Your title is far too simplistic for the excellent point I believe you are trying to make; "you should carefully scale the tactics and Level of force you are using to match the level of violence and risk you are dealing with, while taking lots of different factors into account. For instance, 'how will law enforcement react to my actions?'.." I don't think you are saying dirty fighting *never* works. I think you are saying something far more nuanced than most modern combatives systems will understand or agree with.
@@ArmchairViolence cool,thanks. Violence is kinda like auto repair; you've gotta have alot of different tools for fixing a huge number of different problems. Unfortunately in the Martial Arts world, nearly everyone chooses only to get and use a hammer.
First- I would say that in the street as opposed to the mat or the octagon there is no such thing as “dirty fighting “ only what works and gives you chance and what most likely won’t. That is on a continuum of course. Sometimes you have to match their level. However- second, given the circumstances and as long as you can articulate why- you may be the one to have to tactically escalate so as to get ahead of it and survive. Your decisions and training will used by the others guy (s) defense team (s). The powers that be will probably interview your instructors, guys you train (trained) with and if you compete- footage, etc. if you can justify your actions (however brutal they may need to be) it will most likely be 👌 😎
Of course one has to assess the situation. If one has any critical thinking skills or life experience that should be obvious. I mean if you’re training at a Cobra Kai type place where no mercy rules you could be headed for trouble. That said you have to train in dirty ((as much as is safely realistic )too. Not just something most people can do on the fly and more skill is required than one might believe. 😎
@@TheTobiasSimon they are the only kicks worth doing. Especially if you lead with your knee and snap your side kick. The way wonderboy does it is all wrong.
What's weird is that even if we accept that dirty fighting is dangerous and easy to pull off, the logical conclusion isn't "I will rely on eye gouges", it's "I will get really good at protecting my eyes against gouges". If you think eye gouges are so great, what's your plan for when someone gouges your eyes? Why do people get so confident when they remember that eyeballs are easy to destroy? Shouldn't that scare them away from violence? Did they forget that they have eyeballs too?
I probably should have talked about this more in the video: Relting on fighting dirty is stupid, but training to deal with someone fighting dirty is smart!
A GJJ teacher of mine with many challenge matches under his belt was working through the comers one night before class. Guy asks, "Can I use eye gouges?" Teach replies, "Just remember, you won't be the first to have tried it, and I still have both my eyes. And if you try it, after I choke you out, it will be MY turn... and you'll be sleeping with no ability to defend." Dude didn't try any eye attacks.
It's both. I have trained at gyms that have different sets of sparring rules. And what you find is that people who train under a set of rules that bans a tactic are both worse at executing that tactic and worse at defending against that tactic. If groin kicks are banned in your training, you're going to be really bad at defending against groin kicks. You're either going to get tagged really easily or you are going to overreact to them and leave yourself open in other ways. That's true for everything, not just dirty tactics. I used to train at a BJJ school that didn't allow any leg locks or foot locks below purple belt. The result is that nobody went for leg locks or foot locks, even after they got their purple belts because they had already developed habits that didn't include those techniques. I moved to a school that had no such ban. And you already know what happened. I tapped to leg locks and foot locks all the time because I hadn't developed any defense to them. There's nothing special about dirty tactics. They are tactics you either incorporate into your training or you don't. And, if you don't, you won't learn to defend them or to use them.
That's also a good point. Even if you haven't trained dirty fighting, you will still be able to use it. But you have to train legit fighting a lot in order to do it well. Therefore, you will get a much better return from training actual fighting instead of training dirty fighting. Is that kind of what you're saying?
@@ArmchairViolence Pretty much. Yeah. Legit fight training also leads to health & social benefits (fitness & friends). ...But one exception is that biting / chewing / eating during certain dietary / dining experiences can have health & social benefits too. ;)
@@ArmchairViolence I can get a nut shot in to cause permeant damage or ram my finger in your eye to cause permeant damage cause you wanted to fight me in the streets my goal is to hurt that person and cause permeant damage so they won't hurt me
Holyfield was headbutting Tyson, this is actually a good example of the point being made in the video. That dirty fighting technique got Holyfield wins, but pissed off Tyson enough to take a chunk of Holyfields ear out
I’ve always argued with people who say mma isn’t effective on the street because of groin shots and eye pokes by saying an mma fighter can use those too only they’re most likely still going to be better fighters and you’ve just given them permission to escalate things. Hadn’t thought of it quite in this way though. Totally agree with your reasoning 👍🏽
7:27 Training to do takedowns but then never getting into a fight will still make a person more fit and lead to a healthier life. Miming eye pokes or practicing on a dummy, not as much.
Bounced for almost 2 decades. Saw a couple guys die from konking their heads on the asphalt. Had a fellow bouncer go to jail for 7 years for manslaughter... Olympic judoka hopeful who threw a guy on the asphalt, cracked his head open, died. Ling-time family friend whose kids we watched grow up... her (then 30-ish) son has a drunk friend over. Friend goes irrational, attacks son. Son punches him once, friend goes down, cracks head on living room floor... manslaughter. Just cuz you ain't seen it doesn't make it unreal.
I understand what you are saying. I think in todays world ( In USA where gun laws are very relaxed in the last few years) you should shoot someone and get off easier that using a judo throw. That is assuming the guy is bigger and aggressive and you have witnesses. You just need to show to the Court that you were in fear of your life
In Australia in several States they have introduced specific laws concerning this phenomenon. Known as " 1 punch laws " they are used to prosecute where a death results from someone hitting their head on an object or the ground after an unprovoked attack. They were introduced directly as a result of numerous deaths from this type of attack and involve mandatory incarceration if proven. So just because its unlikely doesn't mean it won't or can't happen; in fact it happens far too often.
*"Friend goes irrational, attacks son. Son punches him once, friend goes down, cracks head on living room floor... manslaughter."* Sounds like a democrat jury in a democrat blue city shithole.
@@ArmchairViolence You already said it in the video that we're mostly talking in the context of a 'consensual' street or bar fight, but comments like Xyon's make me feel like there should be a follow up video discussing dirty fighting and maiming in the context of dealing with assaultive criminal violence i.e. sexual assault, attempted kidnapping, getting 'jumped'... basically any situation in which the person just wants to hurt you and doesn't care if don't want to fight, and they're actually counting on you not fighting back. I have a feeling most of the same points are probably gonna get repeated, but it might help put the arguments around dirty fighting to rest for longer. In the few times I did training in which dirty fighting was a part of curriculum, it was always with the caveat of "you actually need to know how to fight and wrestle, this will just help speed up the transitions in your favour so you don't fuck around for too long." Which is a point you and Mike already addressed. I guess maybe it'd help to spell out what kind of situation would be the one in which someone with a decent level of striking and grappling ability should have no reservations about using brutality right out the gate.
@@Raiden4019 Yeah, it's really a matter of whether you think there's a risk of escalating the fight. If they're already planning to maim or kill you, then you don't have much to lose. You just have to judge whether that extra weapon is worth making them even angrier.
@@ArmchairViolence I think you know before or early in the fight what the level will be and how you will need to defend yourself. But in my opinion it is far better to start of very aggressive and then back off if not needed than let him get an upper hand. Assuming it is a one -on - one fight.
@@Cuffsmaster I would go the other way because, if you start off very aggressive then they will respond aggressively. And now the fight IS aggressive! It's very easy to escalate a fight, and much harder to deescalate one (once it's already started). I do agree that you'll probably be able to tell what level it's at fairly quickly, but I would usually default towards less aggressive.
i never thought people would use the "head to the side walk" hypothesis to justify making the stakes lethal... the whole point of that hypothesis is the exact opposite, it's to tell people they shouldn't be casual about fights and try to avoid them as much as possible, especially bar fights and other escalating arguments that won't happen if you don't agree to them. if you don't wanna fight someone, even someone you pissed off with a witty line, just say "sorry, i was wrong, i won't fight you. you're stronger." and that's it, 80% of fights avoided. now the reverse conclusion to that hypothesis is that, since you don't engage in any casual fight at all, you avoid them like the plague, there's only a certain type of fight you won't manage to avoid, any fight you get into is very likely a life or death situation (and even in ego fights, you should be really careful of someone who still forced you to fight him after you tried to "submit" to avoid it).
There was a situation when a woman was abducted by her taxi driver. She was smart, she scratched and bit her assailant as much as she could. Not because she wanted the upper hand, but because she wanted a means to identify him. She had samples of his skin under her nails, her tooth impressions were left on the assailants skin and his skin particles on her tooth. She was able to pull a bunch of his hair, most of which contained roots, that were used to centrifuge DNA and match it on a data base. The police were able to identify the assailant because she, AT THE TIME chose to fight dirty and play it smart.
@@shinobi-no-bueno you can do! It's easier just to keep scratching, that way you have both skin and blood sample under your finger nails. Plus, I don't think you can get arrested for having fingers
@@memegazer that's true. However, because she chose to fight they way she did, even though she was raped, she was able to create a trail that lead back to her attacker. He is now facing life in prison
So it worked for gathering evidence, not self-defense. The problem is most just say "I don't need to learn how to fight. I'll just bite them or poke them in the eye" and use it as an excuse to not learn to fight. I'll be honest in that situation gathering evidence would be the last thing on my mind. And it doesn't really seem smart either. If I was abducted by someone much bigger and stronger than me that I can't just fight off, it seems like clawing them and biting them would just piss them off even more. I'm glad it all worked out in the end but that doesn't seem like good advice.
good point for id'ing. Likewise, if you get cut or bloodied, wipe the blood in different hidden parts of car and around, then you have DNA evidence for being in their car/house, etc. Or comb/ lightly tear out bits of your hair to leave around, so that there's your own DNA proof of being again in said car or house, if detectives or etc come by later tho, if you escalate, it could be problematic, if they were just planning to kidnap, it could escalate to worse if you're not careful. So it's good to be aware of as a possibility. Found they have like portable keychain car alarm kind of keychains. Could be a good self def alarm to scare attackers away. Be aware of general surroundings, scream for help as needed, etc
I think there's obvious dirty fighting techniques like you pointed out like biting someones ear off or gouging someone's eyes out but there's grey areas like headbutt or even kicking someone if they are partially or fully down. can't do it in MMA but if maybe it can knock them out and end the fight 🤷🏻♂️
That's very true, and the problem is that SOME people are going to consider that violating the unspoken rules, and some people aren't. There's honestly no good answer to that, but they're at least LESS likely to escalate the fight than the obvious dirty fighting moves.
Late to the party haha but recently discovered your channel and I guess RUclips sughests old videos. But I digress. One thing with both biting and scratching that I also find unsafe the following: it likely increasing the chance of getting in contact with another person's blood. And you know, that increasing your chance if getting infected with whatever. Even combat athletes are prevented from competing if they have bloodborne diseases. One more reasons to avoid fights altogether lol. And yes I know fiat fighting also has the same risk to start with.
I just found your channel and it's fuckin' awesome (my perspective - I trained Muay Thai for 7 years, had 1 amateur fight). Thumbs up and subscribed. EDIT - I agree with your approach about dirty tactics. I would have added 1 more case of fighting dirty - being outnumbered and having no way to escape. But this can be called "they started fighting dirty, now I can do it as well".
What if you spent the time learning to identify bad situations and leave before things go real bad, or learning to de escalate? It takes 2 people to "fight". Why are you fighting in the first place? Ego? Screw your ego. Be home by 10pm, don't go to bars, don't hang with drunk people, don't get drunk, don't go to shady places. Leave any place that seems rough or is full of drunks or is shady. Chances of getting in a fight are almost zero. These are things animals in the wild instinctively know. Ego driven humans are dumb.
i've been mugged twice (in Oakland Ca in the 90's-early 2000's) both times I pretty much got my ass kicked by multiple dudes with weapons but didn't get significantly hurt. gave up my money and a new hat (and some pride) but lived. Nothing I did would have changed what happened.
Good video but I have to say I disagree with the just learn something else argument 6:51. If you train 100 hours on grappling and 100 hours on striking, if you spend 1 hour on dirty fighting, you are unlikely to become a better significantly better grappler or striker in that time but you will have better dirty fighting than zero hours. also I think there is a use to training dirty fighting not to use it but to defend it. My jiu jitsu instructor told a story of a friend you got an ear bit off while moving to escape a headlock from mount. This could have been easily avoided if he trained with more awareness of that possibility. Which drilling dirty fighting once every so often can give you.
