This offering is best read
in conjunction with the three prior offerings:
Leg-Breakers,
Street Dentists & Enforcers
The Empirical Fighter: Rules for the SeriousCombatant
[The accompanying video provides just one aspect
of how small tweaks to standard systems change the game—trust me, these tweaks
abound to make all movement “hot and nervy.”.]
Let us
establish our priors.
Combat Sports,
be they boxing, wrestling, MMA, JJ, Muay Thai, et cetera are rough and ready
endeavors.
No arguments there.
A sport, a skill, a
study, any area of focus is improved by frequent practice and ready use. That
is, our badminton player who plays 4-5 days per week is likely more facile with
a blistering fast shuttlecock return than, say, someone like me, who plays at
best, one afternoon a summer.
Or we can look to
boxers, circa 1920s, ratcheting on average over 100 fights in a career, and
many more off-the-record bouts in clubs and smokers giving some double their
official fight tally.
These fighters, with
constant exposure to the ins and outs of the game, adhered to the frequency of
use rule and had more tips, tricks, and tactics in the noggin’ than the fighter
who pulls, at best, 4-5 fights per year.
Again, regarding the
20’s fighters of our example, we are not talking training time, we are talking
bouts. Some fighters were taking on average a fight every two weeks—if we add
corresponding gym time, we can imagine how much more familiarity with all
matters fistic such an athlete would be than our, in comparison, quarterly
dabbler.
A sport,
be it badminton, boxing, or free-diving has designated boundaries, strictures, rulesets.
Be those rules, no hair
pulling, don’t clip the net, or “keep it on the face of the glove, Boys!”
the well-understood rules are what make an endeavor a sport and not a bit of
chaos resembling a sport.
To excel
in a given endeavor, athletes play to the boundaries of the game in question.
Their thinking and their performance become bounded by the black and white
words in the rulebook.
The best athletes in
any endeavor, understand those margins and play to and exploit those defined
margins.
So, with
all of that in mind, if we have an athlete who understands those margins well.
Can color inside the lines just fine but…prefers the vast territory beyond the
lines of acceptable play then when I match my game against his our hers that
lives in a world of chaotic freedom of expression I am hamstrung by my own bounded
training.
My mind and body have
grooved to a rulebook of acceptable play. I may recognize immediately that the
game has gone non-kosher and outside of the lines and decide that I shall “go
beyond” as well, but…
My mind and body have
been grooved; they have been trained to the acceptable boundaries. I must make
cognitive effort to step outside and beyond what has been grooved, whereas, my
free-wheeling opponent has no such cognitive boundary to overcome. [Again, I
would urge you to have a read of The Empirical Fighter: Rules for the SeriousCombatant to make sure we understand the laws of specificity.]
If our
free-wheeling player also has the benefit of frequent pragmatic application
of the free-wheeling mindset and arsenal in real proving grounds, then I am
doubly lost.
When we take a
rule-breaker with the fight record of a 20’s fighter in their own domain we
have an entirely new animal. The Law of Frequent Use will make “the
beyond” not mere tools to snatch at when the going gets tough but the first choices
at any given opportunity.
A rule-breaker that takes
an agreed upon rule-set and sanctioned tactics who then alters them, augments
them, revises them into a new animal altogether, is a formidable animal themself.
I will now re-tread a
bit of territory covered in Leg-Breakers, Street Dentists & Enforcers,
where we turned our eye on the Boxing-Mob connection.
The connection between
old school boxers, old school wrestlers of the legitimate sort and those who
moonlighted a bit in both worlds is vast and almost astonishing in its roster.
If we add those who
never competed in the legitimate game but were considered fearsome nevertheless
by those who did play at top levels in the sportive side of things, the roster
quadruples.
The observations that
follow from Joseph “Donnie Brasco” Pistone are simply from one voice in the
know.
We could easily add hundreds
more like observations from the historical record of folks saying gangsters,
mobsters, wiseguys, hard bastards, hooligans and thugs knew what they were
doing, and, in most cases, knew more than the sport-saturated will ever know.
