3-on-1 street fight/mugging as told by the 1.

[HanshiClayton]

Realizing this was going down, I quickly kicked 1 in the stomach. It was a front kick using my right foot. As I kicked 1, 2, almost simultaneously strikes my right temple with his fist. 1 takes the kick well, and moves more to my left.

This part of the story taps into some deep resentment I have about the value of traditional karate techniques for self-defense. I was always encouraged to believe that karate fighters were virtually untouchable on the street, but in fact traditional karate trains students to lose fights. (Biker-bar bouncers laugh at us.)

I teach my students never to kick higher than the knee (or rarely the groin if they get a clear shot). It is ludicrously easy to catch a high kick. My students are not exceptional athletes, but they can catch most kicks most of the time. Once you catch the opponent's foot, it's your game. You can cripple him, kill him --- just pick an item from the menu.

My students know how to twist the captured leg to shatter the tibia or to set up a figure-4 leg lock that tears apart the knee. When I learned those techniques, I just stopped teaching kicks above the waist. High kicks are suicidal.

And lastly, as our correspondent learned, because high kicks don't seem to be all that effective against real, sweaty, moving opponents. They just grunt and keep fighting. I guess we'll have to take a referee along to explain the point system to them!

Our friend should have kicked #1 in the testicles or the inside of the knee instead of the abdomen. As he said later on:

... as it turns out, it was a fight for survival, not contest.

[HanshiClayton]

My right arm did like a windmill type motion, blocking and I went to a loose headlock.

The only place where I thought that our correspondent made a significant tactical blunder was the headlock. Reference Lessons of Street-Fight Videos, which is a page on this web site. That topic describes the four phases of a typical fight. Just about every fight starts with windmill punches, quickly results in someone accidentally getting someone else into a headlock, progresses to the ground within seconds, and then there's always somebody who steps in to kick our hero in the head. Sound familiar? It is exactly the current scenario.

2. The unexpected,....tripping over the curb changed everything.

On the contrary, this was not an unexpected development. It almost always happens about five seconds after the headlock is applied.

I teach my students to "throw away" the headlock as rapidly as possible. When you "throw away" a headlock, you grab the opponent's chin and spin him down and backward on to his back. If you are lucky he'll bang his head or dig an elbow into the pavement, but even if he doesn't you are better off.

Tying up your right arm with one opponent when there are two more still attacking from the left and rear is a blunder. It is literally fighting two-against-one with one of your hands tied. You can't afford to stop using your right arm in that situation. Let go of the headlock!

[HanshiClayton]

I was trying to get up, and forcefully thrusted my left index finger two knuckles deep into 1's eye, and was able to get my right thumb into the eys of 2, who was still biting me.

I imagine that all self-defense instructors regard the finger-in-the-eye trick as a last-resort technique, just as it was used here. That was very well done. It was the right technique done at the right moment in the right way. Very few people have ever had to gouge two opponents in the eyes simultaneously! Our correspondent had his wits about him at that point.

That said, it is remarkable how little reaction he got from the eye gouges. I have had a corneal abrasion and the pain was devastating. To ignore a finger that is two joints deep into your eye socket would take incredible fortitude --- or you'd have to be high on drugs. I wonder if that was not the case.

Apparently the assailants were willing to back away and disengage at about this time. I believe the eye gouges communicated to their dim minds that they were not having as much fun as they had hoped. It took a minute, though.

There is a strategy that we use when the pain techniques aren't working. If the assailant doesn't respond to pain, we bypass all the nerve techniques and start to deliberately break down the assailant's skeleton with bone and joint breaks. Even drug zombies don't run very fast on broken legs. Jujutsu throws open a fleeting window when it is possible to drop your knee on his upper arm and snap the humerus. Collarbones are pretty easy to break, using either jujutsu or karate. We can literally take a skeleton apart if we have to, systematically disconnecting one limb at a time. This is the stage we resort to when the eye gouges and ear slaps fail.

And there is yet another level of escalation we can use if necessary. We practice skull-cracking techniques and spine-breaking techniques, but only with the warning that killing a man or paralyzing him because he thumped the fender of your car is going to look like excessive force to a jury. These are last-resort techniques indeed. Even if we win, we can still lose.

[HanshiClayton]

I took no strikes to the genitals, ribs, or anything else. One shot landed in the upper abdominals, as I can feel it now. In some way it was amateur night, and in some ways these guys had been here before.

The three opponents were remarkably unskilled fighters. Our correspondent was very fortunate that they were ignorant enough (or drugged enough) to hit all the wrong targets. They were focused entirely on punching him in the head. Little boys fight like that. They also bite.

He's also very fortunate that no one had a weapon.

That's worth a thought, actually. What kind of person goes to a mugging without a weapon?

Or, as my Highway Patrol officer student used to say, "Why do you think they call it dope?"

[HanshiClayton]

4. While on my back, I had no leverage or power. At one point, I had a grip on someone's esophagus, probably #2, and he pulled out of the grip.

It is very easy to pull your neck out of a hand choke, even a two-handed choke. We teach 12-year-old girls how to do it, and the men can't hold them.