Yeah, but it's not black and white with dirty fighting and sport fighting being complete opposites. There is a lot of overlaps between the two. A grappler will be better at eye gouges than a non-grapplers. Grapplers are trained in grabbing a hold of people. They will be able better grab a hold of their opponents to eye-gouge. And a good striker who can reliably land inside leg kicks will be better at landing groin strikes than a not-so-good striker. One of the best ways to get good at dirty fighting is to be good at sport fighting.
@@ballsackschrader218 I agree entirely sports fighting trains the core fighting skill without which no amount of dirty fighting will save you and with these core skills you will be a more effective dirty fighter. However if you never train with or against dirty you won't be prepared to use or defend them . For kickboxing experience may mean theoretically you could deliver devastating groin kicks and easily check them however if you never spar with or against groin kicks, in a high stress situation you will likely do neither. Having said all that someone with combat sports experience will still dominate a street fight against someone untrained 9/10 times but a lack of dirty fighting experience could lead to missed opportunities or avoidable damage(which can be particularly long lasting in the case of dirty fighting even if it doesn't effect the fights outcome).
I was once kicked in the throat accidentally in a karate tournament (straight mawashi geri given after the referee called “yame” as I scored a point with a jako-tsuki). I was 12. I risk dying from it, my airway was stopped for 10seconds, then opened up but I still wasn’t fine breathing. I was admitted to a ENT ward for some days. When discharged, I kept coughing or clearing my throat every third breath and I had to concentrate sometimes to “begin to swallow”. Nearly one year later I underwent a laryngeo-tracheal-bronchoscopy in general anesthesia, to check the whole airway. After another years, all symptoms subsided and I went back to practice martial arts. I gave up karate years later and try others. That experience, facing instant death, shocked me. Though, in a way or another, it’s happened to many practitioners, I really believe that 1) hitting the throat in an uncontrolled way is despicable, unless your life is seriously and definitively in danger and 2) if it is not, it’s just risking killing your opponent for stupid reasons, which obviously has catastrophic legal consequences plus the shame of such behaviour. So, for me fighting dirty is just not fighting and probably, a good martial artist can do without it even in self defence scenario.
It seems like a very strange strategy to avoid some of the easiest and most effective tactics because attempting them might motivate your attacker to resort to them as well. By that logic, you shouldn't have any offense at all because that might motivate your attacker to also have offense. If someone's attacking you, you have already failed to de-escalate the situation. The goal is to escape, which may require incapacitating your attacker. A clean kick the goin is one way of doing that. So is popping an eye. Relying on your attacker's honor seems like a far riskier rolling of the dice than using any dirty tactic that I can think of. I also question the idea that an eye poke or a groin kick is more of an escalation of a fight than a takedown. If someone tries to kick me in the groin, I'm likely to block and back away as a response. If someone shoots for my legs, I'm likely to sprawl and fight for position. In this case, shooting for my legs escalated the fight while the groin kick motivated me to disengage. Going to the ground pretty much guarantees that the fight continues because it makes it harder for both people to fully disengage. Eye gouges and groin kicks are much easier to pull off than take-downs and require much less training. It's also much easier to kick someone's groin if he isn't expecting it. The training exercise where one person is only going for groin kicks and the other person is only defending is unrealistic. You could do the same thing with a jab. The person defending the jab will almost always defend successfully because he knows the jab and only the jab is coming. Does that make a jab a bad technique to go for in a fight? Try just doing normal sparring but allow groin kicks. A front goin kick functions a lot like a jab. The threat of that kick helps you to create distance and get a reaction. It's a positional move. If dirty tactics weren't effective, we wouldn't see fighters use them in professional fighting when they are allowed. But we even see professional fighters sometimes try to get away with them when they aren't allowed. Simply put, if dirty tactics weren't effective, you wouldn't need rules against them in professional fighting competitions.
When he talks about "escalating the fight," I think he actually means "raising the stakes" -- as in, using dirty moves might make your opponent want to hurt you even more. He doesn't say that they aren't effective at all; he argues that you don't know how an opponent will respond, and he states that he wouldn't take the risk in an even fight. However, he does say that, if you're already losing a fight, using dirty moves won't turn things around.
@@seanmadrilejo253 Yeah. I don't find that a compelling argument. It relies on my ability to understand my attacker's willingness to hurt me and how that willingness might change as a response to my behavior. I wouldn't bet on my ability to do so. If someone is attacking me, they want to hurt me. And I am not going to restrict myself from any behavior that may help me to minimize damage to myself. An attacker isn't going to follow any rules. If you place rules on yourself, you put yourself at a disadvantage. When I see these sorts of arguments, they seem to come from people who have never relaxed rules for sparring. You want to play the game that you have practiced. And you rationalize the idea that, if you play that game, your attacker will play it too. And if they play your game, then you will win. That just doesn't make sense.
The reason there are rules against biting, small joint manipulation, eye gouges, and fish hooks isn’t because they’re effective, it’s because they’re mostly INEFFECTIVE and stand a chance of permanently maiming your opponent for no reason. Yeah, you might break his fingers, but then when he gets up and beats your ass anyway he’s gotta deal with the consequences of an idiot using a bad strategy out of desperation- potentially for the rest of his life. For no reason and no benefit to anyone. Groin kicks are illegal because they work, but even when they were allowed, it wasn’t like Royce Gracie was destroying everyone because he was the best nut kicker present.
@@TheKyleMark Either what you're doing is ineffective or it permanently maims your opponent. If you're doing damage to your opponent, you're being effective. That's what "effective" means. I also think you drastically overestimate someone's ability to fight with broken fingers. Have you ever broken a finger? I broke a toe once in BJJ. Trust me when I say that immediately stopped the round. I was out for months healing. Could I have continued a fight in a life or death situation? Yes. But my capacity to fight would have been drastically diminished. If I were the aggressor in the situation and could expect my victim to retreat, a broken toe or broken finger would absolutely motivate me to withdraw my attack. My will to continue the fight would be destroyed. I hear this from BJJ guys more than others. "Sure, he may break my finger or gouge my eye, but then I'll break his neck." And I can only imagine they say this because they have never experienced a broken finger or a gouged eye. And they have some weird ideas from action movies about how people can continue to fight effectively after sustaining this kind of damage. No, you probably won't break his neck. You will find it to be very difficult to fight with a broken finger or gouged eye. You'll probably panic because you don't know how to react to this new thing you haven't trained for and have never experienced. I used to train at a gym that didn't allow any footlocks because they were "too dangerous." Then, a guest instructor did a footlock seminar. You know what happens to guys when they get footlocked after not training with footlocks? They freeze up and make bad decisions. That's what people do when they are faced with unfamiliar situations. You would see BJJ black belts just freeze up and have no clue what their next move should be because they are in an unfamiliar situation. The purpose of self-defense training is to make those situations more familiar so you have some way to intelligently react. You shouldn't have to think about it. It should be automatic. If your training does provide you with instinctive reactions to a set of attacks, those attacks will be especially effective against you even if they are not objectively the best attacks. By the way, this is also why Royce Gracie was so successful when he was fighting. He was fighting in a way that few of his opponents had trained for. It was a time when fighting mostly meant some form of boxing or kickboxing. When he got guys on the ground, they would freeze up and make bad decisions. But I'm sure they thought, "If he tries to wrestle me, I'll just knock him out."
Great comprehensive analysis, I completely agree. And I also share sentiment of "not worth the risk". Probably only thing left are consideration if using only threat of dirty things change something 🤔. Btw. I may (considering your use of word "dimension") or may not be person who writed and deleted mentioned comment. I wrote one about introducing new dimensions to fight, in which you have chance to be better, when things are even. And speculated, that even if dirty things could be used for that purpose if you trained them, it may be better to use that time to work on things that make you winning, instead even. But finally, even after few edits, I didn't like how I phrased the comment* and deleted it with intention of writing it again... which obliviously I didn't do 😅. But, if comment that inspired you was mine, then I must say I really liked how you phrased and completed the though, so all is well that ends well 😀. * - And didn't really have idea how address the problem that learning new things may be easier that perfecting those you already familiar with. So I really love example of Icy Mike and takedowns in this context - new is fairly relative and most of us have many new things even beside that. Finally personal predisposition are also probably strong factor to what be easier to learn... but I don't think there will be that many mentally healthy people with positive predisposition to things like eye gauging.
It was probably your comment! Thank you for providing the perfect counterargument to Mike's point! I think your original comment actually said you agreed with Mike, but then you ended up defending my point better than I did lol I think the threat of dirty fighting could potentially be used to stop someone from starting a fight. If you tell them that messing with you means it's going to be a fight to the death, they might completely back off. But, of they do attack you, then it WILL be a fight to the death! So, I think those kind of threats can be used, but you just have to use your best judgment in each situation to decide if it's a good idea.
@@ArmchairViolence Its stared with something like "Mike kind of has a point about" 😀 (which was mostly figure of speech, as it marked only weak point I saw in your previous version of argumentation). So probably I can say: glad to be of service 😀. As far as threat goes I was thinking about things like marking a kick in general direction of groin. Or something along those lines that give you desired reaction, but may be not clear enough to cause escalation. But after consideration any examples I can think of are at least simply unreliable (both in case of effect and "not being clear") and for many cases I cannot even think of example that could work that way. Controversially I can think of examples that aren't dirty, but to some extent could work more reliably to that goal - eg. covering up someone eyes instead eye gauging. Another example that there may be many better ways to introduce new dimension to a fight.
Honestly this should be one of the first things they should teach at a self defense course. I don't take any self defense courses but this only makes me feel like I should be more confident at basic fighting skills.
i think 2 good ways to eye gouge would be to either use a post - JBJ style just have your fingers out for them to walk onto - or a super loose, fingery jab - just trying to graze or at least distract with your fingers in their face you can blast them with an overhand. That said I've never done either of these. And tbh if you can just jab them in the eye normally you get the benefit + the extra damage
I mostly agree but I do have anecdote that supports Icy mike I once got into a pretty nasty street fight with someone who was a fairly accomplished wrestler at the time I only had striking experience and even if I also wrestled at the time it’s unlikely it would have helped since he was a particularly good wrestler and larger than me so long story short after getting beat black and blue with ground and pound I freaked out started biting him which led to him pulling away and me scrambling back to my feet before either of us had even really gotten fully up I just lunged in and started swinging and I knocked him unconscious so in my opinion yeah takedowns are more important than dirty fighting no argument there but it’s still worth practicing cause fights are unpredictable and you never know what tool you might need btw super underrated channel
Armchair Violence fair my point is sometimes you just gotta make a decision and live with it but when I compete I am prone to risky but high reward moves so maybe I just am a gambler at heart lol
I agree with Icy Mike on his point on using the Dirty Tactics as an opportunity I tell people (Mostly women) who hold too much respect for thos tactics, Eyes, Throat, and Groin are not finishers but are solid setups for one
Hmmmmm, there is a lot here. You seem to be talking about mutual fighting. That’s a drunk sport fight, and there are definitely rules in that and I agree, in that situation overstepping those boundaries definitely can get you in a bad situation. However, don’t choose to fight people over ego. Personally I have lied, apologized, bluffed, reasoned and walked away from a lot of those situations. That kind of fighting in my opinion is ego fighting, and I would hope that most people watching this are mature enough to attempt to extricate themselves from that situation without fighting. If you want to fight do a ring sport and fight other people equally trained as you … with a trainer ref and ring doctor. The MMA knees to the nuts in the early days… groin protection does make a difference… or they wouldn’t use it. What is dirty fighting. Is pretending to be scared, turning away like you’re turtling and suddenly exploding into violence dirty fighting? Is picking up a rock and hammering it into someone’s clavicle dirty fighting? Are elbows and headbutts dirty fighting? In some circles kicking is dirty… what defines a dirty fight? Why would anyone fight for a wallet knowing that muggers rarely work alone, are goal oriented and only pick people that they are pretty sure they can easily fuck up? Give the guy/guys your wallet… fight back when they want you to go with them, or they want to hurt someone under your protection. Not over material objects. (Just my opinion). All in all… great points made here. And I think there is a tendency for people to think that some stupid dirty tactic will make them win… which is such false security. I like your videos and will continue watching. I hope you don’t mind me throwing in some counter arguments here and there. I hope I didn’t come off as disrespectful. Have a great day.
