Lee Morrison/Kelly McCann street fight seminar

[drop bear]

You were a troll then, and you're a troll now, even if you do say useful things. Good day, drop bear.

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What different does it make if I say useful things?

I am not selling a seminar. I don't need to have an image.

 

[drop bear]

And we see this idea inside of sport too. Israel Adesandra can be a boring counter fighter.

But it is a much safer way to fight.

We can also look at bare knuckle. Because the risk of getting incapacitated increases when you take gloves of. The punches are more likely to land. And they are more likely to have more effect.

 

[GreenieMeanie]

You know what. I will try anyway.

People who are trying to sell seminars will say a street fight is a particular thing to make what they are selling more applicable.

So if you are doing BJJ then street fights are a ground affair.

If you have no ground game then street fights are always multiple attackers leaping out of the shadows to kick you.

And so on.

And the way it works is to cover your mistakes. So say you can't fight. Then you are probably going to be discouraged from attending fighting seminars. Because you will probably just get beaten up by people who can fight. And that isn't much fun.

But if you create this environment where you would have won regardless as to your actual ability. Then you will feel like you gained something. And walk away satisfied.

So a street fight works in this magical world where all the bad guys are really bad. But they are also prone to making supervillain mistakes that allow the hero to overcome.

In this meat grinder style street fight you suggest is the focal point. The bad guy Has no ability to take strikes and collapses. Allowing the ambush style self defence to work.

Then you don't need to mess around with footwork or distance management or timing. Because these are not really real fights. They are duels or monkey dances or some lesser thing that you don’t really need to spend a lot of time on.

But people get seriously hurt from duels and monkey dances. The link above started because Viktor Lyall stopped those guys from dropping the boot in to some random.

And if you engage in money dances or dueling. And you are good. You get hit less. It isn't romantic but it is effective.

When the original WWII combatives curriculum was put together for OSS, the goal wasn’t to make the operatives expert fighters, but to give them something to work with if they got in trouble, so they weren’t simply killed on the spot.

I don’t know who you’ve dealt with ….but every gym/dojo/seminar I’ve been too that does RBSD, covered footwork, distance, and timing—but not in the context of prolonged fights.

None of them ever said, that fights are restricted to the ground, or standing.

You can’t even acknowledge, that what you said back in the day was a screwed up thing to say.

I think this will be my last acknowledgment of your existence.

 

[drop bear]

When the original WWII combatives curriculum was put together for OSS, the goal wasn’t to make the operatives expert fighters, but to give them something to work with if they got in trouble, so they weren’t simply killed on the spot.

I don’t know who you’ve dealt with ….but every gym/dojo/seminar I’ve been too that does RBSD, covered footwork, distance, and timing—but not in the context of prolonged fights.

None of them ever said, that fights are restricted to the ground, or standing.

You can’t even acknowledge, that what you said back in the day was a screwed up thing to say.

I think this will be my last acknowledgment of your existence.

The original OSS combatives were not really very well thought out. Especially the whole concept of line drilling which is very inefficient.

They certainly didn't cover footwork etc well in that seminar.

Rushing forwards to try to artificially finish a fight with a guy you have no experience with and is at his freshest and fastest is incredibly risky. And risk is something you want to mitigate if loosing means you could be crippled or killed.

so you are saying in your time with RSBD. You have never encountered the ground. Not ground debate?

And I don't really care that I said what I said.

 

[hoshin1600]

Honestly I don't think Kelly mcann is really a hand to hand guy. It's not his wheel house. Armed tactics yeah sure, but that's not my thing so he could be horrible at it for all I know, but it seems legit to me. Lee on the other hand is pretty good at what he does. One of the big problems I see is when instructors have a specialty that they accel at, over time they think they are good at everything, and their not. I have meet more than my share of top instructors and most have a specialty that made them notable and when they go outside that circle it can be cringe.
On the viewer or student side we shouldn't expect our role model, instructors, seminar guy to know everything about everything.
It would a nice change for some honesty to have the guy say up front "this is what I accel at, so I'll stick to teaching that" but most people's egos get inflated too much for that.

 

[Jared Traveler]

Honestly I don't think Kelly mcann is really a hand to hand guy. It's not his wheel house. Armed tactics yeah sure, but that's not my thing so he could be horrible at it for all I know, but it seems legit to me. Lee on the other hand is pretty good at what he does. One of the big problems I see is when instructors have a specialty that they accel at, over time they think they are good at everything, and their not. I have meet more than my share of top instructors and most have a specialty that made them notable and when they go outside that circle it can be cringe.
On the viewer or student side we shouldn't expect our role model, instructors, seminar guy to know everything about everything.
It would a nice change for some honesty to have the guy say up front "this is what I accel at, so I'll stick to teaching that" but most people's egos get inflated too much for that.

Wow. Excellent. I did a whole post on this reading self-awareness of what you are teaching. Martial Arts, Combatives, Self-defense, Military Combatives, personal protection/security, safety training, defensive tactics, the list goes non...... We feel the need to be "experts" at everything related to personal survival and end up reaching to find solutions without even understanding the problems.

