I have another question related to fights you see in movies and on TV. Often martial artists are depicted as being capable of taking on seven or eight opponents and still coming out on top. Is this realistic? I have always suspected that even the most skilled fighter would be overcome with superior numbers. What do you guys think?
Well, as countless standup comics have noted, whenever Bruce Lee or Steven Seagal takes on 10 bad guys, they always (conveniently) choose to attack him ONE AT A TIME!
If they all swarmed him, there’d be nothing he could do.
Well, they’d be overcome if their opponents all attacked at the same time, instead of politely letting each of their companions take a turn charging the hero in single combat.
As film directors finally clued in to how stupid this looks, lately the trend has been toward making it look like the attackers are all charging at once. This is typically used in Jet Li or Jackei Chan movies. On examination, though, you’ll see that even though three guys are running forward, they’re all at exactly the right distance so the hero’s spinning back kick can clip all of them.
As for reality, a well-trained martial artist could defeat multiple opponents if they were untrained and badly organized (or drunk) but as soon as they get their act together, they’ll cream him.
One point to consider is that there’s a limit to how many guys you can fit around one opponent. A hundred against one really isn’t any more unbalanced than ten against one, and probably not much worse than three or four. There’s also the matter that most folks don’t know how to fight effectively as a team, beyond simple maneuvers like “I’ll hold him while you punch”. In some cases, it can actually be easier to fight two or three at a time than one, since your opponents will tend to get in each others way.
But if they know what they’re doing and have trained properly, then two-on-one becomes a big challenge.
I saw an Aikido seminar on handling multiple attackers, and the people who trained for it were quite capable. The instructor made the point that when you had more than three or four, it actually got easier because you could use one attacker to obstruct others. Depending on the relative skill of the attackers, three or four was very difficult and required the defender to get outside the circle very quickly so he could not be taken from all sides. With more attackers than four, you can use one against others, turning an Aikido throw into “bowling for bad guys” in his terms.
Note that I’m not saying it’s easy or anyone could do it. The situational awareness required is something you have to train for specifically, above and beyond basic one-on-one technique training.
It is theoretically possible to defeat multiple opponents, but the key is to take each one out before the others can attack.
The defender’s only advantage is that he is standing at the center of a series of concentric circles, on which his assailants must stand in order to attack him (this assumes no projectile weapons). By shifting position, the defender can create greater distance between himself and some of the attackers. In theory, the defender can then get a chance to take out one while the others are re-adjusting.
It is also possible to survive an attack from one while taking out another, and then continue to defend against others. Just because you landed a punch on the side of my head while I was kicking your buddy in the nuts, does not mean that I am now incapable of doing the same to you. This becomes less likely, the more opponents I am facing. If no exit is available, I would then try to get my back to a wall, and/or keep flanking my assailants.
I would hope like hell that after I take out the first one or two, the others might pause. This does not happen as much as I would like it to, but was the reason I was able to survive relatively unscathed from the only multiple-attacker scenario I have any experience with. He had some friends with him, but he was the only one really committed to kicking my ass. I was able to concentrate on him, got lucky enough to remove him from consideration for enough time to give my full attention to his nearest friend before said friend was able to damage me very much, and the rest sort of realized it was more like a fight and less like an unopposed beating, and lost interest. Whereupon I demonstrated my skills in sneaker-jutsu, and beat feet out of there.
In real life, if the multiple assailants have any practice in coordinating their attacks (“You go low, I’ll go high, and we will all stomp him to death as soon as he hits the floor - on three, GO!”), the single defender is dead meat.
Regards,
Shodan
IRL you try to get your back to a wall, giving you half the circumference to protect.
Well I have been there. It can be kinda tough.
Part of the fencing group I belong to (SCA rapier) has ‘Melee’ fights as well. Sure sounds like fun when it is 5 on five, until your teammates all up and die on you without taking out someone along the way.
The last Melee I was in ended up being 5 vs Osip and 4 vs Osip by the time my team rolled over. I won both times.
How? As it was explained in previous posts better than I can.
Keep moving, If you get cornered your toast. Moving keeps the odds a bit better, If you move quick enough and rush in and poke (in my case fencing melee) then keep moving you will be ok.