@@darkghoul4049 sorry your right, it was UFC 4 that changed the rules. After Keith hackney kneed an opponent into submission with groin strikes. Forcing him to give up.
@@JoelHuncar he was pinned and striked a hundred times. If it wasn't groin strike it would had been the same result. The point of no groin strike and the back of the head isn't that it is too effective. They are out for the longevity of the fighters. Who the hell wants to fighters to be fertile?
Groin strikes are banned for the health of the fighters. Fighters can do dozens of fights in their lifetime and if they get hit in the groin for multiple of those fights, it affects the long-term health of those fights. In a single short-term street fight, it really isn't a major deal. I've been kneed in the groin in a high school fight. While it hurt like hell, I was still standing, I could still move and defend and attack. You might get someone who isn't that motivated to fight you to back off with a groin strike, but you can also do that with a good leg kick or even a punch. If someone really wants to hurt you, a groin wouldn't do much and you'll just make them a lot angrier.
I’m still not understanding.are there rules in a street fight or no?bc if I’m a teacher n I tell my students hey u can’t stomp on someone’s head if there unconscious in a fight.that’s basically a rule??but if a non trained fighter says u can’t grapple in a street fight then that’s a rule..I think street thugs have dumb rules while martial artist have a more advanced approach when it comes to rules in a street fight?am I right on this?
We do light sparring with cups and allowed groin strikes and i think i helps to be prepared against groin strikes. Also we rarly use them, because most guys only need a few weeks of training and sparring to alter their stance slightly, so that groin strikes are hard to land. I think we should also do a bit of training in dirty tactics but mostly agree with you.
I agree with you and icy mike personally. I think it's a great idea to have dirty moves in your tool kit for whenever you need them but I don't think that should be your first course of action for the reasons you gave in this video and in your video with icy Mike.
You’re making well-reasoned, nuanced points about physical skills related to fighting and self-defense. Fighting is highly contextual, so at the risk of being a “what if” guy, I’d like to bring up an idea about groin strikes I didn’t hear from your video. I agree groin strikes are difficult to land in an actively fighting/sparing context. When applied to self-defense, in a limited context, I believe they have application as a preemptive strike.
A second point about groin strikes in a sparring context. With some very solid, trustworthy, sparring partners I included groin strikes into my MMA sparring. A few things we all found out pretty quickly. A groin strike is a kick to the body. Except for a front push kick, it is also a relatively slow kick. Much like a round kick to the body, the shots had to be set up, usually behind punches. Just like we would get punished for throwing body kicks with out a set up, we would eat some shot throwing a rising front kick-even a little more because we were squared up. Funny side effects, having groin kicks as a tool made rounds kicks land more. When we only had a split second to commit a check or parry to the groin or body, almost everyone defended the groin (obviously). We didn’t even have to throw many front kicks, just threaten it a few times and it cleared the path to the liver like magic.
@@coltonkirshner-lira5398 I trained alot of MMA and then I did some Krav Maga. In the sparring in the the start the groin kicks went through my defense because I've never trained to defend that area because of the rules and lack of attacks there. But after a very few good nutshots you get pretty good at defending that place. And also switching to a bladed stance is really good at covering up there. So my 2 cents are that groin strike will work the first time and in a self defence situation you should do a suprise groin strike hard and then you run away while your attacker is incapacated for a few moments. But if its a "fight" then I agree with the statements of the video. The first might land but then the opponent will adjust and fight by the "new" rules you just applied and aslo escalate.
Man. It was hard for me to watch this video all the way til the end before making a comment but I pushed Through. I’m glad I did because the last 20 seconds is the ONLY thing that Self Defense people should be training for. Anything else is just ego, unnecessary and can get you ‘yes’ killed or locked up. It’s not worth it. If things get to the point of getting physical then all fairness is off the table. That being said , the law is clear on this on. “You may use the amount of force that you deem Necessary to defend yourself. No more no less” Oh. One more thing. You will never kick a man in the groin if he knows your trying to kick him the groin. Especially without a cup ;) .
people talk about eye gauging as if is to easy to take an eye out. but in a fact poking an eye in purpose of scratching the cornea, is very useful i got scratched that way while sparing, and that immediately prevent me from open my eye effectively. so that is good for the purpose of getting an advantage and than making the finishing move (strike or grapple), and that not really maiming. it heals over time, so not a real biggy.
First off: I find it hilarious that there's a disclaimer warning about violence in a video on a channel called "armchair violence" 😁 (Yes, I understand why the disclaimer is necessary. Some people are idiots.) You make very good content. Your videos are very thoughtful, very logical, very well structured, entertaining and well produced. I mostly agree with you but I'd also agree with Icy Mike. Also, kicking someone in the groin in sparring where groin kicks are allowed is possible. I have done it before and I wasn't even a good striker. For example you can do it off of checking a low kick with your opposite leg and then simply kicking them in the groin before you put your leg down. It doesn't look good but it works. In my experience groin kicks might not always be an instant fight ender (although they can be) but they might be a useful weapon in your arsenal along with all your other skills. However, I do agree with you that you shouldn't use them in a situation where you chose to fight someone. But I might use them and other dirty fighting techniques in a self-defense situation. They wouldn't be your only tool and you wouldn't expect them to end the fight right away but, as Icy Mike said, they can open up new opportunities. Make someone flinch, focus their attention on something else or get another reaction you can work with.
I train eye pokes, gauges. Thought, I don't train them too excessively, and when I do it's either combined with a palm strike or it's an opportunity I could be punching the person. And, even there I usually actually do the punching instead. So the idea of practicing takedowns isn't actually a good example as it would be harder and more time consuming to do. I can empathise as to him saying that in regards to how others train though. I've seen eye attacks being a main option to go to for some people.
Going feral from the start is a good tactic to intimidate your opponent an avoid the actual fight. That is why I always whip out pepper spray and spray it all over my face. Nobody wants to fuck with a person who does that.
I think the point people try to make with THERE ARE NO RULES is when somebody approaches you, and there is nobody around to help you or him. Now you have to assume that he really wants to kill you or harm you badly.
Quite some disagreements here: Premises of "win/lose/draw" Streetfighting is not a sports competition where the winner is determined via triumph over the loser. You can NOT win a streetfight. Once the fight is on, you've already lost, because your objective was to be safe, have a drink with your friends, enjoy the evening, walk home in a good mood. Even if you beat down the attacker(S), you'll most likely have some physical injuries, and even if not, you'll be negatively impacted emotionally and probably legally. Your day(s) will be ruined. And legally, even if you can prove self-defense, you'll have to deal with probably a year long rat's tail of court interaction, that's time sucked away you may need for writing papers/preparing for exams at college/university, doing business meetings for your business you wanted to expand, going on holiday with your wife, or whatever your life situation. Premises of "challenge" (aka ritual fight with subconscious "gentlemen's agreement" on a certain set of rules) So, if someone "challenges" you to a fight, do NOT accept that challenge! Angry drunk guy at a bar - buy him a beer, accidently bumped into someone on the street - apology, someone wants to play alpha male and show dominance to mark "his territory" - leave. Swollow your ego and decline any challenge. If despite all (real) efforts to escape a "challenge", the attacker doesn't stop, it's not a ritual fight with subconscious rules anymore, it's pure assault and you can't count on any mercy of the attacker. Rules are off, and you should use any tool available to you to end the attack as fast as possible. The longer the attack goes on, the higher the chances of damage for yourself. Eye-gouges and groin shots may not be fight-enders, but they can certainly be fight-changers. You don't need to "finish" the attacker, you need an opening to get out of and away from the situation. Premises of training 1) Your training experiment clip of groin kicks you showed with Mike and Seth is unrealistic. You knew they would try to groin kick and ONLY groin kick you. They did nothing else. So, of course, it's easy to defend if you know there is only one target. It's very different if you tell them they should sneak in a groin kick while doing a full kickbox sparring. Accidental groin kicks regularly happen in kickbox training sessions. If I can inside low kick you, I can groin kick you. 2) Training time "better invested". You wouldn't train "dirty tactics" only to apply them, but it would also serve for you to be less surprised and to know how to deal with them if an attacker uses them on you. Training something means also training defense to it.
Hey dumbass if you watch any of his other videos the first part of your comment makes no sense. the whole point of self defense is to keep yourself safe and fights are not safe. This is a point he makes in many of his videos
My great-grandfather fought in the Spanish Civil War. His drill sergeant was a boxer and taught his men dirty boxing techniques. My great-grandfather told me that at one point in the war both sides resorted to hand-to-hand combat due to lack of ammunition. He told me that the techniques his sergeant taught him helped him survive. He told me that the secret was to use the fear of dying and transform it into homicidal rage. And although you are right that not all fights are about kill or being killed, some fights are and in that case you have to abandon all inhibitory restraint and the clothing of a civilized man to adopt feral behavior. There is no being more fearsome than a cornered alley cat, and if survival is a biological imperative, it is not wrong to use instinct to survive.
It might be something that you may use if someone is strangling you with the intention to kill you. Otherwise it probably isn't worth the risk of escalation, and probably won't stop the attacker effectively enough.
Even if you do hit them below the waist, it would do very little to nothing at all. And with eye gouging, your aiming at a very small target with both people moving around constantly.
I 100% agree with the notion of avoiding scaling up a fight, specially if you are losing. But i agree with @Ice Mike that if the fight evolves to that (or starts at that level) is better to have pratice than not. For example, that traning session of groin kick with Seth and Mike. That showed that groin strikes are not that reliable as most people think, and you increased your awareness for noticing groin strikes. Yes, most people will instinctive defend themselfs, but just like kyokushin practitioners suck at get punched in the face and defend against them, if you do not practice, your reaction will be similar to people that do not know how to fight (is you will have better space awareness and reflexes, but still act on instinct, not conditioning). Is better to have a tool and not need it, than not having it and need. If that tool is cost-effective, and some dirty fighting move are, some are not. Headbutt? Valid. Groin Strike? Valid. Bitting and scraching? Maybe a couple lessons per year. Eye gouging, small joint manipulation, etc...? Same.
Depends on the situation. If it's a fight you "have" to win = takedown (proper technique) If all else fails and you need a distraction to get away to safety, call for help etc. = eye gouge (dirty fighting)
I think that the real effective dirty fighting is at the edges, not the blatantly violent escalations but the subtle dirty moves that give people advantages, holyfield’s subtle and sly head butting in a boxing match, Jon jones kicking peoples knees, various ‘rips’ in bjj which might expose a chin for choking but aren’t really legal in the rule set, pushing someone’s head away in bjj by applying pressure to the nose. None of which are recommended if you want to remain on friendly terms with your training partners, but they do provide an edge in situations in some situations
I actually agree with you after watching this, at first I thought you were wrong. But coming from a third world hell hole where murders and crime are per capita comparable to war time Iraq, I'd say the regulated street fighting is a no go here. Our people are savage and will typically escalate to guns or machetes just for looking at them wrongly. Nobody gets in street fights or bar fights here because there's an implicit cultural rule that we're either going to die or go to jail (which is far more disgusting and uncivilised than American jails). Dirty fighting is something we have to learn to employ if running away is not possible.
Yeah, third world countries can be quite different. My video was mainly addressing street fights in Western countries, where most start out pretty tame and there is a LOT of room for escalation.
"Dirty fighting is something we have to learn to employ if running away is not possible." 👍 It is true! .. Instant response to the dirty fighting opponent will not happen when you are just an athlete on rules, since the instinctive reaction of on-rules fighters are based on saving the opponent's life. I have experienced a few of street fights by accident, where I had to take my friends away from besieging gangsters. It is tougher than one can imagine. We will be attacked immediately by dirty fighting techniques whilst we do not have sense of fighting dirty which can apply at the time. 🙏 INSTINCTIVE reaction can only be created by training hard, not imagination.
