I was recently chatting with a guy who conducted a defence class in Scotland. He has a hypothesis that the street-fighting styles in a country reflect its sports. His example: In the U.S. we* tend to use our upper bodies – punching, and wrestling people to the ground for more punching. In the UK a fight may start with a ‘Glasgow kiss’, and when an opponent is knocked to the ground the man standing kicks him. In the U.S. popular high scool and college sport are football and wrestling. In the UK the most popular sport is soccer. Upper body vs. legs. (Of course the Glasgow kiss also has a soccer analogue.)
So is this guy’s hypothesis plausable?
[sub]* By ‘we’, I don’t me ‘I’. The last fight I was in was in 7th grade, and I lost that one.[/sub]
I’ve seen Vietnamese guys fight, and the actions are very, very fast, using speed rather than strength, and high kicks to the torso are often given. They play soccer in Vietnam, and also that street game where they kick that feathered shuttlecock thing about. Might be something in it.
White Australians tend to fight like the Americans (as described), although the occasional Glasgow kiss is not unknown.
I dunno. Fights I’ve seen in the US tend to go both ways:
a. Fists are thrown and nobody falls down. They either dance around or they grab onto each other.
b. Fists are thrown and one person falls down. The person on the ground proceeds to get kicked a lot.
Which kinda makes sense, regardless of where you grew up. If you are standing up and your opponent is on the ground, you have a lot in your favor - you can use your full weight, strongest muscles (legs), mobility and your face is away from the other guy’s fists. Kicking seems like a pretty normal thing to do if you really want to hurt the person on the ground.
The person on the ground, by and large, is screwed. This provides a pretty strong incentive to stay standing up, which generally means you don’t let him grab you, or you try and hang on if he does grab you, or you even things out by dragging him down with you.
Much of this goes out the window if you are a trained fighter, you’ll do what you’ve learned works. I assume that a boxer will duck, weave and punch. The folks in my judo and Gracie jiujitsu clubs would be more likely to throw, grapple and choke out/jointlock an attacker.
I watched UFC I live on PPV how ever may years ago that was.
That night Royce Gracie changed my mind on what “fighting” was and how I would think about it from that point on. Thousands of other people in the US obviously had the same thought because mixed martial arts became very popular overnight.
I would not assume that guys here are going to stand in range and trade punches these days.
Ha ha ha, good old Rimmer from Red Dwarf. Now I know the Royal Marines are bad-ass, but I just can’t take someone talking tough in an english accent seriously… it makes me laugh. Worse yet is an Australian accent… LOL
Seriously though, there really is no “fighting style” for 99% of people in any part of the world. Most people don’t know how to fight period; the general universal trend seems to be:
Flail what ever appendage you have the most control over (hand, foot) while turning the head away and squinting as the other guy does the same.
Whoever gets the worst of it either covers up while turning and running off, or he pushes forward and grabs the other guy trying to stop his flailing, often ending up on the ground.
From there it’s the same thing, flail whatever you can, either from the ground or after getting back up - hopefully while he’s still on the ground.
Both guys eventually get pulled apart by onlookers, try to make scary faces, and swear at each other while being both equally bruised, bleeding, and embarassed.
The female version is the same but throw in grabbing the hair first with one hand and not letting go throughout the entire ordeal.
This of course is in the rare case of a 1 on 1 fight with no interferance. That’s my consensus after seeing too many street fights… most are pretty pathetic. Once you get into trained people, the number of fights goes way down and is heavily influenced but what they are taught. Even then unless they are actually good at it, they may start off stylistically but degrade to the above within seconds. There’s a video floating around on the net of a teenaged after-school fight where one kid goes into some really weird Kung-fu kata before fighting this other kid. A few seconds in Kung-fu boy forgets his training, starts windmill flailing, and knocks the other kid down. I don’t know if it’s fake or not but it illustrates my point fairly clearly.
There’s ‘fighting style’ and there’s ‘Fighting Style’. I wasn’t talking about Fighting Style, wihch would be something people are trained in. Your ‘general universal trend’ seems to be the way people fight in the U.S. – using upper bodies. (Admittedly I’ve never seen an actual UK street fight. Just going by what this guy who has spent half his life travelling the world teaching fighting says.)
Anyway, I’m wondering if the way untrained people who know nothing of a Fighting Style are influenced in the way they fight by their national sports.
Only if you live in nice areas. In really nasty areas people have seen enough dust-ups to have an idea of how to do some damage.
Take, as an example, Sidcup.