Well, perhaps not every time.
Two knockdowns in the first few seconds, both from low kicks. There are no guarantees in fighting, of course.
Regards,
Shodan
Dude.
That guy got pasted!
Amazingly, no-one’s said it yet in this thread (I think) - fighting is all about the fighter rather than the style. I also submit that it’s about the preparation. The boxer may well have been the better fighter, but clearly hadn’t done much about preparing himself for an opponent who kicks…despite the fact that he had a scheduled fight with a kickboxer!? If he’d worked on some kick covers, closed distance and actually, ya know, done some fighting of his own, maybe he wouldn’t have got quite so…ya know…pasted.
Having said that, he made other classic mistakes; allowing the other guy to fight at his best range; staying away instead of closing the distance (although he worked on this later on in the round). And although it’s STILL not a “magic bullet”, there’s a reason why leg kicks are so fearsome - just look at Shodan’s clip for the evidence of that. The kickboxer did a good job, and obviously listened to Dinsdale’s advice about learning the other guy’s rules and breaking them. That’s what happened here.
Here’s a kicks vs punches match that went the other way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klx92Bls08I
Boxer is actually a kickboxer in this clip, but only uses boxing technique. My point is that as a kickboxer, he has dealt with kicks before and they clearly don’t have the same devastating effect. Could also be becuase the other guy isn’t that great a kicker, but he’s gotta be at least half decent to get to K1. In any case, the boxer gets inside and owns - breaks the other guy’s rules.
[offtopic]
I had a weird moment of mistaken identity for a moment when I opened this thread today. My username on a lot of other boards is/was “Shodan” so I thought that maybe my online identity had gone rogue, moving independantly through the internet posting of it’s own volition. Turns out other people use that name too; go figure!
[/offtopic]
I wonder where the rumor that kicks to the knee/leg are some kind of ultimate weapon came from. If you watch a Thai boxing match they are constantly kicking each other’s legs and they don’t immediately fall down and curl up. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one lose a match over this. Sometimes a knockdown but it doesn’t end the fight or anything.
Regards
Testy
I think it’s because if you haven’t felt a good one before, it’ll put you on your ass.
Same thing with a punch to the nose; if it’s your first time, it puts you down. If it’s your 10th time, you barely notice it and fight on.
Thai Boxers kick each other in the legs hard, a lot. After a while, they get conditioned to this and so that’s why it doesn’t have a massive impact on them. Have a Thai Boxer kick anyone in the legs who’s not felt a leg kick before and the chances are it’ll have a serious enough effect.
From a self defence standpoint, leg kicks are a valid weapon; not because of some amazing knee snapping ability but because a kick to the thigh just frikkin’ hurts. My personal favourite in this genre is a leg kick to the inner thigh, just above the knee. You wouldn’t believe how painful that puppy is.
Dave
True enough. The Thai boxers I’ve sparred with had the most amazingly dense muscles of anyone I’ve ever met. I haven’t tried the kick to the inside of the thigh or if I have it was just in the scrimmage and I didn’t pay enough attention to it.
I’ll keep an eye out for that one.
On the Thai boxers, there is a persistent rumor in Thailand that they do something surgical to numb their shins. I’ve never seen anything proving it one way or another but from the way they occasionally catch each other shin-to-shin and don’t start hopping around in serious pain, I’d say that it’s possible. Do you know anything about this?
Regards
Testy
and it was obvious he wasn’t trying for knee breaks or groin shots. He just kicked the shit out of his opponents legs, and a few charley horses later the guy can barely move. I still say the ability and willingness to break knees, do nasty groin shots, neck shot and rip someone’s eye out of the socket will give an edge over a straight boxer (all things being equal like the same level of aggression, training, fitness, etc).
Testy: have to say I don’t know anything about that particular rumour, although I’ve been told that using a rolling pin on your shins deadens the nerves round there, stopping you from feeling just about anything. Personally, I like to keep my BS detector on high alert whenever I see or hear anything about martial arts.
China Guy: you may not be wrong. Tell me, how does it work out when you do these things in your fights?
Tried and tested will beat “in theory” every time, even if “in theory” is potentially more deadly.
I’ve stopped people with a kidney punch and groin kick combo, also with a windpipe shot. so, ya, IRL tried and tested they sure worked for me. YMMV. don’t know if the people I was up against were boxers.
The last time I was in a drunken bar out of hand thing between some regulars, I pulled back the neck shot on a former golden gloves guy. Made him swallow pretty hard. A second later he got me in a headlock and then hesitated before pounding my face. Fortunately, mutual friends pulled us both off before any real damage was done. Not sure what would have happend. But that neck shot was just pure instinct and I stopped just as I was about to drive in and pinch the windpipe. Both of us were probably about 2 decades past last training/sparring shape.
Fair enough!
Nice posts so far but sort of off the track of what I had in mind originally. Let me see if I can explain it better. Does focusing on “the inner journey” really give you an advantage over someone who simply sets out to kick butt? In a hundred martial arts/ fight movies like The Karate Kid, the idea is that the swaggering bully gets his comeuppance from the underdog, who has found in himself a deeper, more enlightened path than seeking superior force. (Of course then the enlightened one proceeds to put the whupass on the bully). Do the religious/ spiritual/ philosophical aspects of eastern traditions make any visible difference in the outcome of a fight?
