shakran

This is true, but your goal is to be the one that remains standing while the other falls to the ground

Very few fights that end up on the ground go well for the guy that got sent there. And even if you wind up using a great wrestling move to end up on top of your attacker, his friends are now in a great position to take you out while you're busy fighting him.




I always love it when people say this about any specific style. A good wrestler (i assume you're talking competition wrestling here and not WWE idiocy) can whoop any unprepared person (maybe), but if someone who's trained in kino mutai goes up against the wrestler, the wrestler will most likely end up with a big ol' hole bitten into him, and he might get his eyeballs poked out to boot.


Point being, there is no one superior art. Martial arts is basically a game of rock, paper, scissors. No matter what you choose, something out there can beat it. You increase your odds significantly if you train in multiple styles, but even then, there's always someone out there bigger, meaner, and tougher. I'm a 5th degree blackbelt in a very intense mixed style, and I will admit I'm a no-slouch fighter. I hold no illusions, however, that I'm He-Man, I know there are lots of people out there that could kick my ass, which is why I try very hard to avoid fights. The first thing you should do if you're getting in a fight is to run. If that doesn't work, hide. If that doesn't work, talk your way out of it. Only if those three don't work (or if you don't have time to try them because a fist is heading for your face) should you resort to fighting, and even then your goal should be to put the guy down ASAP and THEN run away.


Here's another question to ask a prospective dojo.

What is your fight strategy?
This is an important question because the majority of fighters out there sit there pummeling each other until someone gets a lucky shot in and the other guy goes down. You're basically playing the odds, and that's no way to run a fight. If they don't answer something along the lines of "entry, pressure, termination" then find someone else. Short explanation - your entry gets you into the fight. It should provide you with an opening which you must then exploit with pressure. Keep hitting until you get close enough to terminate the fight with a finishing blow (headbutts, elbows, and knees are excellent choices for the termination stage). It's too complicated to go into here without typing a book, but suffice it to say they should be able to explain and demonstrate the concept. Most dojos will say some stupid bullshit like "we fight to win, might for right" or some other nonsense when asked about fight strategy, and that's your cue to leave.



And bear in mind it's EXTREMELY hard to find a dojo that really teaches you to fight well. Most instructors out there have NEVER been in a fight outside the ring, so how can they teach you what to do in a situation they've never experienced? You're gonna have to look a long time probably, and you'll probably need a little luck.

Once you start with a dojo, after you've been there awhile and learned some stuff, find a good friend and ask to spar with him. See what happens. If the friend is not "trained" but he still kicks your ass, it may be time to reevaluate your choice of dojos. Lots of dojos will actually train you to be worse fighters because they'll teach you stylized BS that untrained people won't be handicapped with. Watch out for it.



Another sign of a good dojo is one that trains concepts and angles. If they're training "attacker hits with right hand toward solar plexus, and you do A, but if attacker sidekicks with left foot toward solar plexus, and you do B" then they're getting too complicated. the KISS (Keep it simple stupid) rule applies. If you have to learn 30 thousand reactions to 30 thousand different attacks, you'll never be able to keep it straight where it counts. In the above example, both attacks are coming from the same angle, and they're aimed at the same place. The response should be the same. There are 5 main angles that attacks will come from. That means in a good fighting school, once you've learned good responses to those 5 angles, you have the jump on the poor sucker that's busy learning 20 different reactions to one kick. While he's figuring out which reaction to use, you're busy pummelling him.

I also like dojos that train close in. Too many of them train at normal punching distance, but if you get right up in their fighters' faces, they don't know what to do. Suave is correct in that most fights end up with the fighters very close to each other. At my dojo, we like that just fine because we're comfortable in that range. We've found that many schools don't really work with that range and so when they find themselves there they're in a lot of trouble.


No matter what you end up going with I strongly recommend you train in muay thai for the excellent destructive power, in kali because once you learn to fight with sticks, you can now fight with almost any weapon (Think about it. A stick works the same as a machete works the same as a knife works the same as a bottle works the same as a pipe, etc etc etc as far as techniques. Learn stick, and you find you're never far from an effective weapon), western boxing for its quickness, ryuku kenpo for its pressure point work, and grappling mixed with kino mutai (biting, pinching, and eye gouging) in case you wind up on the ground. And always be ready to pick up something that works from another art. Hell I've even got a few moves from drunken monkey style kung fu in my bag of tricks. It looks weird as hell but it works