The head-butt is a
fearsome weapon, while seldom seen today it is given much lip-service in CQB
precincts but seldom trained beyond mock “nods” to the target.
It rears its modern head
[yeah, I hear it, too] in fictional combat in the pages of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher
chronicles; it appears as a non-fiction tool of choice in certain biker
“clubhouse” altercations, and our last large-scale legal use of the tactic was
in the early days of The Ultimate Fighting Championship, pre-time-limits,
pre-weight-class, and pre-initialized re-branding.
Some martial arts
still make much ado about the head-butt from the esoteric capoeira [herrrre,
called knocking] to Burmese Lethwei [“gowl tite.”]
Let us leave behind
recent uses where the martial use of the skull is given short-shrift and travel
to a time when the head-butt in all its forms was far more common and accepted
as part and parcel of the scrum.
Before we traipse into
the arena of rough ‘n’ tumble no-rules play, let’s have a look at two realms
where “legal” or “close enough to pass” uses still made appearances.
Early
Boxing-Pugilism
The early days of
boxing was rife with accidental/incidental head-butts as were there certain
purveyors of sneaky intentionals: Nods, Rises, Wags, etc. [We cover these in
all their forms in our instructional products Illegal Boxing, Savage Strikes,
The Complete Pugilist and Extreme Boxing.]
Early Professional
Wrestling [The Real Era]
Early wrestling also
had its enthusiastic use of the head-butt, a notable example being Sorakichi
Matsuda [also seen as Matsada Sorakichi] who had many memorable tussles in the
catch arena under the now taboo ring name of “The Jap” versus opponents as
storied as William Muldoon and Strangler Lewis.
Matsuda gained a reputation
for breaking opponents’ ribs with an aggressive head-butt to the body.
Those well-schooled in
the Rough ‘n’ Tumble Leg Dive in all its vicious forms recognize Pitting and
Head-Butting as a large part of the success of creating the “hip-shelf” that
makes leg-diving so bafflingly easy. [See Black Box 233 & 234 for
details.]
Street,
Dock, and Alley Use
If we step outside of early
sport, we encounter the head-butt as a tool of choice amongst dockworkers,
longshoremen and stevedores in ports all over the world. Each region providing
its own nickname for the tactic, from the Liverpool Kiss to the Barbary Butt to
[my favorite] “The Pardon Me.”
Indigenous
Use
Historian T.J.
Desch-Obi cites many instances of head-butt use in “Creole” fighting. Here “creole”
refers to any mélange of fighting style where African combat arts imported via
the slave trade mixed with the rough ‘n’ tumble port city variant and is not necessarily
limited to the New Orleans region.
We find the tactic
used in some Plains tribal fighting under the names tso[?]nuar’u,
ka’wiset’u, tso’nikar’u, and tso’wiket’u—each of these being a
mighty different expression of using the head as an unexpected point of
delivered pain. [We shall demonstrate these mighty useful variations in an
upcoming Black Box volume as well as the Creole iterations.]
Lumberjacks
& Mining Camps
The lumber camps “High
Jack” sessions [scheduled or unscheduled all-in altercations] also see aggressive
and copious use of the tactic often in conjunction with “stump work,” a curious
amalgamation of high and low attacks. [Allow me to say, it is mighty hard to
protect against these conjunctions. [Again, we shall provide drill templates
for Black Box Subscribers.]
The Mighty
River
But nowhere in my
research, and I do mean nowhere, do we see the absolute
love of, variety of use, wild-ass angles, hell and hair-raisin’ incidence of
use of the head-butt than we see occurring on the rivers of Frontier America.
Keelboat men, flat
boat men, steamboat men all seem to have an absolute love and familiarity with
this fearsome tool.
We see it used on the
highline [as one would expect] in a staggering variety of ways.
We also see it fired
to the body as we find in Matsuda’s incarnation and rough ‘n’ tumble pitting.
We find it used in conjunction
with weapons.
We find it as an
offense, an opener, a defense, a grappling assist, and even as a form of dueling.
Yes, you read that
right—head-butt dueling.
Head-Butt
Dueling & “Ram-Butters”
Experts in the use of
the head in combat were called “ram-butters.”
These rivermen were so
proud of their head-butting prowess we even have an account from 1860 reported
by Richard Edwards in which a proud purveyor of head-butting takes on a
rambunctious billy-goat in a head-butting contest.
I’ll leave the gory
details to the imagination, but let it be said the goat did not survive, and a
post billy-goat-duel disagreement over bets led to another altercation in which
human-to-human butting and more than a few lost digits occur.
After this duel, the
ram-butting was not done.
A second goat was summoned
and the results are different, far bloodier and end with a well-placed horn
from the victorious goat.
Indeed, the headbutt
of yore was a different animal than what we think of today. It took far more
tactical forms than we conjure today [or may be even able to imagine.]
Even if we do not
resurrect all of the prior uses [I for one can do without head-butt duels and life-or-death
contest with billy-goats] there are more than a few things to be learned by
modern day enthusiasts of self-protection.
[All mentioned forms
of historical head-butting will be rearing their heads--again, I know--in future
Black Box Subscription volumes.]
Or our
brand-spankin’ new podcast The Rough and Tumble Raconteur available on
all platforms.
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