[Mr. Pistone’s
observation is echoed in testimony from the 1750’s forward on both sides of the
pond—never forget Ronnie & Reggie Kray were just two notable examples of
folks who took what they learned in the ring and upped it outside the game. The
following holds for boxing and wrestling; scufflers from
The Barbary Coast to The Five Points put their skills to less than savory use. Gerald
Kersh’s 1938 novel, Night and the City, although ostensibly about
corruption in the wrestling game, also had a knowing eye on “performers who
moonlighted.”]
I turn it over to Joseph
D. Pistone, a man who went deep undercover with the Mob. A brave man who knows
of what he speaks.
“When you grow up
on the streets, you get into a lot of street fights. No way around it, plain
and simple. That’s why a lot of your champion boxers grew up on the streets. In
Paterson, New Jersey, I got into situations all the time where the only way out
was with my fists. The first time you punch someone in the face, you are almost
shocked by the violence of it, the blood, the crunching sound, the breaking
bones. After that, it’s a piece of cake. I punched a lot of people in my day,
almost always in situations where it was punch or be punched.
“One thing
I knew not to do was go looking for a street fight. Why provoke a fight when
the guy might have a knife or a gun? If, however, you sense that a fight is
inevitable, you must make sure you get in the first punch. Once I started
hanging out with wiseguys, though, I was surprised at how they went around
almost eager to mix it up. They knew they had a tremendous advantage over
almost everyone who crossed their paths: an utter fearlessness about fighting. Wiseguys
do everything with their fists: fighting is a way to negotiate, send a message,
settle a debt, even have a little fun on a slow night. I saw wiseguys beat up
waiters, shopkeepers, cab drivers, you name it. And I never saw a wiseguy lose
a fight. If you ever have the misfortune to be punched by a wiseguy, you will
not soon forget it. I got punched by wiseguys a couple of times. They punch
pretty good.”
Mr. Pistone goes on to
say that the fights are not of the bar-room dust-up poseur, throw a few “are
we done here?” variety. Here he refers to the intensity and the “educated”
use of force.
“I have
seen wiseguys beat the bloody hell out of people. It takes a while to do,…but
if you know where and how to punch a guy, believe me, you can kill him.”
He is just one of many
insiders who refer to Street-Dentistry as being a different animal than boxing.
What looks like standard punching or boxing correlates, is often just that,
something that looks like it. Often the resemblance ends there.
There is also the
frequency of actual use of the skill set which further hones tactics and
strategy. An increased exposure to tool-honing opportunity that recalls the
fight records of the 1920’s “in the know” fighter.
Mr. Pistone on
frequency and provocation.
“Hell, people have
been savagely beaten for accidentally bumping into wiseguys.
“So, if you get
into some kind of altercation with someone who looks like a wiseguy, walk away.
No, run away. Wiseguys love getting into fights, and they never lose.”
To conclude, I repeat,
actual street arsenals may resemble their sporting corelates, but the historical
and tactical record reveals that similarities end at appearances. Those who
assume otherwise may make a deadly mistake.
For our
own protection, to confront the predators and rule-breakers of the world, we
must allow our own education in rule-breakers to come from those who know intimately
how to break the rules. And not just bending the rules of a sport.
[Want details,
tips, and tactics on how to throw hands, dirty clinch, and ground crush like the
rule-breakers mentioned?
In
The Black Box Project we provide old-school combat nitty-gritty straight
from the historical record, and yes, it is empirically verified or it ain’t in.
For skinny on The Black Box Project itself.
[For
techniques, tactics, and strategies of Rough and Tumble Combat, Old-School
Boxing, Mean-Ass Wrestling, Street-Ready Frontier Scrapping & Indigenous
Ability culled from the historical record see the RAW Subscription Service, or
stay on the corral fence with the other dandified dudes and
city-slickers. http://www.extremeselfprotection.com
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