Fighting—the art of hand-to-hand combat—was a big thing growing up. You had to know how to use your hands. Guns weren’t the weapon of choice until later—you used your fists or a knife. That’s one thing about Island dudes; they know how to throw their joints.
I didn’t have older brothers to hold me down, so I had to fight my own battles against kids my age and pretty much anybody else who tried me. To this day, fists aren’t my last resort, they’re my first.
That’s why I sometimes have trouble relating to people who have never fought or who have never been punched in the face. How much can you know about yourself until you’re in a physical altercation? There are people today who have never been punched in the face. That’s why they’ll knock right into you as they walk by in the street and not even excuse themselves. They have no basic respect for anyone around them. Not enough people living in New York today have been punched in the face. They could use that lesson, though. I feel that confrontation brings respect. People who keep doing sneaky shit keep getting away with it, often because no one’s willing to call them on it.
Whether in humility or self-confidence, they need that lesson. Getting tested lets you find out who you are deep down. And I found out that deep down I’m a scrapper. I’m also respectful, though. If I bump into someone, I excuse myself. I’m a humble warrior. You can’t go around looking for trouble, but you have to be ready when it comes. You can’t walk around trying to be the toughest, because there’s always someone tougher.
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Just to join little crews and be cool with certain people, you had to fight. You had to shoot the joints. Can you imagine? Even the Avenue Crew, who used to beat us up, had to fight to be able to chill on the avenue. They had to deal with older dudes trying to push them off the block.
To be down with any crew, you had to slap-box: whoever got the most slaps off with an open hand won. Just because you lost the fight didn’t mean you didn’t get in, though. Win or lose, if you had heart to fight, you got in. Some kids didn’t want to fight, so they couldn’t be down. You couldn’t be scared to fight.
I’ve gotten the shit slapped out of my face for five minutes straight when my hands weren’t good yet. All that fighting and getting jumped and sometimes taking a beating is why I’m not afraid to scuffle to this day. And I will hold it down and do my just due with my hands. I prefer my hands to a gun any day. Guns and hands are two different games. A dude knows that you’re good with your hands, he’s not gonna fight you, he’s gonna shoot you.
The problem with a gun is that it’s a coward’s weapon, because anyone can use it. I could put a gun in the hands of a two-year-old, blindfold him, and tell him to squeeze the trigger, and he’d kill somebody.
Now, for someone to come up on me, actually say something, and we get it on, we rumblin’, and I catch him with an uppercut, a cross, kick him in his fuckin’ abdomen, break his fuckin’ leg and break his jaw with my right hand, knock him on his ass, do you know the satisfaction in that? It’s huge, and not just for the winner. That feels better than shooting someone, because he’ll get up and say, “Damn … that was some shit I just went through. I’m not fuckin’ with that dude no more.” Or he might be the kind of dude who thinks: You know what? I like how he did this or that, I’m gonna go learn and practice, and we gonna fight again. He might be one of those guys. But at the end of it all, we both get to walk away and go see our families, and fight another day.
With a fight, there’s a clear winner and a clear loser, and (usually) no one gets seriously hurt. Guns and drugs changed everything; but growing up, fighting brought out the real men on the streets.
There is a science to fighting. Balance, technique, speed. Speed kills. Fuck what you heard. Fuck all that slow, I’ll knock you out, big dude shit. No. Speed kills. I’ve seen David and Goliath stories my whole life. I’ve seen little small dudes knock out dudes ten times their fucking size and weight based on speed and speed alone.
When you tap someone’s jaw properly, their brain rocks. The human brain is encased in fluid, and it has no shock absorbers, so when it moves, it’s going to hit the side of the skull. When someone gets hit, the fluid shifts and the brain shakes, and they get knocked out. If you get hit and it wobbles your brain, no matter how big you are, you’re going to be fucking discombobulated, and you’re gonna fuckin’ fall.
And your size doesn’t matter. That was one of the things that fighting in the streets (and later in jail) etched into my psyche. Size does not matter one bit. I’ve seen big dudes get scooped by small dudes and slammed on their heads. And I’ve seen small dudes jump to punch a big man in the face and still knock him right out.
Back in the day, you used to run out of your apartment when you heard two motherfuckers fighting. It was like Clash of the Titans. It was like a Mike Tyson main event. People would run out of their apartments and come out of the building to see certain people fight. Instead of being on TV, the shit was right in front of your face. These were our heroes growing up.
We’d sit there and they’d go at it and shoot the five until one dude was knocked out. It wasn’t just entertainment for me like it was for most spectators. I wanted to watch so that I could learn. I studied dudes like Tameek. Billy Johnson used to knock guys out. Buddha knocked some people out. Arkim and Dupreme and Ubar all knocked people out, too. And they all used the 52 Hand Blocks.
They were superstars with the knuckle check. These dudes could rock a gold chain, and nobody would fuck with them. Back then, you couldn’t rock any type of jewelry just like that, because someone was going to test you or rob you. If you were wearing a chain, you had to be someone who was known for shooting or cutting or knocking dudes the fuck out. And someone who didn’t know you may still try and test, so you couldn’t really rely on your rep to save you every time. You had to be ready to show and prove.