On the other hand, jamming your fingers hard into the hollow of the throat usually gets a response.

[HanshiClayton]

Additionally, it had been a long time and I just wanted to throw down.

I have to say in all honesty that I have never been in that space, although I think I have known people who lived there.

[HanshiClayton]

My girlfriend was in the car witnessing this and was traumatized by the moment.

I once experienced a similar situation. Midnight. GF in car. I accidentally rear-ended a station wagon on the Harbor Freeway in L.A. We pulled over to the shoulder. Six black teenage boys climbed out of the station wagon. Whoops.

There were a few tense moments as they did the threat/tease thing you would expect, but then we mutually decided that we didn't want to call "the Man." Our "rides" were not badly dented. We piled into our respective cars and left. The driver ran back to my car at the last minute, gave me a Black Power handshake, and said I was "a brother!" I'm still bemused by that conversation. I had been ready to throw him into freeway traffic.

But my GF had to sit helpless in the car and watch, and she was scared to pieces. She talked a mile a minute all the way home.

[HanshiClayton]

I find that I have one more thing to say about that ineffective front-snap kick.

Reference the topic on the Fluid Shock Punch, which contains the entertaining story of my first meeting with Shihan Tom Frobel.

It has been a century since we were allowed to really put power into our karate techniques, and some of us simply don't know what is possible. Front thrust kicks, side thrust kicks, stepping punches (oi zuki), and reverse punches, can all launch an opponent into the air and throw him backward on the ground several feet away. They are the karate equivalent of jujutsu's throws. The problem is that you have to learn how to make that happen, and a lot of schools don't teach it.

You center of mass has to be charging forward as you strike. You can't do it standing still. Simple as that, except that your posture and focus have to be perfect or you'll rupture yourself. The impact is appalling.

My sempai was holding the kick shield, helping a brown belt work power into his side-thrust kick. I watched for a while and then interrupted. I told the brown belt to set up about six inches farther away than before. Then he should shift forward with his front foot, getting the body moving, before turning into the side-thrust kick. He tried it. Sempai flew back several feet and rolled to a stop against the wall. They were impressed.

I don't like to do that kind of demo because there is too much sheer power in play. People get hurt.

This is the karate "blitz" attack that simply opens a hole in the wall around you, letting you move to the outside of the triangle.

[HanshiClayton]

I turn me head ever so slightly, to the right, to face 2, and I see an open mouth descending on my face. I instinctively turn left and 2 proceeds to bite my right cheekbone. ... The pain of the bite scared me and provided a rush to survive.

That was bizarre. Here's a photo of the bite mark:

It was more of an eyebrow bite, but the deep wounds were below the eye on the cheekbone.

I think opponent #2 would not have had this idea if our correspondent had let go of the headlock. It's the kind of think you think of when your opponent's face is right in front of your mouth! (And when you are drunk or stoned out of your mind, and feeling mean to boot!)

I teach my students to bite, especially fingers. Most times when someone grabs a teenage girl (or anybody else, really) their fingers are wide-open for a bone-breaking bite that will force them to release the hold. As our correspondent noted, when there are teeth in your skin the only thing you can think about is escape.

[Nothingfancy]

Hello to those in this forum,...its me, the one-eyed bandit. I would like to thank Kyoshi Clayton for taking an interest in my experience.

Kyoshi, in response to "I have to say in all honesty that I have never been in that space, although I think I have known people who lived there.",........I believe you have.

I understand fighting, competition, drive for improvement, ambition to succeed all in the same line. I see it as self-affirming. I see it as the struggle to survive. I see that struggle in myself and others. To be better today than yesterday, to balance the past with the present and to use that totality to move forward. I see many people along this scale, some having fought for their current place in life and being content, others having given up along the way and being discontent, and those still moving forward along that path, taking their experiences as just that, synthesizing and processing along the way. A dialectic of sorts. Aside from the fighting in my formula, I believe you fulfill this description as I believe I do.

Shojikisho was right in quoting Funakoshi there, however his cryptic warning is just that. Human behavior can take on many forms, some more deceptive than others, as was I believe in my situation.

I did not exit my vehicle with the intent of fighting, more of verbal confrontation to the group. Had they stayed verbal, I would have as well. They didn't, I didn't.

Yes, I had a sum total of about three years training between Karate and Jujitsu, a fair amount I might add. I've also had plenty of "street fights" as a kid. And because of my training, albeit limited, I thought 3-1 was fair for them. Arrogant? Maybe. But I have considered in some depth the attempts of Kano, Morehei, and Funakoshi among others to keep their arts "secret", or should I say a bit antiseptic from their more lethal components; Which was a factor in my not genital-kicking that first person. I have done that in the past, prior to my exposures to Asian fighting and philosophies. My moral quandary came to the forefront that night, it ended with nasty street techniques.

There is a moral component to that night, and a tactical as well as an emotional and a physical. There is also the now, the chance to learn from it. And I hope all here do contribute in whatever way they can as if there can be an evolution to this, there will be growth to it.