My take on this is that dirty fighting is good at creating openings to gain initiative. They dont win fights by themselves most of the time but are good tool to have. And its really hard to keep focus and stay in a fight after a decent kick to the groin.
"There are rules in a streetfight" So if I ever find myself in a streetfight, I don't have to worry about getting sucker punched, getting jumped, getting kicked while I'm on the ground, or a weapon being drawn because moral principle is gonna possess someone to put themselves in danger to come to my aid and break up the fight?
For stats on fatalities after hitting the pavement, Google one punch deaths. In the UK its estimated 80 people died this way between 2007 and 2017. That averages 8 per year. Given the population its fairly negligible. However I guess odds increase massively for those that have an active nightlife.
See, I could find those numbers, but I couldn't find any good statistics on the number of fistfights in a given population. I was trying to figure out what the odds from dying from a punch are in a given fist fight. Without that, I can't really assess the odds of it happening in any given fight. :/
@@ArmchairViolence could look at admittance to A&E possibly to give a rough idea. Or more interestingly look at the circumstances of the one punch deaths. Are they generally people caught off guard, drunk, at night etc? Although not giving odds would explain how the situations can be easily avoided. There was actually a documentary about it several years back, not sure if it's online somewhere. It basically looked at people who had been locked up for accidentally killing someone this way, but also how some people didn't as it was self defence. It was an interesting program.
@@AlexanderGent Looking at how they happen is actually a pretty good idea. Maybe they're more likely in certain kinds of confrontations. Dang, now I have to do more research! Lol
@@Matt90Nine Totally agree. I have actually said before, that personally I think ukemi, general fitness, coordination and wellbeing is the most important role in MA for the everyday person.
What even is dirty fighting? For example what about hair grabs on people with longer hair? (Yes, men have them too). I would think in a clinch this is high percentage technique(?) and not elevating danger but reducing it since it's a control move not "I want to fucking kill you" move?
Yeah, one of the main reasons I didn't mention hair pulling is because it doesn't have the same problem of maiming people and escalating the fight, even though most people would think of it as "fighting dirty." Plus, you really can stop people from doing it to you by keeping your hair really short, so hair pulling really doesn't have the same problems as other "dirty" moves. It isn't super useful in the clinch, if the other person really knows what to do. But they don't know what to do or you manage to grab their hair at arms' length, then it's often really easy to put them on the ground.
I understand where you are coming from, and there definitely is such a thing as a graduated use of force in self defence, but: A) I don't think the line you are trying to draw between "safer" techniques used in competition and "dirty fighting" really exists in the way you seem to think. Competition techniques can main or kill in the uncontrolled circumstances of a street fight or self defence situation. Opponents may not tap out from locks or strangles because they don't understand what's happening, and you may have to actually cause injury. There is no definite line between how hard a punch needs to be to knock someone out and how hard it needs to be to kill. If you do maim or kill someone using competition techniques, and there are legal consequences, good luck trying to explain that while you did repeatedly punch and kick them, the fact that they suffered injury was an accident or that you didn't mean to inflict serious harm. Also, some "dirty tactics" such as biting, don't actually carry as high a risk of causing serious injury as competition techniques. Thats why (as you point out) people continue fighting after they are used. B) I wouldn't always trust bystanders to referee a street fight in a way thats fair or likely to prevent serious injury. Bystanders often know one of the participants, and may only step in to prevent serious harm if they see it happening to a friend or acquaintance. If the crowd doesn't know or like you, they may wait until you are seriously injured before anyone says or does anything.
it is easy to block a groin shot if you know it is gonna happen. and i agree its a small target so no point for going for it unless its a counter like (the dude went for a front kick so you sidestep and grab the leg than do a roundhouse kick upward to the groin" or you have a fast lead roundhouse. and do mma fighters get kick in the groin sometimes with snap kicks and roundhouses. like that big asian dude who took a kick to the nuts that even the heaven heard the impact.
I can attest to how hard it is to kick someone in the nuts, when I was in elementary school, one of my friends were grappling me (he was much stronger) so I went for the nut kick, none of it landed he easily dodged it.
Good video but: "... if criminals were rational they wouldn't be criminals." XD My dude I have some painful news for you about lawmakers... They aren't always (or even normally?) that interested in fairness or justice! A very convincing argument for 'crime can be rational' is made in the first 10 minutes of the film 'Aladdin' I believe :P
The moral of the story is, if he ain't fighting dirty, it's probably best you don't escalate the conflict. Better to get knocked out then to lose your eyes over a dumb argument.
I accidentally kicked my trainer in the nuts during sparring two weeks ago. I was trying to teep to the body, but I was getting tired and completely missed. I apologised profusely after I did it, but I think he's mad at me 😅
One thing a number of "dirty fighting" techniques have in common is that they hit very "soft target" parts of the body. Because of this, they can do significant damage even without a lot of force behind them. This isn't that important if I am a decent sized adult male who spends a bunch of time training combat techniques and can punch significantly hard. So sure, for the kind of person who makes videos about martial arts, fighting dirty isn't that useful. But if I am a small person without a ton of strength, and I find myself being victimized by someone twice my size who could absorb my punches forever without noticing, my only significant chance of escaping without getting badly hurt is probably to hit them in that kind of soft target where it doesn't matter that they are big and beefy and it doesn't matter that I can't generate a massive impact (then, while they are cursing, run like hell). And that kind of scenario, where the big and strong are attacking the weak for fun and profit, probably doesn't involve any gentlemen's agreements on the attacker's part--they will hurt you because they can and they enjoy it, and there is no knowing how extreme "hurt" will turn out to be.
In general you hit some good points in your vids. In my opinion you points are often Black or white. Of course dirty Tricks work. Depends on who execute it....to whom. what i like to say it depends. And what does work mean is also a question....
I agree, only when it's clear that your life is on the line or they have already chosen to escalate is it worth it. For that reason alone having at least minimum training in dirty fighting and more importantly COUNTERING it is a good idea. But the majority of your time should be spend on practical techniques that don't take the fight to "The next level" The point of self defense is to limit the damage you receive, so most of the time, ya, don't go breaking the "Geneva Conventions" of street fights.
I'm still siding with Mike, because "street fights" aren't self defense. Street fights are idiots getting into situations they should avoid. If your goal is to train martial arts for self defense, you train evasion, deescalation, sprinting and situational awareness first. So the only fights you get into when you're good at self defense are fights that are unavoidable and hence life threatening. And in this case training "dirty techniques" gives you not only the benefit of a bigger tool box, but you might also be used to them getting applied on you. Of course a takedown is worth more than an eye poke, but fighting isn't just picking the 4 best tools and spamming them. Using a wheel kick or getting attacked with one for example is very unlikely, but with a little practice you can at least deal with it and that's imo better than disregarding it completely.
Being in a fight doesn't necessarily mean it's a fight to the death. It just means it's a fight that you failed to avoid. A lot of people are NOT good at self-defense. And no one is PERFECT at self-defense, so I don't think you can assume that every fight is a life or death encounter. Anyone could end up in an argument where someone throws a punch. Deescalation is never perfect. And you can definitely train the techniques. My point (which I may have communicated badly) was not that you can never train them, but that you should get pretty good at the bread-and-butter effective stuff first. A wheel kick is a great tool to have, but it's also one of the last kicks you learn. Nobody would teach you wheel kicks until you get good at round, side, front, and spinning back kicks, at least. But I can definitely see the argument that training them occasionally could allow you to defend against dirty tactics better. Training to defend against them is probably a better use of time than training to use them. But the bread-and-butter stuff should still probably come first. Dirty tactics are only really worth spending time on when you have sufficient practice at most everything else.
@@ArmchairViolence I totally agree on the fundamentals. Basic grappling and striking should always be the main focus for efficient fighting. No arguing there. But I still disagree to a degree with your view on physical encounters. In my experience every unnecessary fight can be avoided. If someone's getting into arguments that escalate into violence, I would suggest they learn proper arguing/social behavior instead of fighting. And if a clear "I don't want to fight you. Please leave me alone" doesn't work and is still followed by an attack, the gloves are off imo. At that moment I'm fighting for my life and safety and will do what's necessary to get out on top. If I know the person and they are just in a bad space, that's a different story, but if I don't know them, I don't know how far they'll go and won't take my chances that they'll stop after hitting me a couple of times. I've seen too many people getting their head caved in by soccer kicks after they've been knocked out to risk that happening to me. I think you're correct about the "referee hivemind", but it doesn't always happen and even if it does, it's often way too late. But to come back to me agreeing with you, I wouldn't use "dirty techniques" if I'm either easily winning or getting outclassed. It's a bad idea both times. But if the fight is pretty even, it's a valid tactic imo. I'd rather risk a bite or an eye gouge in retaliation than heavy head trauma. Being blind sucks, being brain dead is hell.
@@jc-kj8yc if im fighting a family member or sum then yea..but if im fightin someone who I don’t know,has never met then fuk it…no rules..cause before the fight even starts I’ll be warning hey I don’t wanna fight,,leave me alone.and walk away.u ignore that shi yes ima feel like my mf life is on the line.n ima do wats necessary.now this dosnt mean u should kill the opponent NEVER N I MEAN NEVER kill in a street fight,weapon or not that’s life.but do defend yourself by cutting off A:air flow (choking them out)a disrupting there breathing by throat strikes,B Be brutal with your strikes but once they hit the ground stop C knock them out D Dislocate something so u can E…Escape…
If dirty tacticts would be super good we would know and have writen evidence of it. But what do we have? Wrestling, boxing, TMA and different Swordstyles around the world... not much biting in it. Yes you could counter argument that they had their honor and codes and what not. But war is war.
Your title is far too simplistic for the excellent point I believe you are trying to make; "you should carefully scale the tactics and Level of force you are using to match the level of violence and risk you are dealing with, while taking lots of different factors into account. For instance, 'how will law enforcement react to my actions?'.."
I don't think you are saying dirty fighting *never* works. I think you are saying something far more nuanced than most modern combatives systems will understand or agree with.
This is a very good summary of my points, so I'm pinning this!
@@ArmchairViolence cool,thanks. Violence is kinda like auto repair; you've gotta have alot of different tools for fixing a huge number of different problems. Unfortunately in the Martial Arts world, nearly everyone chooses only to get and use a hammer.
I think a lot of armchair violence vids do that
The title is pretty vague but the points he makes are pretty good and articulated
First- I would say that in the street as opposed to the mat or the octagon there is no such thing as “dirty fighting “ only what works and gives you chance and what most likely won’t. That is on a continuum of course. Sometimes you have to match their level.
However- second, given the circumstances and as long as you can articulate why- you may be the one to have to tactically escalate so as to get ahead of it and survive. Your decisions and training will used by the others guy (s) defense team (s). The powers that be will probably interview your instructors, guys you train (trained) with and if you compete- footage, etc. if you can justify your actions (however brutal they may need to be) it will most likely be 👌 😎
Of course one has to assess the situation. If one has any critical thinking skills or life experience that should be obvious. I mean if you’re training at a Cobra Kai type place where no mercy rules you could be headed for trouble. That said you have to train in dirty ((as much as is safely realistic )too. Not just something most people can do on the fly and more skill is required than one might believe. 😎
He’s right.. you guys probably aren’t as good as me
Is that a challenge 😂
@@shinobi-no-bueno bruh it’s a joke my striking sucks
Sensei Seth obviously you needed to do a side kick to the groin. It’s the kick that works. 🤦🏽♂️
@@christophervelez1561 Side kicks don’t work
@@TheTobiasSimon they are the only kicks worth doing. Especially if you lead with your knee and snap your side kick. The way wonderboy does it is all wrong.
What's weird is that even if we accept that dirty fighting is dangerous and easy to pull off, the logical conclusion isn't "I will rely on eye gouges", it's "I will get really good at protecting my eyes against gouges". If you think eye gouges are so great, what's your plan for when someone gouges your eyes?
Why do people get so confident when they remember that eyeballs are easy to destroy? Shouldn't that scare them away from violence? Did they forget that they have eyeballs too?
I probably should have talked about this more in the video:
Relting on fighting dirty is stupid, but training to deal with someone fighting dirty is smart!
