A favorite refrain from many of the non-grappling Combatives instructors and practitioners in the self-defense community is how getting too involved in “sport grappling” will get you killed in the streets. The card they almost all go to is the one in which the grappler, all occupied with doing his sport moves does not pay attention to what the opponent is doing and gets stabbed or shot with a weapon.

That sounds good, and really neat. And it gives the non-grappler an “out” in which he does not have to waste time training grappling. And is it something the grappler needs to be aware of? Absolutely. The consequences of thinking that your grappling system is the end all be all can be catastrophic if you are wrong. So the smart grappler – the one who thinks about these things and takes action to remedy any issues? What about him?

Well, apparently, to the typical non-critical thinking “tactical/Combatives” person, that person does not exist. Except he does exist. And there are a lot more of them than the critics think. Not just myself, and the people who teach and train similar material like Craig Douglas, Paul Sharp, Larry Lindenman, and Chris Fry, but also all the people we teach and who read our articles/blogs and watch our vids. For example, just in 2017 alone, I have taught face-to-face over 200 people between seminars, Tactical conferences, and weekly classes. That does not take into account all the people getting this information and instruction through various online outlets. Plus, there are other people out there working this material across the globe that I have no interaction with who have decided on their own to pursue this part of the overall self-defense package. In short, there are a lot more potential grapplers who understand this, and that number will continue to grow.

And so what happens when the non-grappler, who eschews real grappling training because it is not “Street”, meets up with the smart grappler? Well, this:

Yes, it is from a movie.  But this is exactly the kind of training a lot of people are doing. And this exact scene gets played out time after time in force-on-force (FOF) training.

So what is the guy inside of the triangle going to do? He is being completely dominated and controlled. The person applying the triangle could be a nice guy and put him to sleep, or he could do what is being shown here: do a mag dump into the guy’s face, and there is not a thing triangled dude can do about it. Even if he could bring a weapon into play, the best he could hope for is mutually assured destruction. Not a particularly smart bet.

Minimizing the need to understand grappling, assuming the grappler will not have any idea of how to handle himself against multiples or with weapons present, thinking that all you need to beat a grappler isa weapon or a dirty tactic like an eye gouge. All those things? THAT is how you get kilt in da streetz.

Don’t be that guy.