It is a gross - and potentially dangerous - misconceptualization to consider MMA'sts as not posessing the knowledge of maiming attacks (eye jabs, kicks to the knee, etc.). These attacks make great sense on paper, and there is even one Wing Chun hundred-yard warrior who has repeatedly published articles in the karate mags about how he would use his trapping hands and eye strikes to defeat a stoopid wrassler. He has yet, however, to take one up on an invitation to go all out...2 fight, anything goes, one walks away and the other goes to the hospital if they're lucky.
The Gracies used - in pre-UFC challenge matches - what would be called in kenpo terms a "lead-leg pull-drag side stamp kick" to the lead knee of their opponent to close the gap, and ruin tissues in the process. Eye gouges can be delivered easily from the mount, at a range from which the other guy can not counter. If you want to get smug about it, you can even pin one of his arms under a knee, and the other one with a hand, leaving one of the wrasslers hand free to happily claw away at the ocular orbits, punch at the throat, or drive heavy inward elbows into the pterion/temple...all while the guy on the bottom can do nothing but get hit, squirm, and pass out. Remember the 2nd UFC where the kickboxer mounts and beats the ninja-boy with elbows? Unstopped or out of a ring, that fight would have ended with some serious skull fractures and brain swelling. Good combat strategy consists of nullifying your opponents ability to utilize their resources, providing you the opportunity to deploy yours at will. Why do you suppose air bases, missile batteries, and infrastrusture are the first targets in a pre-invasion air war?
We have the same nasty tools as the rest of the TMA crowd...we just like delivering them from a more advantageous, one-sided position. And I'll tell you this: All the pontificating about the woulda-coulda-shoulda stuff about how to defeat an experienced grappler who has you mounted flies out the window when you're pinned under the straddle, and getting pummeled. We don't just mount you to lay on you. Submissions wrestling is the nice-guy approach to whippin' a** in BJJ & MMA.
Final thought: MMA does not mean athlete only; it means MIXED martial arts. Mix might loook like JKD modified kickboxing and Thai while upright and in a clinch, shifting to shootfighting and BJJ when the brawl hits the floor. That works just as well on the side of the freeway as it does in a ring.
Food for thought,
Dr. Dave