A GJJ teacher of mine with many challenge matches under his belt was working through the comers one night before class. Guy asks, "Can I use eye gouges?" Teach replies, "Just remember, you won't be the first to have tried it, and I still have both my eyes. And if you try it, after I choke you out, it will be MY turn... and you'll be sleeping with no ability to defend."
Dude didn't try any eye attacks.
@@davecrouch1013 LOL excellent story. Do you remember who the instructor was?
@@ArmchairViolence Rickson. At the Laguna Niguel Raquet Club satellite school, at the time run by Mark Eccard and Dave Kama.
It's both. I have trained at gyms that have different sets of sparring rules. And what you find is that people who train under a set of rules that bans a tactic are both worse at executing that tactic and worse at defending against that tactic. If groin kicks are banned in your training, you're going to be really bad at defending against groin kicks. You're either going to get tagged really easily or you are going to overreact to them and leave yourself open in other ways.
That's true for everything, not just dirty tactics. I used to train at a BJJ school that didn't allow any leg locks or foot locks below purple belt. The result is that nobody went for leg locks or foot locks, even after they got their purple belts because they had already developed habits that didn't include those techniques. I moved to a school that had no such ban. And you already know what happened. I tapped to leg locks and foot locks all the time because I hadn't developed any defense to them.
There's nothing special about dirty tactics. They are tactics you either incorporate into your training or you don't. And, if you don't, you won't learn to defend them or to use them.
I agree. Never fight dirty. Showers exist for a reason.
Underrated comment. 😂😎👌🏻👍🏻👊🏻
Shower + Bubble bath with a rubber ducky is the best triple combo. 💯
Extremely underrated comment
@@migueltorres1949 with Irish spring
If you shower though you won't be able to do added posion damage
Glad you brought up Tyson vs Holyfield.
A biter can bite; a boxer can bite... and box.
That's also a good point. Even if you haven't trained dirty fighting, you will still be able to use it. But you have to train legit fighting a lot in order to do it well. Therefore, you will get a much better return from training actual fighting instead of training dirty fighting.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
@@ArmchairViolence Pretty much. Yeah. Legit fight training also leads to health & social benefits (fitness & friends).
...But one exception is that biting / chewing / eating during certain dietary / dining experiences can have health & social benefits too. ;)
Well, Holyfield certainly gave Tyson an earful.
@@ArmchairViolence I can get a nut shot in to cause permeant damage or ram my finger in your eye to cause permeant damage cause you wanted to fight me in the streets my goal is to hurt that person and cause permeant damage so they won't hurt me
Holyfield was headbutting Tyson, this is actually a good example of the point being made in the video. That dirty fighting technique got Holyfield wins, but pissed off Tyson enough to take a chunk of Holyfields ear out
That’s why I always keep a bottle of windex in case I get too dirty while fighting.
I’ve always argued with people who say mma isn’t effective on the street because of groin shots and eye pokes by saying an mma fighter can use those too only they’re most likely still going to be better fighters and you’ve just given them permission to escalate things.
Hadn’t thought of it quite in this way though. Totally agree with your reasoning 👍🏽
7:27 Training to do takedowns but then never getting into a fight will still make a person more fit and lead to a healthier life.
Miming eye pokes or practicing on a dummy, not as much.
Why not practice takedowns instead of dirty fighting?
Jon Jones: *practices both*
Jon Jones gets to learn more than everyone else because he practices all his new moves on his wife!
😂😬
@@ArmchairViolence God damn, you did not have to attack my eyes with this raw comment.
Funny as hell.
Master Wong : *grab the nuts, smesh the nuts*
Bounced for almost 2 decades. Saw a couple guys die from konking their heads on the asphalt. Had a fellow bouncer go to jail for 7 years for manslaughter... Olympic judoka hopeful who threw a guy on the asphalt, cracked his head open, died.
Ling-time family friend whose kids we watched grow up... her (then 30-ish) son has a drunk friend over. Friend goes irrational, attacks son. Son punches him once, friend goes down, cracks head on living room floor... manslaughter.
Just cuz you ain't seen it doesn't make it unreal.
He never said impossible he said it was highly unlikely🤦♂️🤦♂️
The fact that you've seen it happen so many times gives me a lot of questions about your life.
I understand what you are saying. I think in todays world ( In USA where gun laws are very relaxed in the last few years) you should shoot someone and get off easier that using a judo throw. That is assuming the guy is bigger and aggressive and you have witnesses. You just need to show to the Court that you were in fear of your life
In Australia in several States they have introduced specific laws concerning this phenomenon. Known as " 1 punch laws " they are used to prosecute where a death results from someone hitting their head on an object or the ground after an unprovoked attack. They were introduced directly as a result of numerous deaths from this type of attack and involve mandatory incarceration if proven. So just because its unlikely doesn't mean it won't or can't happen; in fact it happens far too often.
*"Friend goes irrational, attacks son. Son punches him once, friend goes down, cracks head on living room floor... manslaughter."*
Sounds like a democrat jury in a democrat blue city shithole.
*Basically*
Fighting Dirty is unnecessary UNLESS both fighters agreed its a fight to the death.
Yep, pretty much. If the other guy does something that makes you think it's a fight to the death, then you might as well go BALLISTIC
@@ArmchairViolence You already said it in the video that we're mostly talking in the context of a 'consensual' street or bar fight, but comments like Xyon's make me feel like there should be a follow up video discussing dirty fighting and maiming in the context of dealing with assaultive criminal violence i.e. sexual assault, attempted kidnapping, getting 'jumped'... basically any situation in which the person just wants to hurt you and doesn't care if don't want to fight, and they're actually counting on you not fighting back.
I have a feeling most of the same points are probably gonna get repeated, but it might help put the arguments around dirty fighting to rest for longer. In the few times I did training in which dirty fighting was a part of curriculum, it was always with the caveat of "you actually need to know how to fight and wrestle, this will just help speed up the transitions in your favour so you don't fuck around for too long." Which is a point you and Mike already addressed. I guess maybe it'd help to spell out what kind of situation would be the one in which someone with a decent level of striking and grappling ability should have no reservations about using brutality right out the gate.
@@Raiden4019 Yeah, it's really a matter of whether you think there's a risk of escalating the fight. If they're already planning to maim or kill you, then you don't have much to lose. You just have to judge whether that extra weapon is worth making them even angrier.
@@ArmchairViolence I think you know before or early in the fight what the level will be and how you will need to defend yourself. But in my opinion it is far better to start of very aggressive and then back off if not needed than let him get an upper hand. Assuming it is a one -on - one fight.
@@Cuffsmaster I would go the other way because, if you start off very aggressive then they will respond aggressively. And now the fight IS aggressive! It's very easy to escalate a fight, and much harder to deescalate one (once it's already started).
I do agree that you'll probably be able to tell what level it's at fairly quickly, but I would usually default towards less aggressive.
i never thought people would use the "head to the side walk" hypothesis to justify making the stakes lethal...
the whole point of that hypothesis is the exact opposite, it's to tell people they shouldn't be casual about fights and try to avoid them as much as possible, especially bar fights and other escalating arguments that won't happen if you don't agree to them. if you don't wanna fight someone, even someone you pissed off with a witty line, just say "sorry, i was wrong, i won't fight you. you're stronger." and that's it, 80% of fights avoided.
now the reverse conclusion to that hypothesis is that, since you don't engage in any casual fight at all, you avoid them like the plague, there's only a certain type of fight you won't manage to avoid, any fight you get into is very likely a life or death situation (and even in ego fights, you should be really careful of someone who still forced you to fight him after you tried to "submit" to avoid it).
There was a situation when a woman was abducted by her taxi driver. She was smart, she scratched and bit her assailant as much as she could. Not because she wanted the upper hand, but because she wanted a means to identify him. She had samples of his skin under her nails, her tooth impressions were left on the assailants skin and his skin particles on her tooth. She was able to pull a bunch of his hair, most of which contained roots, that were used to centrifuge DNA and match it on a data base. The police were able to identify the assailant because she, AT THE TIME chose to fight dirty and play it smart.
@@shinobi-no-bueno you can do! It's easier just to keep scratching, that way you have both skin and blood sample under your finger nails. Plus, I don't think you can get arrested for having fingers
I think it is fine to tell someone to do this...just don't tell them it is guaranteed to save their life.
@@memegazer that's true. However, because she chose to fight they way she did, even though she was raped, she was able to create a trail that lead back to her attacker. He is now facing life in prison
So it worked for gathering evidence, not self-defense. The problem is most just say "I don't need to learn how to fight. I'll just bite them or poke them in the eye" and use it as an excuse to not learn to fight. I'll be honest in that situation gathering evidence would be the last thing on my mind. And it doesn't really seem smart either. If I was abducted by someone much bigger and stronger than me that I can't just fight off, it seems like clawing them and biting them would just piss them off even more. I'm glad it all worked out in the end but that doesn't seem like good advice.
good point for id'ing. Likewise, if you get cut or bloodied, wipe the blood in different hidden parts of car and around, then you have DNA evidence for being in their car/house, etc. Or comb/ lightly tear out bits of your hair to leave around, so that there's your own DNA proof of being again in said car or house, if detectives or etc come by later
tho, if you escalate, it could be problematic, if they were just planning to kidnap, it could escalate to worse if you're not careful. So it's good to be aware of as a possibility. Found they have like portable keychain car alarm kind of keychains. Could be a good self def alarm to scare attackers away. Be aware of general surroundings, scream for help as needed, etc
I think there's obvious dirty fighting techniques like you pointed out like biting someones ear off or gouging someone's eyes out but there's grey areas like headbutt or even kicking someone if they are partially or fully down. can't do it in MMA but if maybe it can knock them out and end the fight 🤷🏻♂️
That's very true, and the problem is that SOME people are going to consider that violating the unspoken rules, and some people aren't. There's honestly no good answer to that, but they're at least LESS likely to escalate the fight than the obvious dirty fighting moves.
Late to the party haha but recently discovered your channel and I guess RUclips sughests old videos.
But I digress.
One thing with both biting and scratching that I also find unsafe the following: it likely increasing the chance of getting in contact with another person's blood.
And you know, that increasing your chance if getting infected with whatever. Even combat athletes are prevented from competing if they have bloodborne diseases.
One more reasons to avoid fights altogether lol.
And yes I know fiat fighting also has the same risk to start with.
This you man has wisdom beyond his age.
Love his videos, some straight shooting, no sugar coating.
it's hard for sensei and icy mike to kick you in the groin because you know it's coming and you made it your priority to block for just that.
True, but they also don't have to worry about any attacks coming back. And they were allowed to throw other things to distract me
I just found your channel and it's fuckin' awesome (my perspective - I trained Muay Thai for 7 years, had 1 amateur fight). Thumbs up and subscribed.
EDIT - I agree with your approach about dirty tactics. I would have added 1 more case of fighting dirty - being outnumbered and having no way to escape. But this can be called "they started fighting dirty, now I can do it as well".
But what about Master Ken's re-stomp the groin techniques?
What if you spent the time learning to identify bad situations and leave before things go real bad, or learning to de escalate? It takes 2 people to "fight". Why are you fighting in the first place? Ego? Screw your ego. Be home by 10pm, don't go to bars, don't hang with drunk people, don't get drunk, don't go to shady places. Leave any place that seems rough or is full of drunks or is shady. Chances of getting in a fight are almost zero. These are things animals in the wild instinctively know. Ego driven humans are dumb.
i've been mugged twice (in Oakland Ca in the 90's-early 2000's) both times I pretty much got my ass kicked by multiple dudes with weapons but didn't get significantly hurt. gave up my money and a new hat (and some pride) but lived. Nothing I did would have changed what happened.
The guy who kicks the groin kicks as slowly as I do! No wonder he can't connect.
Don't start fights, some folk don't play nice.
Extremely well constructed demonstration.
Good video but I have to say I disagree with the just learn something else argument 6:51. If you train 100 hours on grappling and 100 hours on striking, if you spend 1 hour on dirty fighting, you are unlikely to become a better significantly better grappler or striker in that time but you will have better dirty fighting than zero hours.
also I think there is a use to training dirty fighting not to use it but to defend it. My jiu jitsu instructor told a story of a friend you got an ear bit off while moving to escape a headlock from mount. This could have been easily avoided if he trained with more awareness of that possibility. Which drilling dirty fighting once every so often can give you.