In some cases it is easier, if you “spin” an opponent (moving him so his back is to his buddies) it keeps said buddies from helping and he has to worry about backing up into them.
Alas, the movies usually has the good guy stand there and the bad guys come at him one or two at a time.
trust me… if your moving you have a chance… you get cornered… your toast… just try and take someone out with you.
There was this time I was attacked by, like, 100 guys, probably more - so I, like, pulled up this metal post thing out of the concrete and just started batting them away. Whoah.
Very much like some paint ball battles I’ve fought.
Moving helps keep everyone adjusting their attack vector. Unless you are completely encircled from all directions, the best is to keep moving sideways. Unless they’re trained and coordinated, you’ll reach your first opponent and have his friends behind him. Bring him out of the fight ASAP and keep moving. Grappling in this sort of fight = losing…badly.
In my paint ball games the key is to run like a rabbit, take quick shots and prevent anyone from entering your six. Walking into a corner or wall is both good and bad. It’s good that they can’t surprise and surround you, it’s bad that you can’t run.
Back when I was taking karate (Shotokan), we would sometimes do two-on-one sparring. I can tell you from experience that the single defender is almost always doomed, even when he is at a significantly higher level than the two attackers, say a first kyu brown belt (that’s one level below black belt) vs. two green belts (three steps up from beginner).
Unless the defender is good enough or lucky enough to totally incapacitate one attacker in the first blow, he has an extremely tough time. In reality, as opposed to the movies, the attackers will not only come at you simultaneously but from opposite sides or from both front and back. The smart thing for the defender to do, if he has the time, is to move toward one of the attackers and try to land the first blow. But then he has to move quickly again to either block or get out of the way of the second attacker. Meanwhile, the first attacker is circling around to come in again from the side or from behind.
The attackers are moving to get the defender between them, and the defender is moving, not only to stay out from between them, but to try to maneuver one of them to the middle so that he can deal with them one-at-a-time.
So what you end up with is a defender who’s working his butt off, trying to block two attacks, maybe get in a blow of his own, and constantly, constantly running, dodging, stopping, starting, turning, etc. The defender gets worn down almost literally twice as fast as the attackers. And even then, it’s almost inevitable that there will quickly come a time when one of the attackers has a clear shot. I mean, we were sparring in a class, so control was paramount, no actual disabling blows allowed, and so you’d frequently see one or the other attacker holding back, waiting for the defender to finish with the other attacker. In a street fight, without that holding back, the defender would have been dead, or at least on the ground in agony.
So no, it’s not realistic at all for even two attackers, much less more.
I think it also depends heavily on the style of combat you’ve studied. When I was taking Kenpo, we would occasionally have 2-on-1 or 5-on-2 combat, as part of the training. Everything people have said above applied; your opponents tend to interfere with each other and as long as they hold back and you can keep moving, you’ll be OK, but if they rush you at once and can corner you, you get creamed.
OTOH, I read a lengthy article by an Aikido black belt, and he made it sound as though learning defense against multiple attackers is an integral part of that martial art, and from the little I studied it seemed to be true. According to him, part of the black belt test involves defending yourself against 3 or 4 attackers at once, all of whom are doing their honest best to hit you. Which makes it easier for you, since if they were holding back, it would interrupt the flow of combat and make it more likely for you to make a mistake. He even described a black belt test where the testee wasn’t really well trained enough yet, and it wasn’t pretty.
While the Kenpo I studied was pretty effective for self defense, I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against multiple attackers. But if an Aikido black belt were being jumped on the street by 2 or 3 ordinary guys, I’d put my money on the Aikidoka.
It is most definitely something you train for specifically. My arnis school had a strong aikido influence, and we used many-against-one sparring (which we called “posting”) extensively. When you first start, having learned a few elementary blocks and strips, your opponents attack one at a time. The delay is gradually shortened as you progress, with opponents allowed to attack you from behind, until they’re all attacking at once.
The key to succeeding at this is to choose your own target and attack immediately, with the goal of getting behind him. That takes you out of the circle and puts an obstacle between you and the other attackers. In training, you use this to delay some of the attackers while you concentrate on a new target. In the real world, this would be the point at which you run like a rabbit with his tail on fire. Once you’ve broken out of the circle, staying to fight is stupid. Enough opponents can take down anyone, even if they’re not very coordinated.