it. None of this is to say everyone should kick, above the waist, after spinning. The bottom lines are taekwondo can be effective, and take self-defense advice from experts in a discipline with a verifiable record of success.
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