Pretty much.
Those are your top hand-to-hand fighters - not your martial artists or elite soldiers, but guys who are really good at hurting people and at getting hurt.
but gurkhas are kinda small, aren’t they?
thus far (evidenced by youtube) boxing seems very effective. there’s the “messed with the wrong guy” video (2 vs 1) and the “awesome streetfight” in india where i counted 4 knockdowns by just one fighter.
among the soft techniques, i’d favor aikido and i’m not thinking of any segal stuff: just move and prod to allow one to break through a circle and scamper the hell out of there.
No idea about MMA, but Krav Maga explicitly trains for multiple attacker scenarios, right from the first lesson. Hell, the basic inside defence & counter is expressly aimed at getting you behind the first assailant, where you can see if there’s any other attackers sneaking up (whilst giving you opponent number 1 as a rather spiffy shield)
I am told (no cite, purely comments from a chum who was a rupert in the gurkha rifles) that the close combat system Gurkhas are trained in is actually derived from the commando system that Fairbairn & Sykes derived during World War 2, with some custom techniques based around the khukri. I believe that this system also influenced the close quarter training used by the seals and other SF units, but again this is just anecdote. Either way, all military close combat systems rely on the principle that Fairbairn summarised as “no fair play, no rules except one: kill or be killed,””
It can be reasonably claimed that if a person is well trained in an effective system based around such principles, whether KM, defendu, GRU or other, they will have a better chance against multiple attackers than an untrained person. They should be looking for other attackers, they should be working quickly to remove individual attackers as threats, and they should be using any available objects as either weapons or defensive items. All these points will improve their odds significantly.
But having said all of that, a single person facing multiple attackers, no matter what level of training, is always going to be the likely loser. I’ve never met any martial artist worth a damn who claimed otherwise. The best edge it’d probably give you is quicker assessment of the situation, that would give you a bit more time to get the hell out of there.
my instructor, a rather eclectic guy, showed us a technique for taking down several opponents BUT with all their backs facing you. might be useful if you see a friend being creamed by several punks and you approach them unawares. he would bring both his palms down on their shoulders, startign with the nearest guy. the force of the slap reaches one’s thighs and knees and you go down. it’s the first movement in taichi-chuan.
If I’ve got several people with their back to me, unaware of my pending attack, I think the ancient technique of a 2by4 off the back of the head is a good starting point.
I don’t watch a lot of MMA, but in some of the fights I’ve seen with guys like the Gracies, they spend a hell of a lot of time on their back. They usually win by getting a submission, but if the guy they were fighting had a friend or two, they would get kicked in the head and that would be that.
So it depends what you mean by “normal.” If you mean they kidnap a bunch of accountants and drop them in a pit with an MMA fighter, then they will likely be afraid to mix it up, and will get picked off one at a time. But if you mean untrained but aggressive guys, like bar fighters, then one against three is probably going to lose unless he’s really good or really lucky.
Darn Deadwood was such a good show, really blows that they cancelled it.
And I agree with Alessan, I think a street maniac would pound the pavement with the skull of a martial artist. While the martial artist’s training will enable him to reach his inner self and stuff, the street manac will reach for his entrails (and spread them on the pavement as well. They’re heavy onto that pavement thing).
If we’re talking untrained opponents, I doubt there’s any number that would be adequate to take out an elite trained fighter. Yeah, the crowd could have a lot of advantages from their numbers, but they’d have to coordinate well to use those advantages, and I don’t think most untrained folks have the skill to do that. Or, heck, even many trained folks, since team fighting isn’t something that’s taught much.
This is especially true if there’s any sort of terrain at all. If the trained fighter can back up against a wall, or better yet a corner, there’s just no chance. And it’s not like walls or corners are all that rare.
Hmmmm. The pedagogical reflex in me wants to know why the hell that is true. We got a whole lot of guys who are organized into groups, and trained in combat. We even train them in individual unarmed combat. Why the hell isn’t there military training, hell even a military research effort in how cooperating unarmed combatants can maximize their effectiveness against armed opponents? (I do think that the first goal in such a combat strategy would be to turn at least one of your team members into an armed opponent, but that seems a given.)
If I knew twenty “plays” for doing that exact thing, and knew that my associates also knew those plays, there seems to me to be a very large increase in how effective prisoners of war would be in resisting, and escaping.
Tris
I respectfully disagree. All you need are guys who are willing to take some punishment. If the pro has his back to a wall then, he’s trapped.
One-punch knockouts are not that common outside of movies. If two guys tackle a pro at once from opposite sides, it would be pretty hard for him to deliver crippling blows to both of them, and if one of them can tie him up for a second, a third guy should be able to take him off his feet. As I said in a previous post, all those ground techniques you see in MMA would not be as effective when a third or fourth party is kicking the pro in the head.
I used to train with an ex-special forces guy who was an expert in unarmed combat and BJJ black belt. One day he offered to take on his class of six all at once. We were all physically fit, mildly trained and in our 20’s & 30’s (he was in his 40’s) and he tapped us all out in just a few minutes.
It wasn’t full contact, but we went at him pretty hard. I have a feeling that it was to our benefit that it wasn’t full contact.
American Kenpo was developed to take on multiple attackers at once. Ended in tears though as James Mitose (?) died after being stabbed.
american Kenpo definate trains for multiple attackers. In such a scenario, you don’t fuck around, broken knee caps and running like hell are par for course.
Twenty minutes later…
how serious is the contradiction?
Mitose died in prison, from complications of diabetes. You might be thinking of Joe Emperado, brother of Kajukenbo founder Adriano Emperado. Joe was stabbed several times in the back and chest while trying to break up a bar fight.
The first guy becomse the weapon with which the SEAL bludgeons the others into submission.
With the best will in the world, that is a group of people sparring with a single person - with all of them trying not to deliberately hurt the other side.
I have never seen that scenario played out in brawls.
Well, the latter statement is directly contradicting the former. So as serious as an internet discussion about fantasy battles can be.
Thank you for the voice of sanity in this thread. Yes, some disciplines like Kempo and Krav Maga do have “more-than-one-attacker” facets, but their success in the real world is predicated on:
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Being able to hold attackers off for a few seconds while attracting attention for someone to come help you, and
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Straight up luck. If you can take out three guys before they know what’s happening (and for some of the better Muay Thai guys I know, this is a real possibility), then you can get out of a four-on-one situation. If one of them can take your back while two or three of the others are still up and swinging, though, you’re toast. I don’t care if you’re Bruce Lee, Anderson Silva, Junior Dos Santos, or one of these legendary guys from the SEALS or Mossad; you’re still toast.