Watching street fight/attack videos ?

[crazydiamond]

So I have been watching some of the "street fighting" videos on YouTube. Was trying to see if there is something I could learn from a SD standpoint. My observations so far:

1) Not walking away from agitated person or argument or insults.
2) Not maintaining/controlling distance
3) Getting (or allowing) very close (up in their face) with and angry person - while keeping their hands down.
4) Multiple attackers - from a buddy to a girlfriend - coming up from side or behind or jumping in the fight. Not being aware.
5) Mostly fists -Lots of wild hay makers to head, and occasionally grabbing of head interlocking. No defense (other than on ground and fetal position). Not much other types of strikes, or strategic target points, no kicking, no elbows, no real grappling or locks.
6) Lots of videos from 1) Poor urban areas in America and 2) Russia
7) Occasional obstacles or situations that cause people to fall - tables/chairs in restaurants, cars/garbage cans, curbs, or other passive bystanders.
8) Most fights last less than 1 min - someone connects hard and the other person goes down. Depending on fight type - most often thats it - but sometimes the hits continue after a person is down. I have seen this is often when a bystander may jump in.
9) Mixture of random violence and also some intended "let's fight" videos.
10) I feel kind of icky after watching them and want to avoid street confrontations even more then I always have.

 

[Koshiki]

Hey, any information you can get your hands on is good, even if only so that you can learn what NOT to do. Watching Youtube "fight vids" is more practical than going out and trying to find people punching each other, that's for sure. The failing comes from the limited context provided by a 60 second clip of two guys posturing and then slugging for three seconds.

I haven't spent much time watching Youtube "streetfights" but my personal understanding of the proverbial "real fight," is that generally the first strike that lands wins the fight, whether on its own or by establishing an immediate, immense advantage. My other understanding is that generally the first one to strike is the first one to land a strike.

My takeaway? Don't get hit first.

 

[Flatfish]

I have watched a number of these vids,too. I am mostly struck how often your item 4 happens. So many folks getting clobbered from behind unawares.

 

[mber]

I agree, and I think a lot of fights fall into two categories -- serious, when at least one person intends to do damage, and "fake" (at least to my mind), when the combatants are simply venting their rage, and rarely do significant harm.
It's interesting to observe the differences in those situations.

 

[Flying Crane]

#10, yeah, that.

 

[Koshiki]

I agree, and I think a lot of fights fall into two categories -- serious, when at least one person intends to do damage, and "fake" (at least to my mind), when the combatants are simply venting their rage, and rarely do significant harm.
It's interesting to observe the differences in those situations.

It's amazing how often this gets overlooked too. What many people consider Self-Defense, I consider informal sparring with a stranger. If you're both posturing and roaring and shaking your horns and stomping your feet, then it's not self-defense when one of you finally swings a punch and you both get to vent and feel manly.

It's self-defense when someone wants to hurt you and makes sure the deck is stacked in their favour before you know anything is up.

 

[Hanzou]

I'm personally surprised how many fights end up on the ground.

 

[crazydiamond]

Video today making the rounds where it "appears" a bully bigger kid is hitting a smaller blind kid when someone comes up from behind and takes the bully out with a single hit.

 

[Koshiki]

I'm personally surprised how many fights end up on the ground.

I'm not.

People are usually pretty good at falling over.

 

[crazydiamond]

I'm personally surprised how many fights end up on the ground.

Yes and sometimes that's when the friend or GF enters the picture to take a shot.... but I have also seen (usually in agreed street fights) when the crowd steps in to break it up when someone is being pounded or choked on the ground.

I am always instructed to stay off the ground - or get up as soon as possible from the ground - in a street fight.

 

[hoshin1600]

I watch a lot of videos too. It's a great resource. While Hanzou will point out " most fights go to the ground". They don't really and if they do it is usually a good example of why you don't want to be there. I particularly like the bid of the two guys rolling in the street and the girl friend comes up and kicks the guy who was on top in the head and knocks him out cold. I always teach, watch out for friends, relatives and sympathizers. I also like what I think I heard Buka say once, there are always 2 more punks involved that you didn't see coming.

 

[mber]

Yes and sometimes that's when the friend or GF enters the picture to take a shot.... but I have also seen (usually in agreed street fights) when the crowd steps in to break it up when someone is being pounded or choked on the ground.

I am always instructed to stay off the ground - or get up as soon as possible from the ground - in a street fight.

It really pays to at least be competent at ground fighting. Getting up off the ground may not even be a possibility if you're fighting someone who has more experience on the ground and you can't get them off from on top of you.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I'm personally surprised how many fights end up on the ground.

ha starting already I see. Lol

 

[JowGaWolf]

You never know what wrappings people may have on them or when they may try to use it. The more mobility you have the better of you'll be for either fighting multiple people or for escaping. Fights usually don't last a long time and most people get tired after a minute or two of intense swinging or grappling. I always assume that there is more than one person that poses a danger including people who may pull on my arms to get me out of the fight, which takes away from my ability to defend myself. Fighting in the streets means there are no rules and everything is fair game you shouldn't view street fighting in the same light as UFC sports..

 

[crazydiamond]

Fighting in the streets means there are no rules and everything is fair game you shouldn't view street fighting in the same light as UFC sports..

I do tend to agree - anything goes in a street fight, but since I train in a type of MMA, one thing that stands out is that what I see in the videos is a lot of "boxing", or rather wild swings and haymakers. I do see occasional "wrestling" on the ground (but it mostly wild unstructured grabbing and pulling).