Short answer?
Nah.
Longer answer: the belief systems of the originating countries often seems to have got tangled up in the study of their martial arts, and there’s been a fair dollop of classic misunderstandings along the way. When it comes down to it, hard training and adversity do have an effect on your character; I guess you could call this an “inner journey” but not in the sense that most people think of when they think of martial arts. So, no.
ahem
Renowned documentarian Abel Ferrara, in his feature Fear City, has already definitively answered this one. An ex-boxer turned strip club manager against a serial killer martial arts hotshot. The boxer wins :D.
No, pretty much the opposite.
Peace and inner tranquility is almost the worst possible frame of mind to approach a street fight. Best is a state of controlled rage (note the inclusion of the word “controlled”). That’s part of the reason why so many successful fighters are assholes - both because they get a lot of practice fighting, and because they have a reservoir of rage they can easily tap so as to maximize their motivation when they fight.
The idea of meditating into a state of calm originated with the samurai (among others), because they fought for a living, and developed meditiation as a way of handling the adrenaline dump that occurs when someone is trying to kill you with a pointy thing. Their problem was staying calm enough to fight successfully. The modern, civilized person’s problem is marshalling the inner rage to fight successfully at a moment’s notice.
If you are calm and rational to begin with, meditation will not help you deal with a fight. It may help you if you are in a chronic state of anxiety because you kill people for a living, or because you expect to die honorably in your lord’s cause and want to give a good account of yourself before you die.
The martial arts start off as martial, then develop into martial ways of spiritual development and self-improvement in response to (in Japan) a change in the social situation that makes a constant readiness for battle maladaptive. Then finally, into sport.
It begins “what is the best way to cut off a head”, develops into “practicing some of the techniques of swordsmanship will make you a better person” to “kendo is a fun sport for the whole family”.
But in a fight between the deeply spiritual, self-actualized Zen master and the psychopathic asshole who has been beaten up by practically everyone he met for the first ten years of his life, bet on the asshole. All other things being equal, etc.
Regards,
Shodan
No. Genuine martial artist.
Please post proof of that statement.
Lumpy
Let me second (or third) what’s already been posted. All the meditation and “chi” in the world isn’t going to help in a fight. If you want to kick the other guy’s butt you need to be pumped-up and pissed off. 
Theoretically, a small person can beat a bigger one and sometimes they do, but they aren’t doing it with their superior spirituality, they’re doing it because they have trained harder.
A good rough guide to things that are meant to provide spirituality etc. is to look for the “do” ending on the name of an art. Traditionally at least, things ending in “jutsu” are intended for a battlefield while those ending in “do” are intended to make you a better person, make you more spiritual etc. A good example would be Kendo, a sport practiced in armor with a light bamboo sword called a Shinai. Kenjutsu, OTOH, uses an oak sword/club to practice with. Kendo is not really a martial art but is about the most fun you can have while standing up. Kenjutsu is whole 'nother matter.
This applies to Japanese, Korean, and Okinawan schools. Other MAs, from SE Asia in particular, don’t use this kind of terminology. Kali, an art from the Philippines I took for many years has no spiritual aspect at all and is intended purely for smashing people up. IIRC, we had to swear not to use opium or harm the innocent and that was the extent of it.
Please note, having a “do” ending does not make something totally useless in the butt-kicking area as IOMDave has convinced me in several of his posts.
Regards
Testy
One possible wrinkle on the “enlightenment” aspect has to do with relaxation. The more at ease you are/the less tension you feel/the less you “think” - the more time you have. So I can imagine meditation and such helping some folks getting to the place where they effortlessly act and react. But you can also get there other ways.
As a general matter, the best fighters I’ve known have studied technique rather than philosophy. Many very good fighters are completely ignorant of and uninterested in any mysticism, eastern or otherwise.
Re: a couple of previous points, one of the hardest shots I ever received whas a thai kick to the nerve on the outside of the leg, just above the knee. Not only did it take me down, but it made me puke. That vasovagal (sp?) reaction really surprised me. Limped for some time afterwards - but no damage to my knee.
Re: shin conditioning anecdote - one of my crazier buddies had a tree stump in a big bucket full of sand that he would do thai kicks on. That SOB could kick thru walls. Of course, he was also into reiki, meditation, eastern healing, and all other kinds of what I considered BS mumbo jumbo.
He’ll find that difficult.
TWIMC, I don’t believe Clothahump and I have ever significantly agreed on a damn thing, but I do know that he has posted reasonably believable evidence that he is indeed a martial-arts teacher. Fair’s fair.
I took an Aikido class in college from a dude that could have been Mr. Miyagi’s double. He was small, shriveled and old. Until then I was always of the opinion that no amount of training could bridge a serious gap with an opponent in size and weight, but I was wrong. If that old guy rumbled with a bar full of Hell’s Angels there’d be a mess of dead bikers.
Did you ever see him in a real fight? Or was it just in training?
Believe me, there’s a difference. Heck, did anyone ever seriously try to shoot in and ground-and-pound him?
I grant you, I am fairly-to-severely biased against Aikido as a method of self-defense, and it is not impossible that he was as bad-ass as you indicate, but it isn’t very likely either. In any case, I doubt it was because he was in tune with the universe.
My $.02 worth, but based on more than a passing acquaintance with martial arts.
Regards,
Shodan