There are a lot of takeaways from this video that we can talk about, but I want to focus on two in particular. I am going to discuss these two because they get overlooked by the majority of people in the training community, and when these issues do get talked about, it tends to be intellectually vapid or ignorant. So we are going to take a moment to dive a bit deeper and hope that some people listen.

The first thing I would like to draw your attention to is the fact that this fight goes to the ground. And how it goes there is the important point. Neither the attacker nor the defender tried to go to the ground. Moreover, they were on a flat, even, and level surface, with little to no obstructions in the way, and yet, the attacker went to the ground by slipping. Think about that – on a flat surface, when he was doing what he wanted (to willfully attack another human being with a sword), and was moving forward in a straight line, he still slipped and fell. HE WENT TO THE GROUND THROUGH NO INTENTION OF HIS OWN.

All the internet experts who decry going to the ground seem to overlook this scenario, and they certainly overlook how often it happens. I have yet to meet someone who at some point in their life has not stumbled and fell. And that was almost always during normal events and probably moving forward. How much more likely is it to happen when you are suddenly taken by surprise and have to fight for your life and start moving backwards? It happens quite often, as any viewing of real world videos will tell you (unless you have intentional blinders on).

The other part that I would like any reader to think about is what happened after the attacker fell down. The defender was able to gain enough control of the weapon to stop the attacker from doing what he wanted, unlike when both were on their feet and unattached. The fight became an entangled weapons fight on the ground, and that is what allowed the good guy to stay alive. If they had stayed upright, there is a fairly good chance the good guy would have taken a lot more damage from that swinging sword. Being on the ground is what made him able to win that fight.

But Cecil! According to many experts, these things never happen so this video must be fake! And yet it isn’t. It is real. And it is another in a longggggg line of entangled weapon fights that happen to private citizens on a regular basis.

What is interesting to me is that many of the people who insist that weapon grappling never happens for non-police also will either teach or talk about the need for disarming or gun retention skills. Yes, let that sink in. Apparently some of the people who teach this as an important component for defensive firearms use don’t realize that disarms or retention are….wait for it…….entangled weapons fighting.

I have literally hundreds and hundreds of documented instances of this happening, and I will be posting them regularly now, as well as going back to writing about the historical instances of these scenarios. Hold on tight, it is going to be a bumpy ride.