This is an interesting video to me for a lot of reasons, because it so simply illustrates how so many simple self-defense community tropes are incredibly foolish.

Now, before I take a look at this, understand something. I am not going to comment at all on what the police officers should be doing prior to the start of this video. LE tactics and procedures as it relates strictly to LE work is beyond me and whatever lane I have some knowledge of. I refuse to go into those areas that I am not familiar with just because I am considered a subject matter expert is some other vaguely related area. Too many people make that mistake, and I will not be one of them.

So, with that proviso, let’s look at what stands out to me about this video.

1. The first bullet point is the sucker punch. There is a continuing bleating in the tactical/self-defense community about not going to the ground in a street fight, mostly because you will get stomped and KOed by other attackers. While I agree that is a definite danger, the issue I have with that statement is the implied part that being on your feet makes it easy to deal with multiple attackers. The simple fact is that the position is not the problem, but being hyperfocused in the position is. Note that the officer was standing, and had plenty of room on level ground to move. And it did not matter one single bit. He got hyperfocused on the person he was helping to arrest and got hit. Also note that it actually was not multiple attackers against a single defender. It essentially is two attackers versus two defenders! Even numbers and it still went bad, even on their feet and upright. Also note that the cops were well aware that there were a lot of people standing around, and they still failed the awareness test. Take a look at slow the second bad guy comes into the fight before he throws a punch. He was taking a lot of time and there were ample chances for just one of the LEOs to see him, and it did not happen. Just being on your feet does not mean you are going to be situationally aware and prepared for multiple attackers anymore than being on the ground automatically means you are extra vulnerable to multiples and will be taken by surprise. We need to move away from simplistic and mindless sound byte phrases.
2. The second big takeaway is what happens when the bad guy takes the cop down. First watch the cop on the bottom try the eye gouge The bad guy obviously has no ground game and does not even try to control the cop’s hands or block them, and the vaunted eye gouge has literally ZERO effect. Then watch the third cop come in and kick the bad guy in the head (just like all the combative gurus warn grapplers about) and then punch him, and again exactly zero effect. I am not saying that getting booted in the dome or getting eye gouged can be laughed off, but I will categorically state that those things are not sure things. Not even close. There is a good chance (as demonstrated here in this video in great depth and detail) that they will be useless and if you don’t have the skill set to deal with the entangled fight, and are relying on those kind of tactics, you may very well be setting yourself up for failure.

In short, don’t rely on phrases that sound good but fail in the real world as often as not. Base your self preservation on high percentage and intelligently thought out material.

One of the biggest epiphanies I had in my martial arts life was watching Gracie Jiu-jitsu in Action in 1988.

It is probably too hard to fathom what this did for me. Seeing grappling work so well against different arts was like a gut shot. It woke me up to what was possible, as well as the probability that I was had not seen the total package of fighting. What the UFC did for a lot of people in 1993, and then later in 2005 when it hit the mainstream, was what I felt in ’88.

This video is actually one of my favorite parts of the first volume. Here is the quick back story. There was a karate instructor in Rio who was looking to prove the superiority of his art and decided that challenging the Gracies was a good idea. He most likely thought that they would want so many rules and be on soft mats that he would not have to actually face them. To his shock, the Gracies agreed to all his conditions and even suggested using the location (which I will get to in a moment). There are a number of important takeaways from this short video, and they are easily understood lessons if people would look at it with a critical eye.

First of all, this video took place in the late 70’s and was made widely available on the original mass marketed video tape in 1988, and yet there are some who keep spouting ideas that this video trashes.  