Yeah, but it's not black and white with dirty fighting and sport fighting being complete opposites. There is a lot of overlaps between the two. A grappler will be better at eye gouges than a non-grapplers. Grapplers are trained in grabbing a hold of people. They will be able better grab a hold of their opponents to eye-gouge. And a good striker who can reliably land inside leg kicks will be better at landing groin strikes than a not-so-good striker. One of the best ways to get good at dirty fighting is to be good at sport fighting.
@@ballsackschrader218 I agree entirely sports fighting trains the core fighting skill without which no amount of dirty fighting will save you and with these core skills you will be a more effective dirty fighter.
However if you never train with or against dirty you won't be prepared to use or defend them . For kickboxing experience may mean theoretically you could deliver devastating groin kicks and easily check them however if you never spar with or against groin kicks, in a high stress situation you will likely do neither.
Having said all that someone with combat sports experience will still dominate a street fight against someone untrained 9/10 times but a lack of dirty fighting experience could lead to missed opportunities or avoidable damage(which can be particularly long lasting in the case of dirty fighting even if it doesn't effect the fights outcome).
I was once kicked in the throat accidentally in a karate tournament (straight mawashi geri given after the referee called “yame” as I scored a point with a jako-tsuki). I was 12. I risk dying from it, my airway was stopped for 10seconds, then opened up but I still wasn’t fine breathing. I was admitted to a ENT ward for some days. When discharged, I kept coughing or clearing my throat every third breath and I had to concentrate sometimes to “begin to swallow”. Nearly one year later I underwent a laryngeo-tracheal-bronchoscopy in general anesthesia, to check the whole airway. After another years, all symptoms subsided and I went back to practice martial arts. I gave up karate years later and try others. That experience, facing instant death, shocked me. Though, in a way or another, it’s happened to many practitioners, I really believe that 1) hitting the throat in an uncontrolled way is despicable, unless your life is seriously and definitively in danger and 2) if it is not, it’s just risking killing your opponent for stupid reasons, which obviously has catastrophic legal consequences plus the shame of such behaviour. So, for me fighting dirty is just not fighting and probably, a good martial artist can do without it even in self defence scenario.
It seems like a very strange strategy to avoid some of the easiest and most effective tactics because attempting them might motivate your attacker to resort to them as well. By that logic, you shouldn't have any offense at all because that might motivate your attacker to also have offense. If someone's attacking you, you have already failed to de-escalate the situation. The goal is to escape, which may require incapacitating your attacker. A clean kick the goin is one way of doing that. So is popping an eye. Relying on your attacker's honor seems like a far riskier rolling of the dice than using any dirty tactic that I can think of.
I also question the idea that an eye poke or a groin kick is more of an escalation of a fight than a takedown. If someone tries to kick me in the groin, I'm likely to block and back away as a response. If someone shoots for my legs, I'm likely to sprawl and fight for position. In this case, shooting for my legs escalated the fight while the groin kick motivated me to disengage. Going to the ground pretty much guarantees that the fight continues because it makes it harder for both people to fully disengage.
Eye gouges and groin kicks are much easier to pull off than take-downs and require much less training. It's also much easier to kick someone's groin if he isn't expecting it. The training exercise where one person is only going for groin kicks and the other person is only defending is unrealistic. You could do the same thing with a jab. The person defending the jab will almost always defend successfully because he knows the jab and only the jab is coming. Does that make a jab a bad technique to go for in a fight? Try just doing normal sparring but allow groin kicks. A front goin kick functions a lot like a jab. The threat of that kick helps you to create distance and get a reaction. It's a positional move.
If dirty tactics weren't effective, we wouldn't see fighters use them in professional fighting when they are allowed. But we even see professional fighters sometimes try to get away with them when they aren't allowed. Simply put, if dirty tactics weren't effective, you wouldn't need rules against them in professional fighting competitions.
When he talks about "escalating the fight," I think he actually means "raising the stakes" -- as in, using dirty moves might make your opponent want to hurt you even more. He doesn't say that they aren't effective at all; he argues that you don't know how an opponent will respond, and he states that he wouldn't take the risk in an even fight.
However, he does say that, if you're already losing a fight, using dirty moves won't turn things around.
@@seanmadrilejo253 Yeah. I don't find that a compelling argument. It relies on my ability to understand my attacker's willingness to hurt me and how that willingness might change as a response to my behavior. I wouldn't bet on my ability to do so.
If someone is attacking me, they want to hurt me. And I am not going to restrict myself from any behavior that may help me to minimize damage to myself.
An attacker isn't going to follow any rules. If you place rules on yourself, you put yourself at a disadvantage.
When I see these sorts of arguments, they seem to come from people who have never relaxed rules for sparring. You want to play the game that you have practiced. And you rationalize the idea that, if you play that game, your attacker will play it too. And if they play your game, then you will win. That just doesn't make sense.
Alright, you make sense. I’m sorry for being accusatory.
The reason there are rules against biting, small joint manipulation, eye gouges, and fish hooks isn’t because they’re effective, it’s because they’re mostly INEFFECTIVE and stand a chance of permanently maiming your opponent for no reason. Yeah, you might break his fingers, but then when he gets up and beats your ass anyway he’s gotta deal with the consequences of an idiot using a bad strategy out of desperation- potentially for the rest of his life. For no reason and no benefit to anyone.
Groin kicks are illegal because they work, but even when they were allowed, it wasn’t like Royce Gracie was destroying everyone because he was the best nut kicker present.
@@TheKyleMark Either what you're doing is ineffective or it permanently maims your opponent. If you're doing damage to your opponent, you're being effective. That's what "effective" means.
I also think you drastically overestimate someone's ability to fight with broken fingers. Have you ever broken a finger? I broke a toe once in BJJ. Trust me when I say that immediately stopped the round. I was out for months healing. Could I have continued a fight in a life or death situation? Yes. But my capacity to fight would have been drastically diminished. If I were the aggressor in the situation and could expect my victim to retreat, a broken toe or broken finger would absolutely motivate me to withdraw my attack. My will to continue the fight would be destroyed.
I hear this from BJJ guys more than others. "Sure, he may break my finger or gouge my eye, but then I'll break his neck." And I can only imagine they say this because they have never experienced a broken finger or a gouged eye. And they have some weird ideas from action movies about how people can continue to fight effectively after sustaining this kind of damage. No, you probably won't break his neck. You will find it to be very difficult to fight with a broken finger or gouged eye. You'll probably panic because you don't know how to react to this new thing you haven't trained for and have never experienced.
I used to train at a gym that didn't allow any footlocks because they were "too dangerous." Then, a guest instructor did a footlock seminar. You know what happens to guys when they get footlocked after not training with footlocks? They freeze up and make bad decisions. That's what people do when they are faced with unfamiliar situations. You would see BJJ black belts just freeze up and have no clue what their next move should be because they are in an unfamiliar situation.
The purpose of self-defense training is to make those situations more familiar so you have some way to intelligently react. You shouldn't have to think about it. It should be automatic. If your training does provide you with instinctive reactions to a set of attacks, those attacks will be especially effective against you even if they are not objectively the best attacks.
By the way, this is also why Royce Gracie was so successful when he was fighting. He was fighting in a way that few of his opponents had trained for. It was a time when fighting mostly meant some form of boxing or kickboxing. When he got guys on the ground, they would freeze up and make bad decisions. But I'm sure they thought, "If he tries to wrestle me, I'll just knock him out."
Great comprehensive analysis, I completely agree. And I also share sentiment of "not worth the risk". Probably only thing left are consideration if using only threat of dirty things change something 🤔.
Btw. I may (considering your use of word "dimension") or may not be person who writed and deleted mentioned comment. I wrote one about introducing new dimensions to fight, in which you have chance to be better, when things are even. And speculated, that even if dirty things could be used for that purpose if you trained them, it may be better to use that time to work on things that make you winning, instead even. But finally, even after few edits, I didn't like how I phrased the comment* and deleted it with intention of writing it again... which obliviously I didn't do 😅. But, if comment that inspired you was mine, then I must say I really liked how you phrased and completed the though, so all is well that ends well 😀.
* - And didn't really have idea how address the problem that learning new things may be easier that perfecting those you already familiar with. So I really love example of Icy Mike and takedowns in this context - new is fairly relative and most of us have many new things even beside that. Finally personal predisposition are also probably strong factor to what be easier to learn... but I don't think there will be that many mentally healthy people with positive predisposition to things like eye gauging.
It was probably your comment!
Thank you for providing the perfect counterargument to Mike's point!
I think your original comment actually said you agreed with Mike, but then you ended up defending my point better than I did lol
I think the threat of dirty fighting could potentially be used to stop someone from starting a fight. If you tell them that messing with you means it's going to be a fight to the death, they might completely back off. But, of they do attack you, then it WILL be a fight to the death!
So, I think those kind of threats can be used, but you just have to use your best judgment in each situation to decide if it's a good idea.
@@ArmchairViolence Its stared with something like "Mike kind of has a point about" 😀 (which was mostly figure of speech, as it marked only weak point I saw in your previous version of argumentation). So probably I can say: glad to be of service 😀.
As far as threat goes I was thinking about things like marking a kick in general direction of groin. Or something along those lines that give you desired reaction, but may be not clear enough to cause escalation. But after consideration any examples I can think of are at least simply unreliable (both in case of effect and "not being clear") and for many cases I cannot even think of example that could work that way. Controversially I can think of examples that aren't dirty, but to some extent could work more reliably to that goal - eg. covering up someone eyes instead eye gauging. Another example that there may be many better ways to introduce new dimension to a fight.
Krav Maga guys?
Honestly this should be one of the first things they should teach at a self defense course. I don't take any self defense courses but this only makes me feel like I should be more confident at basic fighting skills.
i think 2 good ways to eye gouge would be to either use a post - JBJ style just have your fingers out for them to walk onto - or a super loose, fingery jab - just trying to graze or at least distract with your fingers in their face you can blast them with an overhand. That said I've never done either of these. And tbh if you can just jab them in the eye normally you get the benefit + the extra damage
I mostly agree but I do have anecdote that supports Icy mike I once got into a pretty nasty street fight with someone who was a fairly accomplished wrestler at the time I only had striking experience and even if I also wrestled at the time it’s unlikely it would have helped since he was a particularly good wrestler and larger than me so long story short after getting beat black and blue with ground and pound I freaked out started biting him which led to him pulling away and me scrambling back to my feet before either of us had even really gotten fully up I just lunged in and started swinging and I knocked him unconscious so in my opinion yeah takedowns are more important than dirty fighting no argument there but it’s still worth practicing cause fights are unpredictable and you never know what tool you might need btw super underrated channel
Hey, I'm not saying it will never work! It's risky, but sometimes the gamble DOES come out in your favor! I just don't like gambling lol
Armchair Violence fair my point is sometimes you just gotta make a decision and live with it but when I compete I am prone to risky but high reward moves so maybe I just am a gambler at heart lol
If you want to step up your game, take an intensive course on how to use punctuation.
another banger from mr.violence
@Armchair Violence How do you feel about being known as "Mr. Violence?"
I agree with Icy Mike on his point on using the Dirty Tactics as an opportunity
I tell people (Mostly women) who hold too much respect for thos tactics, Eyes, Throat, and Groin are not finishers but are solid setups for one
Finally somebody saying what I've always thought when watching some self defense technique video. Especially the "how to beat a trained fighter" type.
Hmmmmm, there is a lot here. You seem to be talking about mutual fighting. That’s a drunk sport fight, and there are definitely rules in that and I agree, in that situation overstepping those boundaries definitely can get you in a bad situation. However, don’t choose to fight people over ego.
Personally I have lied, apologized, bluffed, reasoned and walked away from a lot of those situations. That kind of fighting in my opinion is ego fighting, and I would hope that most people watching this are mature enough to attempt to extricate themselves from that situation without fighting. If you want to fight do a ring sport and fight other people equally trained as you … with a trainer ref and ring doctor.
The MMA knees to the nuts in the early days… groin protection does make a difference… or they wouldn’t use it.
