From their very beginning movies have had the standard “hit the guy over the head knock him out & neutralize him yet he recovers hours later with no residual effects” scene. But as pro football is beginning to reveal there ARE residual effects to blows to the head. It’s easy to find nunchaku videos of cinder blocks being shattered. It isn’t that big of a leap to imagine what this kind of impact would have on the human skull.
Master Andrew Linnick is definitely right for labeling nunchaku as “karate’s deadliest weapon”. But again, nunchaku’s degree of deadliness is in direct proportion to the degree of the skill of its user. There is no legitimate way nunchaku can definitively be given an abstract general estimation of lethality without knowing the level of skill of the person using it.
Presuming this does mean spelling and grammar, I gotta say I expect better of you than this sort of thing.
AND I’m going to more this to IMHO. Presumably, it’ll do better in that forum. Thanks for posting and welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, Hill/Billy.
A nunchaku master could easily kill an attacker in a single strike, while a beginner is more of a danger to himself than anyone else. In the art of nunchaku mastery could, for some practioners, be attained in a relatively short time while others never become nunchaku masters regardless of how long they study.
A complete imbecile could hit someone in the head with a hard stick and kill them. It says nothing of the expertise of the imbecile or the particular deadliness of the stick.
To put this another way : There are old men who practice a generic martial art such as Judo who are extremely deadly while there are young 2nd degree black belts in Brazilian jujitsu or Krav Naga whom the afore mentioned old man could actually kill quickly & easily. Gene Lebbel is such an old man.
Your example proves the unpredictability of head injury related deaths NOT the predictability of nunchaku’s deadliness in a master’s hand. Huge difference between the two.
Nunchaku aren’t sold engraved with serial #'s nor do they leave definitive marks for deaths to be conclusively attributed to. A nunchaku is rarely used kill, usually to subdue & neutralize an attacker. If the defenders object is to kill a strangling death with the binding route or chain is much more predictable yet impossible to unmistakably attribute to an exact set of nunchaku.
Isn’t the way of figuring out relative nunchaku superiority to have an equivalent master of each type of weapon go against each other? Has anything like that been tried before? (with padding and safety in mind of course)
You are a proponent of nunchaku, but do you agree that there are some martial arts weapons that would inherently counter it? Like, they can’t block a stab from a sword or deal with things that just out-range it.
That is how Miyamoto Musashi seemed to win a lot of his fights, by just having a longer sword/staff than his opponent
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Arima made the mistake of disrespecting Musashi by treating him like a child, which resulted in Musashi throwing him on the floor and beating him with a six foot wooden staff
[…]
Kojiro had his swords made just a little longer than the average sword length to give himself reach advantage over his opponents however it seems Musashi knew this and devised a strategy to combat it. It is believed that he fought with a bokken that he fashioned out of an oar on the boat ride to the island, making it longer than his opponent’s sword in order to beat him at his own game.
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a***A sjambok no joke. In Zimbabwe they’re still widely used for crowd control. Ten cops with Sjambkos can scatter a crwod of demonstrators of over 700 people with little to no effort. It’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve witnessed in action. Grown adults scream in terror when the cops roll in with these things. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of it…
For anybody familiar with the Immigration issue, there have been many protests on the streets, especially in California. My friend and I went out at about 3:00PM one day and came back in the middle of a protest at about 7:30. The car he had been driving ('88 Accord) had been giving him many problems recently and decided to crap out while on our way back from our trip. We pushed the car to a less discrete area, figuring we would wait for the protests to calm down. We pushed the car into a small alley where we came upon a somewhat mean looking group of individuals (4) and they started harrassing us. After saying that we didn’t want any problems they continued to harrass us and get closer. When one of the individuals was about 10 yards away I saw him reach into his pocket and pull out a knife. I went to the back seat quickly but calmly and pulled out the Sjambok. I told the gentlemen once again that we didn’t want any trouble. By now the individual with the knife was within my area where I felt uncomfortable, so I got into a defensive stance with the Sjambok in my right hand over my left shoulder. In my other hand I had my C3 Centurion The individual brought his blade up, and I struck the back of his hand, which quickly disarmed him. I came back around and struck him in the face which from what I saw left a nasty mark. Before anybody else could react I took my light and shone it into the eyes of 2 of the other men. I managed to strike one of them multiple times, which brought him to the ground, where I remember kicking him. I backed off to a safe distance. The man on the floor got up, injured, and the four men left the scene. By now my friend had already gotten to the triunk and pulled out a baseball bat, but it’s use was unecessary.
I must say that between all the things I have heard about the sjambok, good and bad, I believe the added reach gave me the edge I needed to escape from this situation unharmed. I am now a firm believer in the martial use of the sjambok, and plan to carry one in my car for as long as possible.***
Bruce Lee’s Green Bamboo Whip from GAME OF DEATH
Handmade to Bruce Lee’s exact specifications by the Golden Harvest Studios in Hong Kong. The “Broken Rhythm” Green Bamboo Whip is one of the most historic, symbolic weapons ever used in martial arts motion picture history. This unique flexible whip was designed to help illustrate the core principles of his revolutionary martial arts system, Jeet Kune Do. As JKD was a system without fixed positions, Bruce wanted to vividly demonstrate through the use of unconventional weapons that he was not affiliated to any traditional martial arts style or philosophy. The whip, in this instance, becomes a metaphor for speed, flexibility elusiveness and unpredictability. Bruce Lee’s technique can clearly be seen during his celebrated ‘first floor’ pagoda fight sequence against Guru Dan Inosanto in Game of Death. Prior to facing off against his opponent, who is armed with two red kali sticks, Bruce comments on the whip, as follows: “You know baby, this Bamboo is longer, more flexible, and very much alive… and when your flashy routine cannot keep up with the speed and elusiveness of this thing here, all I can say is you’ll be in deep trouble.” This almost directly parallels his quote about the man being more important than any style or system, a dead piece of wood going up against a flexible weapon that is “very much alive.” He then continues to ‘school’ his opponent as he fights – a tool used to educate the audience, and to psych out his opponent, breaking down his confidence which in turn makes him less aggressive. Bruce Lee also mentions “Broken rhythm,” a powerful way to confuse an opponent by frequently changing the pace or timing of a fight to throw an opponent off guard. . The Bamboo Whip is 105cm (45.5 inches) long. Bruce Lee was a true innovator in every sense, and this unique bamboo weapon, reinforced with a rubberized protective coating, is a striking example of his ability to illustrate complex principles through dynamic visual means. Bruce Lee loved the Bamboo Whip so much that the title of his next movie was to be GREEN BAMBOO WARRIOR, and was to be centered around this weapon.