part0017

“We’re not just going to shoot the bastards. We’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.” — General George S. Patton

Physical conflicts are nasty affairs. We have stated many times the importance of avoiding a fight whenever possible. To escape, to not be there when things pop off, that’s a laudable and often achievable goal. We’ve written extensively in other books about how to use awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation among other strategies to extricate oneself from nasty situations. And, we’ve gone on the record as being opposed to needless physical conflict.

But that doesn’t mean that violence does not happen, that it won’t happen to you. That doesn’t mean that that it’s always possible to avoid an altercation. And, there are a lot of folks out there who hold a different view about fighting… some relish the opportunity to dish out pain on others.

Born on the South Pacific island of Tonga, ‘Uli’uli Fifita is better known by his professional wrestling moniker “Haku.” Haku was a top earner at onetime for several World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) productions such as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), and World Championship Wrestling (WCW). He was also acknowledged as one of the toughest men to ever battle in or out of the ring.

A legend had grown around a bar fight involving Haku. It’s said that during a night of drinking the barroom became chippy, with several patrons calling out Haku and other wrestlers in the establishment as fakes. As fans we all accept that professional wrestling is scripted, yet most realize that the physicality and the violence, both contrived and sometimes real, takes a toll on the participants. In other words, the wrestling business is a business in which tough people can make a tough living.

The men heckling these wrestlers must have thought they were tough too, they were taunting a 6-foot, 2-inch tall, 275-pound professional wrestler after all, but in truth they had no idea what they were messing with. You see, when one of the hecklers pushed too far, he set Haku off. By his own admission, Haku answered the challenge of being a fake by saying, “I’ll show you.” Then, he reached out, grabbed the man’s face, and bit his nose off! The moment went from zero to sixty instantaneously. And, the fight was on…

Imagine the shock of witnessing another person’s nose being bitten off, let alone being the target of such an attack. The blood streaming from the victim’s face was a clear demonstration that everything bad was in play, and Haku and fellow professional wrestler Papali’itele Max Amata Taogaga (known in the ring as Siva Afi), a 5-foot, 10-inch, 240-pound Samoan, used that shock-and-awe to clear the room.

Note that Haku used surprise, speed, and violent action to turn the tables on his heckler and did so in the extreme. His choice was next-level violence, mentally and physically going far beyond anyone’s expectations of a “normal” bar brawl, to the extent that there is such a thing as a normal bar brawl. Haku was a guy used to fighting. After all, scripted though it may have been, violence was his job.

Even drunk, Haku had a plan. His very first movement was strategic and it set up everything that followed. You see, taking ahold of another person’s face is only done in one of two situations, intimacy or dominance. The other guy’s instinctive recoil from that first touch made the next movement, biting his nose off, easier. From that point on, he had no chance.

The tactics of fighting vary, but the opportunity to take advantage and keep that advantage is our principle here. It is the essence of “everything bad for you,” which we can short-hand as EB-FYOU. This is when blocks disappear as they morph into strikes, punches come in bunches, and domination becomes inevitable. In other words, when violence is necessary and unavoidable, our goal is to get so far ahead of the count that the other guy (or gal) has no chance like that nose-less wonder who messed with the wrong Tongan.

Here’s the deal, striking first leaves an opening. That opening may be small, wonderfully large, or vaporize quickly, but in the moment of the initial strike it exists. Think of how many confrontations you have seen on video or in real life with the pulling back of a fist in anger was an opening. More often than not this telegraphs the threat’s first move, so those of us used to training for sen no sen can use it as a gift. How did that play out in the examples you’ve seen? Was that gift exploited or did the target get behind the count, become a victim, and lose the fight?

The opening moments of a confrontation can be a present or a penance. It’s all in how we meet it. As you now know, what we do at the start sets the stage for everything that follows.

Jumping into and back out of range is the core of tournament fighting strategy. Competitors understand it is an advanced, somewhat painful game of tag, with its own set of rules and referees, and strategies to fit. That doesn’t mean that tournament fights are not real, but rather that they are artificial. When our opponent cannot pull our hair, gouge our eyes out, break our fingers, stomp us to the curb, or utilize any number of outlawed techniques designed to prevent serious injury and keep things moving during competition, the dynamic between what happens in the ring and outside the ring is changed.

Consequently, what wins in a tournament often stands little chance of doing so during in a serious violent encounter. Heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson may have bitten a chunk out of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a match, but he was subsequently disqualified. Not only is biting illegal, we’re not aware of anyone having their nose bitten off in the ring. On the street, however, it’s a different story. The real world has a different set of rules and strategies than the tournament ring and we must accommodate those differences.

The good news here is that whatever system of karate (or most any martial art for that matter) that we choose to practice, it will have means and methods of using continuous attack that will make it effective on the street. That suggests that we don’t need to recreate the proverbial wheel, it’s already been invented for us. We need only apply the axiom EB-FYOU, leveraging the strategy and applications from our chosen system.

In other words, whenever we have to fight, we must constantly seek and exploit opportunities for dominance as they become available. This is how we prevail.

One path to discovering how to dominate a fight is to choose a piece of our kata (or application set for those who practice a style that does not use kata ) and work it as a staircase drill with a partner, applying a simple policy of striking with our closest available weapon throughout the exercise. In other words, if our right hand is closest to the opponent, that’s what we hit with. If it’s our left knee, we’ll strike with that instead. In this fashion we increase the speed and efficiency of our applications.

Staircasing is inevitable and natural. It emulates what happens in a real-life physical confrontation. The principal of staircasing allows us to seek EB-FYOU without the hazards of presumptive entanglement. In part, that’s because we only seek “perfection” in the opening moment of our encounter and then use whatever works from that point forward. Watch a few altercations on YouTube and you’ll see this dynamic in action.

Here’s how the drill is performed: Set up a pre-determined attack (say head punch by way of example) to respond to. This is discussed with our training partner ahead of time so that both parties know what will happen and can conduct the drill with as much speed and power as we are safely able.

1) For our first move, we use something from one of our kata (forms) to answer this opening attack. Done right it shouldn’t be purely defensive as we utilize sen no sen to recover the initiative.

2) The second move may well be in sequence, or at least resemble the next movement in whatever form that we are using, but it is less prescribed. Simply strike with the nearest available weapon, hand, foot, elbow, knee, forehead, etc...

3) The third move leaves the gravity of the form. We take advantage of whatever opportunity presents itself with the knowledge that it likely will not be coherent with what’s normally seen in kata . It will, however will be consistent with the principle of EB-FYOU.

This exercise will likely be messy and somewhat awkward as we begin, but focusing on target availability and the principle of everything being bad for you begins to increase. As we practice moving down the EB-FYOU staircase we should pull together all the principles discussed earlier in this book too.

This drill trains us to open up the proverbial can of whoop-ass and splatter it all over the other guy (or gal). Note that everything we do originates in our karate system of choice, so we are reinforcing mindset more than technique. In this fashion we make a giant leap toward being able to turn the tables on our assailant and defend ourselves in a real fight.