What is dirty fighting. Is pretending to be scared, turning away like you’re turtling and suddenly exploding into violence dirty fighting? Is picking up a rock and hammering it into someone’s clavicle dirty fighting? Are elbows and headbutts dirty fighting? In some circles kicking is dirty… what defines a dirty fight? Why would anyone fight for a wallet knowing that muggers rarely work alone, are goal oriented and only pick people that they are pretty sure they can easily fuck up? Give the guy/guys your wallet… fight back when they want you to go with them, or they want to hurt someone under your protection. Not over material objects. (Just my opinion).
All in all… great points made here. And I think there is a tendency for people to think that some stupid dirty tactic will make them win… which is such false security. I like your videos and will continue watching. I hope you don’t mind me throwing in some counter arguments here and there. I hope I didn’t come off as disrespectful. Have a great day.
Uh they didn’t use cups in early days lol
@@darkghoul4049 yes…. They did.
@@darkghoul4049 sorry your right, it was UFC 4 that changed the rules. After Keith hackney kneed an opponent into submission with groin strikes. Forcing him to give up.
@@JoelHuncar he was pinned and striked a hundred times. If it wasn't groin strike it would had been the same result.
The point of no groin strike and the back of the head isn't that it is too effective. They are out for the longevity of the fighters.
Who the hell wants to fighters to be fertile?
Groin strikes are banned for the health of the fighters. Fighters can do dozens of fights in their lifetime and if they get hit in the groin for multiple of those fights, it affects the long-term health of those fights. In a single short-term street fight, it really isn't a major deal. I've been kneed in the groin in a high school fight. While it hurt like hell, I was still standing, I could still move and defend and attack. You might get someone who isn't that motivated to fight you to back off with a groin strike, but you can also do that with a good leg kick or even a punch. If someone really wants to hurt you, a groin wouldn't do much and you'll just make them a lot angrier.
I’m still not understanding.are there rules in a street fight or no?bc if I’m a teacher n I tell my students hey u can’t stomp on someone’s head if there unconscious in a fight.that’s basically a rule??but if a non trained fighter says u can’t grapple in a street fight then that’s a rule..I think street thugs have dumb rules while martial artist have a more advanced approach when it comes to rules in a street fight?am I right on this?
It depends on the scenario. The dimensions in a fight is like how boxers get stunted at anything other than stand-up fighting.
We do light sparring with cups and allowed groin strikes and i think i helps to be prepared against groin strikes. Also we rarly use them, because most guys only need a few weeks of training and sparring to alter their stance slightly, so that groin strikes are hard to land. I think we should also do a bit of training in dirty tactics but mostly agree with you.
I agree with you and icy mike personally. I think it's a great idea to have dirty moves in your tool kit for whenever you need them but I don't think that should be your first course of action for the reasons you gave in this video and in your video with icy Mike.
Definitely good stuff and valid arguments
Great video as always
You’re making well-reasoned, nuanced points about physical skills related to fighting and self-defense.
Fighting is highly contextual, so at the risk of being a “what if” guy, I’d like to bring up an idea about groin strikes I didn’t hear from your video.
I agree groin strikes are difficult to land in an actively fighting/sparing context. When applied to self-defense, in a limited context, I believe they have application as a preemptive strike.
A second point about groin strikes in a sparring context.
With some very solid, trustworthy, sparring partners I included groin strikes into my MMA sparring.
A few things we all found out pretty quickly. A groin strike is a kick to the body. Except for a front push kick, it is also a relatively slow kick. Much like a round kick to the body, the shots had to be set up, usually behind punches.
Just like we would get punished for throwing body kicks with out a set up, we would eat some shot throwing a rising front kick-even a little more because we were squared up.
Funny side effects, having groin kicks as a tool made rounds kicks land more. When we only had a split second to commit a check or parry to the groin or body, almost everyone defended the groin (obviously). We didn’t even have to throw many front kicks, just threaten it a few times and it cleared the path to the liver like magic.
@@coltonkirshner-lira5398 I trained alot of MMA and then I did some Krav Maga. In the sparring in the the start the groin kicks went through my defense because I've never trained to defend that area because of the rules and lack of attacks there. But after a very few good nutshots you get pretty good at defending that place. And also switching to a bladed stance is really good at covering up there.
So my 2 cents are that groin strike will work the first time and in a self defence situation you should do a suprise groin strike hard and then you run away while your attacker is incapacated for a few moments.
But if its a "fight" then I agree with the statements of the video. The first might land but then the opponent will adjust and fight by the "new" rules you just applied and aslo escalate.
Violence is never the answer, until it is the answer and then it’s the only answer! There is no fighting dirty in violence!
Man. It was hard for me to watch this video all the way til the end before making a comment but I pushed Through. I’m glad I did because the last 20 seconds is the ONLY thing that Self Defense people should be training for. Anything else is just ego, unnecessary and can get you ‘yes’ killed or locked up. It’s not worth it. If things get to the point of getting physical then all fairness is off the table. That being said , the law is clear on this on. “You may use the amount of force that you deem Necessary to defend yourself. No more no less”
Oh. One more thing. You will never kick a man in the groin if he knows your trying to kick him the groin. Especially without a cup ;) .
How many batman shirts do you have
I remember there was a time that someone said sidekicks dont work................... if mma fighters can get cup check by a kick normal people can too
people talk about eye gauging as if is to easy to take an eye out. but in a fact poking an eye in purpose of scratching the cornea, is very useful i got scratched that way while sparing, and that immediately prevent me from open my eye effectively. so that is good for the purpose of getting an advantage and than making the finishing move (strike or grapple), and that not really maiming. it heals over time, so not a real biggy.
What about preemptive strikes....aren't they usually the best option in a violent encounter
The fucking reverse flamingo nut kick seth threw 🤣
First off: I find it hilarious that there's a disclaimer warning about violence in a video on a channel called "armchair violence" 😁 (Yes, I understand why the disclaimer is necessary. Some people are idiots.) You make very good content. Your videos are very thoughtful, very logical, very well structured, entertaining and well produced.
I mostly agree with you but I'd also agree with Icy Mike. Also, kicking someone in the groin in sparring where groin kicks are allowed is possible. I have done it before and I wasn't even a good striker. For example you can do it off of checking a low kick with your opposite leg and then simply kicking them in the groin before you put your leg down. It doesn't look good but it works. In my experience groin kicks might not always be an instant fight ender (although they can be) but they might be a useful weapon in your arsenal along with all your other skills. However, I do agree with you that you shouldn't use them in a situation where you chose to fight someone. But I might use them and other dirty fighting techniques in a self-defense situation. They wouldn't be your only tool and you wouldn't expect them to end the fight right away but, as Icy Mike said, they can open up new opportunities. Make someone flinch, focus their attention on something else or get another reaction you can work with.
I train eye pokes, gauges. Thought, I don't train them too excessively, and when I do it's either combined with a palm strike or it's an opportunity I could be punching the person. And, even there I usually actually do the punching instead. So the idea of practicing takedowns isn't actually a good example as it would be harder and more time consuming to do.
I can empathise as to him saying that in regards to how others train though. I've seen eye attacks being a main option to go to for some people.
Going feral from the start is a good tactic to intimidate your opponent an avoid the actual fight.
That is why I always whip out pepper spray and spray it all over my face. Nobody wants to fuck with a person who does that.
Get good at fighting, then you can get good at cheating
I have no idea about street fights but this makes a ton of sense!
I think the point people try to make with THERE ARE NO RULES is when somebody approaches you, and there is nobody around to help you or him. Now you have to assume that he really wants to kill you or harm you badly.
Quite some disagreements here:
Premises of "win/lose/draw"
Streetfighting is not a sports competition where the winner is determined via triumph over the loser. You can NOT win a streetfight. Once the fight is on, you've already lost, because your objective was to be safe, have a drink with your friends, enjoy the evening, walk home in a good mood. Even if you beat down the attacker(S), you'll most likely have some physical injuries, and even if not, you'll be negatively impacted emotionally and probably legally. Your day(s) will be ruined. And legally, even if you can prove self-defense, you'll have to deal with probably a year long rat's tail of court interaction, that's time sucked away you may need for writing papers/preparing for exams at college/university, doing business meetings for your business you wanted to expand, going on holiday with your wife, or whatever your life situation.
Premises of "challenge" (aka ritual fight with subconscious "gentlemen's agreement" on a certain set of rules)
So, if someone "challenges" you to a fight, do NOT accept that challenge! Angry drunk guy at a bar - buy him a beer, accidently bumped into someone on the street - apology, someone wants to play alpha male and show dominance to mark "his territory" - leave. Swollow your ego and decline any challenge.
If despite all (real) efforts to escape a "challenge", the attacker doesn't stop, it's not a ritual fight with subconscious rules anymore, it's pure assault and you can't count on any mercy of the attacker. Rules are off, and you should use any tool available to you to end the attack as fast as possible. The longer the attack goes on, the higher the chances of damage for yourself. Eye-gouges and groin shots may not be fight-enders, but they can certainly be fight-changers. You don't need to "finish" the attacker, you need an opening to get out of and away from the situation.
Premises of training
1) Your training experiment clip of groin kicks you showed with Mike and Seth is unrealistic. You knew they would try to groin kick and ONLY groin kick you. They did nothing else. So, of course, it's easy to defend if you know there is only one target. It's very different if you tell them they should sneak in a groin kick while doing a full kickbox sparring. Accidental groin kicks regularly happen in kickbox training sessions. If I can inside low kick you, I can groin kick you.
2) Training time "better invested". You wouldn't train "dirty tactics" only to apply them, but it would also serve for you to be less surprised and to know how to deal with them if an attacker uses them on you. Training something means also training defense to it.
So how would defend against someone trying to bit u or groin kick??orrrr anything like that
Hey dumbass if you watch any of his other videos the first part of your comment makes no sense. the whole point of self defense is to keep yourself safe and fights are not safe. This is a point he makes in many of his videos
My great-grandfather fought in the Spanish Civil War. His drill sergeant was a boxer and taught his men dirty boxing techniques. My great-grandfather told me that at one point in the war both sides resorted to hand-to-hand combat due to lack of ammunition. He told me that the techniques his sergeant taught him helped him survive. He told me that the secret was to use the fear of dying and transform it into homicidal rage. And although you are right that not all fights are about kill or being killed, some fights are and in that case you have to abandon all inhibitory restraint and the clothing of a civilized man to adopt feral behavior. There is no being more fearsome than a cornered alley cat, and if survival is a biological imperative, it is not wrong to use instinct to survive.
It might be something that you may use if someone is strangling you with the intention to kill you. Otherwise it probably isn't worth the risk of escalation, and probably won't stop the attacker effectively enough.
Even if you do hit them below the waist, it would do very little to nothing at all. And with eye gouging, your aiming at a very small target with both people moving around constantly.
3:05, “I am 100% going to kill them.” I love that
I 100% agree with the notion of avoiding scaling up a fight, specially if you are losing.
But i agree with @Ice Mike that if the fight evolves to that (or starts at that level) is better to have pratice than not.
For example, that traning session of groin kick with Seth and Mike. That showed that groin strikes are not that reliable as most people think, and you increased your awareness for noticing groin strikes. Yes, most people will instinctive defend themselfs, but just like kyokushin practitioners suck at get punched in the face and defend against them, if you do not practice, your reaction will be similar to people that do not know how to fight (is you will have better space awareness and reflexes, but still act on instinct, not conditioning).
Is better to have a tool and not need it, than not having it and need. If that tool is cost-effective, and some dirty fighting move are, some are not. Headbutt? Valid. Groin Strike? Valid. Bitting and scraching? Maybe a couple lessons per year. Eye gouging, small joint manipulation, etc...? Same.
*kajukenbo and Krav Maga screaming*
Depends on the situation.
If it's a fight you "have" to win = takedown (proper technique)
If all else fails and you need a distraction to get away to safety, call for help etc. = eye gouge (dirty fighting)
I think that the real effective dirty fighting is at the edges, not the blatantly violent escalations but the subtle dirty moves that give people advantages, holyfield’s subtle and sly head butting in a boxing match, Jon jones kicking peoples knees, various ‘rips’ in bjj which might expose a chin for choking but aren’t really legal in the rule set, pushing someone’s head away in bjj by applying pressure to the nose. None of which are recommended if you want to remain on friendly terms with your training partners, but they do provide an edge in situations in some situations
Master Ken wants your location
Great Video!
