As anyone who has ever watched this show knows, the following happened almost every show: a gang of toughs rush Jim West, confident that he can’t fight them all at the same time. Except that is precisely what he does. He knocks heads together, throws one opponent at another, ducks or dodges at precisely the right instant so that they end up hitting each other, etc. In short, West is master at dealing with multiple assailants simultaneously. Is this a real fighting technique or was it entirely a choreographed fiction? The closest thing I’ve seen to it is Jackie Chan’s stunt fighting.
I thought most of the time, the bad guys waited patiently for Jim West to get done knocking out the previous bad guy before taking their turn. I always think of this as TV Hero-focused Fighting ™
Given that Robert Conrad is a shrimp, all it would take is three beefy minions to charge him at the same time. He’d be buried in an instant.
No, that’s why it’s so memorable. They did all rush him, and yet he could typically counter four attacks at the same time.
It was a lot of intense stunt work on the part of Conrad and others.
Marc
Shame on you. So was Bogart, and he regularly kicked ass. 
Hey, don’t piss off Robert Conrad. He doesn’t just have a chip on his shoulder, but a battery, too!
**Is this a real fighting technique or was it entirely a choreographed fiction? **
Yeah, sure, it’s real. So’s wrestling. 
I saw a video in college (in Japan) of a famous old Aikido master[sup]1[/sup], who could supposedly take on multiple challenges at the same time. Being aikido, though, this would mostly involve avoiding or throwing, not hitting heads against each other.
Still I suspect that this would have been something more successful in the classroom than in the real world.
Either way, it’s unlikely that the Wild Wild West fighting style was aikido.
[sup]1[/sup] Morihei Ueshiba - Wikipedia perhaps
Heh.
What if four Chuck Norris clones rushed Robert Conrad?
As an aside, the only funny moment in the movie remake was when a guy confronts a taken aback Will Smith with some flashy kung-fu moves:
{show-off minion} I learned this off a Chinaman in San Francisco!
{Will Smith, hitting show-off in the face with a shovel} Yeah? I just made that up!
Gabe Kaplan/Robert Conrad dispute on Battle of the Network Stars. Gabe outruns Conrad (race starts at about 8:00). Who would have believed it?
Conrad basically took over the stunt team on that program and choreographed most of the action himself, using the same set of stunt men (Red West and Dick Cangey and Whitey Ford are in every damn episode, practically) which pissed off the union to no end, resulting in most of the stunt performers being blacklisted after the show’s run. Ross Martin used to jokingly refer to the program as the show with “me and the stuntman.” But Ross even tried to get in on the action and wound up with a cracked shin for his trouble.
Sir Rhosis
Modern Kenpo Karate, as evolved by Ed Parker, Mitose and a few others in Hawaii, was based on creating a system for taking on multiple attackers from multiple angles. And whaddya know, search on “ed parker” +“robert conrad” and get lots of hits including this one: Martial Arts Magazine - Robert Conrad and here: http://www.akts.us/AboutEP.htm
There are no Chuck Norris clones. His original DNA did a search and destroy before they were viable embryos.
Go on…I dare You… 