 

[Jared Traveler]

Ok, I’m not going to comment on the second video, as my fingernails tend to be fairly soft and I keep them cut very short so they don’t snag and get turned backwards. In a nutshell, I don’t see my fingernails as a reliable self-defense tool. I can deliver a pretty powerful tigerclaw strike however, hitting with the palm and fingertips (not engaging the nails). I’ll leave it at that.

For the first video I have some comments. The first thing is that compilations like this, where it rather quickly cuts from one thing to another, often leave me wondering what, if any, consistent engine is under the hood. The compilation of short clips does not give me a chance to evaluate whether there is a systematic delivery system, or if it is just a collection of tricks designed as responses to particular types of attacks. Furthermore, if this is a seminar with attendees who do not regularly train with the instructor, then to the extent that a delivery system exists, how well do the attendees understand it? And if the answer is “not very well” then how effective can they be with the material that they learn?

Moving on from that, the material itself reminds me of the Ed Parker derived branches of kenpo, which includes the Tracy lineage which I trained in the past. The bulk of the curriculum consists of self-defense scenarios with an attacker, and a prescribed defense to be executed by the defender. Collectively these are usually referred to as “self-defense techniques”. Some of the ideas within these techniques can be good, others can be bad. How well they get trained varies from school-to-school, so it is difficult to comment on consistency of quality within these lineages. But at any rate, I think this approach to training would be familiar to anyone who has spent time within the Parker-derived kenpo lineages.

Good catch on Kenpo similarities. I didn't see it until you mentioned it. Now I definitely do.

 

[Jared Traveler]

Looks very much like stuff I was taught--but I'd like to know if any of you recongnize anything in here, that has routes, in specific TMAs.

Was never taught technical raking though, wouldn't be particularly useful unless you paired it with followups.

I can't get past Lee and his wife beater shirts. Also the "tough guy persona" that seems to ooze from everyone associated with these guys, seen in both videos. It's complete opposite of the humble, relaxed, almost beach vibes that experienced grapplers exude.

I don't understand or connect with walking around like it's your first day of prison and you are trying to convince everyone you are an Alfa male. Are they also selling this persona? It's a bit silly.

 

[Jared Traveler]

Don't misunderstand me, I think a lot of these techniques can be very effective. But because combatives programs and often self-defense programs aren't having students pressure test their techniques, they seem to seek some credibility through aggressive posturing. It just looks like knuckle dragging nonsense.

 

[hoshin1600]

Don't misunderstand me, I think a lot of these techniques can be very effective. But because combatives programs and often self-defense programs aren't having students pressure test their techniques, they seem to seek some credibility through aggressive posturing. It just looks like knuckle dragging nonsense.

Yeah, you hit that square on. Lee has credibility issues. From what I can parse out, he learned most of what he knows on his own picking up things from others here and there. Unfortunately I feel a large number of RBSD and combatives folks use those terms to mask a lack of a solid background. But then there are also guys like Matt Larson who trained with Royce and Rorion Gracie and created modern Army combatives.

 

[GreenieMeanie]

I can't get past Lee and his wife beater shirts. Also the "tough guy persona" that seems to ooze from everyone associated with these guys, seen in both videos. It's complete opposite of the humble, relaxed, almost beach vibes that experienced grapplers exude.

I don't understand or connect with walking around like it's your first day of prison and you are trying to convince everyone you are an Alfa male. Are they also selling this persona? It's a bit silly.

In my experience, the cadre are humble in person.

But they all market themselves as “tough guys.” You’ll be hard pressed to find people that teach in Hawaiian shirts.

They are pressure tested at his dojo’s, that his, people who train with his brand name.

 

[GreenieMeanie]

Yeah, you hit that square on. Lee has credibility issues. From what I can parse out, he learned most of what he knows on his own picking up things from others here and there. Unfortunately I feel a large number of RBSD and combatives folks use those terms to mask a lack of a solid background. But then there are also guys like Matt Larson who trained with Royce and Rorion Gracie and created modern Army combatives.

From my experience, that is not unusual, but they’re also taking things from guys who know their stuff.

I originally started training his stuff, from a recommendation of experienced RBSD/TMA/MMA types (the type who train the above paired with knives and guns, for a well-rounded self-defense-set). I found that what I was taught was a bit different from things I’d learned previously, and much more grounded in MMA. It is in fact, harder to absorb, unless you have an MMA background.

 

[Taiji Rebel]

Using Street anywhere in your marketing materials is going to attract a certain type of person.

The martial arts world seems to have become a lot more violent since the reality-based marketing campaigns of the late 80s and early 90s.

These days you see a lot of bald, beardy, aggressive, testosterone-fuelled types preaching and promoting effective methods of self-defense to the kind of people who have no real requirement for defending themselves in the first place - can you seriously imagine anybody who really needed to learn how to defend themselves and stay safe in the streets attending these kind of events?

For the average member of society, these instructors/attendees are the kind of people who would scare the living daylights out of you in everyday life!

 

[drop bear]

Using Street anywhere in your marketing materials is going to attract a certain type of person.

The martial arts world seems to have become a lot more violent since the reality-based marketing campaigns of the late 80s and early 90s.