Random question: are head butts considered dirty fighting?
I fucking love hearing mike scream
I actually agree with you after watching this, at first I thought you were wrong. But coming from a third world hell hole where murders and crime are per capita comparable to war time Iraq, I'd say the regulated street fighting is a no go here. Our people are savage and will typically escalate to guns or machetes just for looking at them wrongly. Nobody gets in street fights or bar fights here because there's an implicit cultural rule that we're either going to die or go to jail (which is far more disgusting and uncivilised than American jails). Dirty fighting is something we have to learn to employ if running away is not possible.
Yeah, third world countries can be quite different. My video was mainly addressing street fights in Western countries, where most start out pretty tame and there is a LOT of room for escalation.
"Dirty fighting is something we have to learn to employ if running away is not possible." 👍
It is true! .. Instant response to the dirty fighting opponent will not happen when you are just an athlete on rules, since the instinctive reaction of on-rules fighters are based on saving the opponent's life. I have experienced a few of street fights by accident, where I had to take my friends away from besieging gangsters. It is tougher than one can imagine. We will be attacked immediately by dirty fighting techniques whilst we do not have sense of fighting dirty which can apply at the time. 🙏 INSTINCTIVE reaction can only be created by training hard, not imagination.
My take on this is that dirty fighting is good at creating openings to gain initiative. They dont win fights by themselves most of the time but are good tool to have. And its really hard to keep focus and stay in a fight after a decent kick to the groin.
2:05 hilarious 😂😂😂
For the algorithm
"There are rules in a streetfight"
So if I ever find myself in a streetfight, I don't have to worry about getting sucker punched, getting jumped, getting kicked while I'm on the ground, or a weapon being drawn because moral principle is gonna possess someone to put themselves in danger to come to my aid and break up the fight?
Yes, street fights have no rules - except for the rule of law
For stats on fatalities after hitting the pavement, Google one punch deaths. In the UK its estimated 80 people died this way between 2007 and 2017. That averages 8 per year. Given the population its fairly negligible. However I guess odds increase massively for those that have an active nightlife.
See, I could find those numbers, but I couldn't find any good statistics on the number of fistfights in a given population. I was trying to figure out what the odds from dying from a punch are in a given fist fight. Without that, I can't really assess the odds of it happening in any given fight. :/
@@ArmchairViolence could look at admittance to A&E possibly to give a rough idea. Or more interestingly look at the circumstances of the one punch deaths. Are they generally people caught off guard, drunk, at night etc? Although not giving odds would explain how the situations can be easily avoided. There was actually a documentary about it several years back, not sure if it's online somewhere. It basically looked at people who had been locked up for accidentally killing someone this way, but also how some people didn't as it was self defence. It was an interesting program.
@@AlexanderGent Looking at how they happen is actually a pretty good idea. Maybe they're more likely in certain kinds of confrontations.
Dang, now I have to do more research! Lol
@@ArmchairViolence This is the documentary I mentioned.
ruclips.net/video/txIGbPsp6ts/видео.html
@@Matt90Nine Totally agree. I have actually said before, that personally I think ukemi, general fitness, coordination and wellbeing is the most important role in MA for the everyday person.
Pocket sand!
What even is dirty fighting? For example what about hair grabs on people with longer hair? (Yes, men have them too). I would think in a clinch this is high percentage technique(?) and not elevating danger but reducing it since it's a control move not "I want to fucking kill you" move?
Yeah, one of the main reasons I didn't mention hair pulling is because it doesn't have the same problem of maiming people and escalating the fight, even though most people would think of it as "fighting dirty."
Plus, you really can stop people from doing it to you by keeping your hair really short, so hair pulling really doesn't have the same problems as other "dirty" moves.
It isn't super useful in the clinch, if the other person really knows what to do. But they don't know what to do or you manage to grab their hair at arms' length, then it's often really easy to put them on the ground.
I think you instantly lose the fight and revoke your man card when you start pulling hair
I understand where you are coming from, and there definitely is such a thing as a graduated use of force in self defence, but:
A) I don't think the line you are trying to draw between "safer" techniques used in competition and "dirty fighting" really exists in the way you seem to think. Competition techniques can main or kill in the uncontrolled circumstances of a street fight or self defence situation. Opponents may not tap out from locks or strangles because they don't understand what's happening, and you may have to actually cause injury. There is no definite line between how hard a punch needs to be to knock someone out and how hard it needs to be to kill. If you do maim or kill someone using competition techniques, and there are legal consequences, good luck trying to explain that while you did repeatedly punch and kick them, the fact that they suffered injury was an accident or that you didn't mean to inflict serious harm. Also, some "dirty tactics" such as biting, don't actually carry as high a risk of causing serious injury as competition techniques. Thats why (as you point out) people continue fighting after they are used.
B) I wouldn't always trust bystanders to referee a street fight in a way thats fair or likely to prevent serious injury. Bystanders often know one of the participants, and may only step in to prevent serious harm if they see it happening to a friend or acquaintance. If the crowd doesn't know or like you, they may wait until you are seriously injured before anyone says or does anything.
I have never had someone step in and stop a fight I had.
Just don't fight if you know you will regret it
The rules of streets says only fight and survive by any means
it is easy to block a groin shot if you know it is gonna happen. and i agree its a small target so no point for going for it unless its a counter like (the dude went for a front kick so you sidestep and grab the leg than do a roundhouse kick upward to the groin" or you have a fast lead roundhouse. and do mma fighters get kick in the groin sometimes with snap kicks and roundhouses. like that big asian dude who took a kick to the nuts that even the heaven heard the impact.
I can attest to how hard it is to kick someone in the nuts, when I was in elementary school, one of my friends were grappling me (he was much stronger) so I went for the nut kick, none of it landed he easily dodged it.
Sometimes the rules say kicking is dirty so it depends
This sounds almost verbatim what you said in your previous video with ya boxer friend
Good video
but:
"... if criminals were rational they wouldn't be criminals." XD
My dude I have some painful news for you about lawmakers...
They aren't always (or even normally?) that interested in fairness or justice!
A very convincing argument for 'crime can be rational' is made in the first 10 minutes of the film 'Aladdin' I believe :P
Aladdin is a fiction, and its depiction of crime isn't rooted in what we know about it in reality.
Yep.
The moral of the story is, if he ain't fighting dirty, it's probably best you don't escalate the conflict.
Better to get knocked out then to lose your eyes over a dumb argument.
I accidentally kicked my trainer in the nuts during sparring two weeks ago. I was trying to teep to the body, but I was getting tired and completely missed.
I apologised profusely after I did it, but I think he's mad at me 😅
One thing a number of "dirty fighting" techniques have in common is that they hit very "soft target" parts of the body. Because of this, they can do significant damage even without a lot of force behind them. This isn't that important if I am a decent sized adult male who spends a bunch of time training combat techniques and can punch significantly hard. So sure, for the kind of person who makes videos about martial arts, fighting dirty isn't that useful.
But if I am a small person without a ton of strength, and I find myself being victimized by someone twice my size who could absorb my punches forever without noticing, my only significant chance of escaping without getting badly hurt is probably to hit them in that kind of soft target where it doesn't matter that they are big and beefy and it doesn't matter that I can't generate a massive impact (then, while they are cursing, run like hell). And that kind of scenario, where the big and strong are attacking the weak for fun and profit, probably doesn't involve any gentlemen's agreements on the attacker's part--they will hurt you because they can and they enjoy it, and there is no knowing how extreme "hurt" will turn out to be.
Person’s aggression = (desire to harm you) / (potential risk for attacker).
In general you hit some good points in your vids. In my opinion you points are often Black or white. Of course dirty Tricks work. Depends on who execute it....to whom. what i like to say it depends. And what does work mean is also a question....
Why choose? Learn how to fight, grapple, and fight dirty. EZ
I agree, only when it's clear that your life is on the line or they have already chosen to escalate is it worth it.
For that reason alone having at least minimum training in dirty fighting and more importantly COUNTERING it is a good idea.
But the majority of your time should be spend on practical techniques that don't take the fight to "The next level"
The point of self defense is to limit the damage you receive, so most of the time, ya, don't go breaking the "Geneva Conventions" of street fights.
I'm still siding with Mike, because "street fights" aren't self defense. Street fights are idiots getting into situations they should avoid. If your goal is to train martial arts for self defense, you train evasion, deescalation, sprinting and situational awareness first. So the only fights you get into when you're good at self defense are fights that are unavoidable and hence life threatening. And in this case training "dirty techniques" gives you not only the benefit of a bigger tool box, but you might also be used to them getting applied on you. Of course a takedown is worth more than an eye poke, but fighting isn't just picking the 4 best tools and spamming them. Using a wheel kick or getting attacked with one for example is very unlikely, but with a little practice you can at least deal with it and that's imo better than disregarding it completely.
Being in a fight doesn't necessarily mean it's a fight to the death. It just means it's a fight that you failed to avoid.
A lot of people are NOT good at self-defense. And no one is PERFECT at self-defense, so I don't think you can assume that every fight is a life or death encounter. Anyone could end up in an argument where someone throws a punch. Deescalation is never perfect.
And you can definitely train the techniques. My point (which I may have communicated badly) was not that you can never train them, but that you should get pretty good at the bread-and-butter effective stuff first. A wheel kick is a great tool to have, but it's also one of the last kicks you learn. Nobody would teach you wheel kicks until you get good at round, side, front, and spinning back kicks, at least.
But I can definitely see the argument that training them occasionally could allow you to defend against dirty tactics better. Training to defend against them is probably a better use of time than training to use them. But the bread-and-butter stuff should still probably come first. Dirty tactics are only really worth spending time on when you have sufficient practice at most everything else.
@@ArmchairViolence I totally agree on the fundamentals. Basic grappling and striking should always be the main focus for efficient fighting. No arguing there. But I still disagree to a degree with your view on physical encounters. In my experience every unnecessary fight can be avoided. If someone's getting into arguments that escalate into violence, I would suggest they learn proper arguing/social behavior instead of fighting. And if a clear "I don't want to fight you. Please leave me alone" doesn't work and is still followed by an attack, the gloves are off imo. At that moment I'm fighting for my life and safety and will do what's necessary to get out on top. If I know the person and they are just in a bad space, that's a different story, but if I don't know them, I don't know how far they'll go and won't take my chances that they'll stop after hitting me a couple of times. I've seen too many people getting their head caved in by soccer kicks after they've been knocked out to risk that happening to me. I think you're correct about the "referee hivemind", but it doesn't always happen and even if it does, it's often way too late. But to come back to me agreeing with you, I wouldn't use "dirty techniques" if I'm either easily winning or getting outclassed. It's a bad idea both times. But if the fight is pretty even, it's a valid tactic imo. I'd rather risk a bite or an eye gouge in retaliation than heavy head trauma. Being blind sucks, being brain dead is hell.
@@jc-kj8yc if im fighting a family member or sum then yea..but if im fightin someone who I don’t know,has never met then fuk it…no rules..cause before the fight even starts I’ll be warning hey I don’t wanna fight,,leave me alone.and walk away.u ignore that shi yes ima feel like my mf life is on the line.n ima do wats necessary.now this dosnt mean u should kill the opponent NEVER N I MEAN NEVER kill in a street fight,weapon or not that’s life.but do defend yourself by cutting off A:air flow (choking them out)a disrupting there breathing by throat strikes,B Be brutal with your strikes but once they hit the ground stop C knock them out D Dislocate something so u can E…Escape…
If dirty tacticts would be super good we would know and have writen evidence of it. But what do we have? Wrestling, boxing, TMA and different Swordstyles around the world... not much biting in it.
Yes you could counter argument that they had their honor and codes and what not. But war is war.
2:00 best scrap recorded. watch the full fight its a classic
Headbutt the balls>get the back while the opponent is stunned and confused>slam them>win
I've been accidently eye poked in a karate tournament. Trust me, it works.
You and Icy Mike need to collect pokemon and wear star wars clothes. Run from life.....