Now anybody can wear a chain in the goddamn hood. Nobody’s doing shit to them. You can wear your Jordans and leathers and jewelry in good faith. Rarely are you gonna get tested. At least in comparison to when I was coming up. Fighting was just a way of life then. It was pretty much a given that you were going to have to fight or at least stand up for yourself if you hoped to keep whatever little fly shit you had.
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Everybody wanted to be Bruce Lee back in the day. He was the main dude on TV, and played a major part in the 52 Hand Blocks. The 52 is like “the Continuing Fist” in tae kwon do. No matter what kind or how many punches you threw, if your opponent had mastered it, it was hard as hell to hit them. The 52 Blocks is both an offensive and defensive style that was developed on the street. It’s elbows, arms, and a combination of hand movements that combines techniques from a half-dozen martial arts, including tae kwon do, monkey-style kung fu, jeet kune do, and who knows what else. That’s why 52 Blocks was such a major advantage if you could master it. Size or ability didn’t matter if you could block everything your opponent threw at you, then retaliate.
For whatever reason, the OGs didn’t pass 52 down to the younger generation. Maybe it was because guns became more of a factor in settling disputes. Whatever the reason, 52 Hand Blocks is nearly a lost art today, with only a scarce few remaining who claim to know it. So few that people think it’s a myth. It’s not, though. If you tangle with one of these old heads that knows the 52, you’re gonna get hit with a tornado. He’ll hit you from your kneecaps to both sides of your dome.
Sha-Bon, or Shabby, who was down with the Avenue Crew, had a brother named Tameek who was a master at 52 Hand Blocks. You could not get your shit off with Tameek. He was a knockout artist in every sense of the word, and there is an art to the knockout. He had big ol’ mitten hands, and he could knock you out with either one. His defense skills were impenetrable. You could not land a single punch on this guy, and he would land all his. Believe it or not, this dude used to catch your punch and kiss your fist, then bust your shit.
I wanted to do a documentary with Tameek about the 52, but he got killed before I could. He was in the life, and tried to take over a drug building, and got shot in the back of the head. I wanted to interview him because he knew the blocks. He knew defense, but he also knew offense, how to come back from the block. Once he had neutralized his opponent’s attack, he knew the best way to strike and drop them with one punch. That’s lost knowledge. That died with him. That’s a damn shame.
One of my best friends was named June June, aka Infinite, who I first met in high school. He was a six-foot-two-inch, wavy-haired, jet-black motherfucker, and a born fighter. I wish he were still alive; he could have become a heavyweight fighter.
He showed me about what having heart really meant and to not be afraid of anybody. Even if he was, he’d hide it real good and take them on anyway. I was smaller than a lot of other dudes, but I was already a fighter with heart, and had been for years. So he kept my little yellow ass around.
I learned so much from him. I learned that if I got into a fight and I got lumped up, I’d just take my beating. That’s heart. And that’s something I learned from him, because he lost fights, too.
He and I would be walking down the street or hanging out, and we’d see someone who had a rep for fighting.
“Yo, God, you think he could get me?” In other words, do you think he can beat me?
“I don’t know, Infinite.”
That’s all he needed to hear. He’d go over and start a fight
with the dude. Either he’d win or he’d lose. Usually he’d win, but if he lost, he’d take the loss. He wouldn’t cry and go get his gun. He would say, “I’ma see that dude in three months.”
That’s all he’d say to whoever beat him. He’d go work out crazy hard for three months, then come back and challenge him to another fight. And he’d knock him the fuck out. Every. Time.
Infinite also taught me that you can take a loss and you can come back strong. That’s the true heart of a champion. He was a notorious knockout artist on Staten Island. To this day, if I said his name there, people would know who he was.
I remember before he died, he got locked up at Rikers Island and came home with twenty-two cuts on his back and face. He showed me the scars on his back—it was gruesome. I asked him what happened.
“I was goin’ to war in Rikers!” he said. “As soon as I arrived in the Four Building [the prison dorm], my name’s ringin’ bells. ‘June June’s in the house!’”
See, the moment you get in jail, you gotta act a certain way, or other dudes are gonna try to take advantage of you any way they can. That’s your reputation, and if it’s solid, it can protect you from a lotta shit. Of course, the bigger rep you have, the bigger target you can be, too. June June knew this, and since he had a rep for knockin’ dudes out, he knew guys were gonna come at him, hoping to improve their rep by taking him down.
“Them lil’ dudes all had to gang up on me, there musta been about twenty of ’em,” June June said. “They climbed up on me, and I was knocking ’em out one by one. But after that, I came out of the infirmary, and the whole jail was dialed down.”
That’s just how he was. He was one of those dudes that everywhere he went, you always knew he was in the house. Everyone knew not to mess with him, or if they didn’t know, they learned damn quick. Matter of fact, during that stretch was when he changed his name to Infinite. He went in June June, he came out Infinite.
I loved that man. He had a lot of people that didn’t like him, but then he also had mad peoples who loved him. And he didn’t like that many people, but I was lucky to be one of them. He even got along with my moms.
Unfortunately, like a lot of the good brothers I grew up with, he got killed. He ran up on some little shorty who was scared of him, and he shot June June in the chest with a .45. Just murdered him. The guy who shot him was a little sucka punk, but he feared June June, so he shot him. I always told June June he couldn’t keep just running up on people like that. But he wasn’t trying to hear that, and it got him killed.