A few videos I have seen have someone trained in MMA (or MT or BJJ) but that's not often and those fights look semi-arranged. I never see any of the target striking (knees, groin, throat) or locks or nasty stuff (except hits to back of head).

One of my instructors prefers to give us a lot of basic boxing or modified JKD boxing work specifically to deal with your average schmuck fight. Last night we focused on dealing with haymakers which was practical I think.

I hear lots of concerns about "watch out for MMA moves" in the street like RNC's because everyone is into UFC now (watching or training). So I think boxing or MMA/UFC skills would be helpful in a street fight.

 

[crazydiamond]

Here is the street fight of a bully hitting a blind kid. Its gone viral.

News has verified it was legit and the bully punching the blind kid has been arrested.

I wonder if I would have approached it the same way (punching the bully from behind) or used a RNC. Does not matter really he got what he had coming.

 

[Hanzou]

I watch a lot of videos too. It's a great resource. While Hanzou will point out " most fights go to the ground". They don't really and if they do it is usually a good example of why you don't want to be there. I particularly like the bid of the two guys rolling in the street and the girl friend comes up and kicks the guy who was on top in the head and knocks him out cold. I always teach, watch out for friends, relatives and sympathizers. I also like what I think I heard Buka say once, there are always 2 more punks involved that you didn't see coming.

In that particular video, the guy clearly wasn't trained, and they weren't "rolling on the ground". He was on top of the other guy punching him in the face. The other guy's gf/cousin/mom/whatever ran up and soccer kicked him in the head to get him off of her guy.

And yeah, you don't want to be on the ground in a street fight with potential multiple attackers, which is why its important to learn how to fight from that position if you're unfortunate enough to wind up there.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I do tend to agree - anything goes in a street fight, but since I train in a type of MMA, one thing that stands out is that what I see in the videos is a lot of "boxing", or rather wild swings and haymakers. I do see occasional "wrestling" on the ground (but it mostly wild unstructured grabbing and pulling).

A few videos I have seen have someone trained in MMA (or MT or BJJ) but that's not often and those fights look semi-arranged. I never see any of the target striking (knees, groin, throat) or locks or nasty stuff (except hits to back of head).

One of my instructors prefers to give us a lot of basic boxing or modified JKD boxing work specifically to deal with your average schmuck fight. Last night we focused on dealing with haymakers which was practical I think.

I hear lots of concerns about "watch out for MMA moves" in the street like RNC's because everyone is into UFC now (watching or training). So I think boxing or MMA/UFC skills would be helpful in a street fight.

I teach self-defense classes from time to time. My last one was in 2002 before MMA is as big as it is now. I told the teen students my game plan for that time. Most people only punch so I'm going to take advantage of someone who wants to knock me out with a punch by kicking their legs. We would do scenarios where they will fight like they do in the streets. I kept kicking them in the legs. At the end of the scenario they said that it wasn't fair that I was kicking them in the legs because they weren't expecting it. I smiled and said. "That's the point. This is self-defense." Why would I do an attack that my opponent would expect?

I'm teaching an updated self-defense class next month and it'll cover the MMA and BJJ attacks and how to watch for them. The knees and groin are easy targets even if you don't know a martial arts, you just have to be careful with how you go about attacking those areas. Eyes are easy too as long as you aren't trying to start off with that first or trying to do it once someone has you in an arm bar. Bitting is fair game as well, for me it's a last resort because you don't know what diseases the other person may have. Breaking fingers is also good.

The thing about self-defense is that you have to get yourself mentally ready to deal with the horror of it. Pressing a finger in my opponent's eye with the purpose of forever blinding that person would make most people's skin crawl. You have to get rid of that feeling when the time comes, yes it's horrible but it could be the difference between life and death. People like that they can see through their eyes so trying to put one out is going to change your attacker's focus from fighting you to preventing you from blinding him.

Most people care more about seeing out of their eye than fighting.

 

[Buka]

I've watched a lot of fights on youtube. (Fills a snowy winter day sometimes. Nice with a cup of coco) Seen a lot of fights up close, both as a bystander and in various protective services. What I usually see is a brawl, usually a short one. I think learning to brawl is important in self defense. Even if you don't want to brawl, if you know how, you're better prepared to defend yourself in one.

Crazydiamond - I feel icky when I see a fight up close. It's never a good thing.

Hoshin - yeah, it was taught to me, "There's always one more son of a ***** than you counted on."
I've found that to be true over the years, there's usually at least one.

Back to brawling for a second. It's while you are in a brawl, right smack dab in the midle of one, when you can execute a great martial technique that you have, whatever that technique might be. It's a great game changer or ender. The problem I've seen most young Martial Artists running into is they aren't used to the chaos of a brawl, they always seem to be trying to set (their feet, hands, distance, whatever) but the brawl is overpowering them and taking them out of their game - actually, it's keeping them out of their game. But if you execute technique while brawling, you'll land it....if you know how to brawl.

Learn to brawl. Then never get into a fight. Then make coco.

 

[Koshiki]

...It's while you are in a brawl, right smack dab in the midle of one, when you can execute a great martial technique...

Exactly. I've seen a fair amount of guys, mainly in class but also out of it, attempt what should be close-quarters Karate technique, grabs, grapples, takedowns, etc, from a comfy, long-distance sparring range. Sorry, but you're just not going to pull that off. I'd much rather have someone in my face and grabbing than kickboxing from a distance.

They have too much awareness at that range, they have too much time to react, and you have way less opportunity to attempt to control their actions. In close, you can control, if you know what you're doing, out far, everything is much more of a gamble...