“Ram-Butters” or, The Fearsome Head-Butt in Early Combat by Mark Hatmaker

 

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.]

[For more Rough& Tumble history, Indigenous Ability hacks, and for pragmatic applications of old school tactics historically accurate and viciously verified see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]

Or our brand-spankin’ new podcast The Rough and Tumble Raconteur available on all platforms.