These days you see a lot of bald, beardy, aggressive, testosterone-fuelled types preaching and promoting effective methods of self-defense to the kind of people who have no real requirement for defending themselves in the first place - can you seriously imagine anybody who really needed to learn how to defend themselves and stay safe in the streets attending these kind of events?

For the average member of society, these instructors/attendees are the kind of people who would scare the living daylights out of you in everyday life!

A suprising number do. Especially defendo. That has a large number of real industry guys attending it.

There is a weird disconnect even with capable martial artists when it comes to RBSD.

The nature of the training is designed to be deceptive. And the cultures the training come from don't allow for much debate.

So there is a lot of weird stuff baked in to these courses.

 

[drop bear]

I am trying to think of an easy way to explain this. But there are so many elements that make up a package like this that I keep distracting myself.

So this is combat sportsmen at a high level testing their fighting theories.

And it goes through the process of fighting.

Which isn't used in RBSD generally. And they use deception to effectively mask that they don't use this process. By creating compliant drills and logical escape clauses.

Which is far more satisfying because you win more often. But is ultimately not as efficient

 

[Taiji Rebel]

I am trying to think of an easy way to explain this. But there are so many elements that make up a package like this that I keep distracting myself.

So this is combat sportsmen at a high level testing their fighting theories.

And it goes through the process of fighting.

Which isn't used in RBSD generally. And they use deception to effectively mask that they don't use this process. By creating compliant drills and logical escape clauses.

Which is far more satisfying because you win more often. But is ultimately not as efficient

There is obviously a need for men to prove themselves tough and ready for combat in the modern age.

Is it possible these courses are just fulfilling an emptiness and lack of physical challenges in the life of modern man?

Are they just opportunities to roleplay and pretend you are some kind of superhero, or the chance to imagine yourself as an elite special forces operator?

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Don't know how I missed this thread when it was originally posted.

I have indeed seen all these techniques before in various systems. Some are better than others.

I have a few general criticisms in terms of the training as presented...

All the of scenarios presented have the "attacker" coming in with about 20% intensity and aggression, while the "defender" comes in hard and fast and aggressive. Essentially it's about overwhelming the other guy by taking the initiative with superior speed, aggression, and intensity. That's a pretty hard thing to pull off in an actual self-defense situation where the other person is initiating the attack*. It might have some applicability in a scenario where you recognize that the other person is about to attack you and you decide to hit first. But that adds a number of other factors that you need to take into consideration - the other person must be presenting a clear threat that justifies pre-emptive action, they need to be standing close enough that you can land these move without any setup, they aren't aware that you may decide to initiate the action or else you need to be able to disguise your intent, your techniques need to be ones you can legally justify after the fact given that the other person hadn't attacked yet, etc.

In addition, the scenarios shown all seem to be based around the idea that you will immediately succeed in using your superior aggression to beat the other guy down. None of the clips addresses the scenario where you don't immediately smash the other guy into submission and they go to work hitting you back. Maybe he covers that in other parts of the seminar, but this is where drop bear's comment regarding positioning come into play. If your forearm smash, hammer fist, knee combo didn't land cleanly and take the other guy out and now you're just standing directly in front of the other person, then you aren't in an ideal position to defend yourself.

* My general approach is to assume that in most self-defense scenarios, the attacker has the option of selecting a target that they believe they will be able to physically overwhelm, choose the moment of the attack (ideally when the defender is inattentive or appears otherwise vulnerable), and psych themselves up beforehand to be ready to unleash maximum aggression. The idea that the defender will be able to reliably pre-empt the attack with superior initiative, speed, aggression, and power is not particularly likely.

The first thing is that compilations like this, where it rather quickly cuts from one thing to another, often leave me wondering what, if any, consistent engine is under the hood. The compilation of short clips does not give me a chance to evaluate whether there is a systematic delivery system, or if it is just a collection of tricks designed as responses to particular types of attacks.

If by "delivery system" you mean a consistent set of body mechanics and tactical options, then I think the instructor does demonstrate that in his movements. Whether he does a good job of actually teaching that system I have no idea.

 

[drop bear]

There is obviously a need for men to prove themselves tough and ready for combat in the modern age.

Is it possible these courses are just fulfilling an emptiness and lack of physical challenges in the life of modern man?

Are they just opportunities to roleplay and pretend you are some kind of superhero, or the chance to imagine yourself as an elite special forces operator?

To a certain degree.

 

[Flying Crane]

If by "delivery system" you mean a consistent set of body mechanics and tactical options, then I think the instructor does demonstrate that in his movements. Whether he does a good job of actually teaching that system I have no idea.

What system do you see?

 

[Tony Dismukes]

What system do you see?

Tactically, as I mentioned, it's all about overwhelming pre-emptive forward aggression at close range.

In terms of body mechanics, I could demonstrate it in person better than I can describe it in print. But fundamentally it's hitting with the full body weight as a unit, mostly by driving the whole body into the opponent (as in the forearm strikes) or dropping the body weight down (as with the hammer fists), but occasionally using rotation of the hips.

It's not a bad method of power generation and it's pretty appropriate for the types of techniques that he's showing.