1. Note the surface. It is the kind of hard and unyielding surface you might find on a public racquetball court. It is most certainly NOT a nice padded mat. And the ones who wanted this surface? That’s right, the grapplers. Of course, that should be impossible because all the combative experts say grapplers won’t be able to fight when they are not on mats, that somehow they will freeze when they are on a solid surface and they will be at the mercy of the non-grappler. Utter crap. It isn’t that big a deal to fight on a hard surface. No grappler wants to continually train on it, because it will eventually cause accumulated trauma and damage. But that is over YEARS of training, and has nothing to do with a single particular instance. As this video aptly demonstrates over multiple fights. Find any single moment where the BJJ practitioner is having trouble with moving on essentially concrete. You won’t find it, just as you won’t find it happening in any of the countless hundreds or even thousands of real world videos showing people using grappling to defend themselves. It is a moot point and another illustration of why those combative “experts” who have no grappling experience have no idea of what they are talking about.
2. Note the absence of gloves. Bare knuckle striking, done by stand up fighters who spend all their time using bare knuckle strikes. There is no chance of hiding behind the old trope of “well, the gloves softened the blows and made the strikers less effective”. The grapplers let the strikers have yet another advantage and it made no difference.
3. Note that even with the bare knuckles, the strikes had no effect. Most of the time, the karate men got off only one or at most two strikes before they were tied up and taken down. Striking is a great and useful tool, but thinking that you will be able to end a fight against an adrenalized opponent with one or two strikes generally falls in the fantasy camp.
4. Note that even though most of the jiu-jitsu fighters did not have a particularly great method of closing the gap, it still worked 100% of the time. Most of them were turtle your head and dive forward type close, and it did not matter. Imagine if instead it had been a good collegiate wrestler or trained MMA fighter. How much better that close would have been.  If you do not train and have practiced to deal with a true grappling close, you will fall victim to it far more often than not. You are fooling yourself if you think you can handle it otherwise.
5. Note that unlike the striker that the jiu-jitsu man could strike at will once he had established positional dominance and the other man was completely at his mercy. That is a much more sure way of being effective with your strikes.
6. Note in the last fight the attempt to smash the grappler backwards to the ground. Again, according to combative “experts”, this should be sufficient to stop the grappler and let the other man escape, and yet once again that kind of wisdom fails in reality. Even slammed to the hard surface by someone 40 pounds heavier on top did not shake the positional dominance of the grappler and the choke still happened right after.

As I said, I love this video for all the short and immensely powerful lessons it provides. Learn from it.  

This is not one of the first MMA fights ever. There had been hundreds if not thousands prior to this. Just in Brazil alone through the first three decades of the 20^th century there were a lot (all documented in the book Choque), as well as many formal such events in Europe. However, currently this is the earliest one on video.

Neither one of the competitors were top of their professions. Pio Pico (real name Lupe Lemon) had a final record of 7-14-2. Not exactly championship caliber. However, keep in mind he was a legit heavyweight boxer at a time when that really meant something, and he could hit hard and was used to fighting. It was not new to him. Likewise, the pro wrestler he faced in this video, Nick Lutze was a mid-card wrestler who had a bit of notoriety on the west coast from the 30’s through the 50’s, and he did his work at a time when most wrestlers had to actually have a base skill in actual grappling (as opposed to the modern Hulk Hogan body builder types of the current era). So while neither was the best in their fields, they were legit and were far tougher, more dangerous, and more capable than most people.

As to the fight itself, we see the same things repeated that the UFC has shown to the modern world.

1. The grappler does not try to hit, and actually is wide open to get hit himself. And in fact, does get hit often. And remember from the hands of a HEAVYWEIGHT boxer. Using the very small and not well padded gloves of a 30’s boxer (if you ever get to see gloves from that era, you may be shocked to see they more resemble UFC gloves instead of modern boxing gloves as far as padding goes), he takes a bunch of shots and it does not stop the wrestler. Strikes are rarely a decisive quick stopper against a determined opponent.
2. While the boxing stance of that era was not as bladed as the current methodology dictates, it is enough that the wrestler has no problem shooting in and getting hold of the boxer’s leg or body.
3. The oft repeated “advice” from tactical self-defense guys to “just get back to your feet when you get taken down” is completely meaningless if you do not have the physical skill set to do so. Note that Pico does try to get up; using every ounce of his peak athletic 200+ pound body, and it is useless. If someone like that fails at getting back up, what chance does the average person have? The only time the fight gets back standing is when the boxer can grab the rope and the referee steps in or he is pinned (a pure sport concept). When is that going to happen in the street? All the combatives gurus love to talk about how there are no rules in the street and it is not like the mats. Well, neither is it like a boxing ring with ropes bro. If you have no outside factor that will let you get up, and you don’t have that skill already, it will not happen magically just because you will it to be so.
4. Note how quickly the shoot happens, over and over. A professional boxer, who trains everyday and has a lot of experience actually hitting a moving target, never gets in more than a punch or two before getting taken down. How likely is someone who does not train to that level will get even a single shot in? The answer is slim to none and slim just left town.

It is a lesson that a goodly number of people try to resist even though we have an overwhelming mountain of evidence to the contrary. In a one on one scenario, trying to beat a grappler without having a dedicated practice to do so is quite literally placing your well being on the hope that the ball lands on green zero. Not exactly best practice to staying alive.