https://sports.yahoo.com/anthony-smith-ufc-light-heavyweight-nebraska-home-invasion-040914890.html
There has been a great deal of talk about this break in and attack on a professional MMA fighter. A number of people have chimed in with what they think were important points, but after reading a great deal of the posts and comments, I think three of the most key takeaways from this incident are being overlooked.
First, we have to remember that in the circles that are most likely to be paying attention to this incident that we are the outliers. Because understanding criminal violence and being prepared for it is important to perhaps the majority of folks in this community, we tend to talk in a bubble. That bubble is one in which not that many of the general public spends any time in, and gives little thought to. We may spend a lot of time thinking and even training for these things, including spending money, and blood, sweat, and effort while doing so, and trying to get ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically prepared if we should find ourselves in the middle of this kind of situation. The simple fact is most people don’t. Based on the story and the actual words said by the good guy here, I doubt seriously if he spent more than a minute on thinking about self-defense, and even then, it was probably in the same superficial way that the typical gun owner does. You know, the guy who goes to the gun store and buys whatever the employee says is the tactically cool gun, buys a couple of boxes of ammo, shoots some of it, and maybe goes and takes a CCW class, and that’s it. No other thought or effort to understand all the chaotic variables that may arise in a given criminal encounter. I doubt the MMA athlete here ever thought about coming into contact with someone who truly wanted to hurt him, and had some skills – whether trained or artificially chemically induced or both – and what the consequences of that would be. Every reasonably respected trainer in the firearms or self-defense training world (whether it is a Tom Givens, MAs Ayoob, Craig Douglas or a Gracie family member) has told people over and over that trying to survive a sudden violent encounter when you have never prepared for it is not the best time to start. Too many awful things may happen and trying to deal with it in the moment may cause mental overload and lockup. This event is a perfect illustration of not understanding the contextual considerations that differ from his normal and understood routine world view. Listen to his shock at how the bad guy just kept fighting. Anyone of us who think seriously about real world self preservation issues has read about any of a thousand different criminal attacks – the Jared Reston one, or Platt and Mattix’s actions in Miami , et al – would have been applying their skills in a different way, with a slightly different emphasis. This has exactly ZERO to do with “street vs sport”, and entirely down to the personal worldview of the individual. Being a combat sports athlete who spends a lot of time working his sport application under those rules had the exact same effect on this person as being a professional race car driver spending all his time on a race track has on the driver being on the day to day roads driving on the freeway or in rush hour traffic. Anyone who thinks that the reason this fight was not easier had anything to do with “sport” is just being infantile.
Second, there is a reason that a lot of us don’t really emphasize teaching much striking anymore, especially to people new to unarmed fighting. I myself spent the beginning 25 years of my martial art training and study as a striker first and foremost and most of my early seminar work was focused on teaching how to hit often, precisely, and as hard as humanly possible. I did not come into this as the “jiujitsu guy”. I became that over time when I realized the efficacy of grappling for self-defense. What I came to understand was that it was one thing to have someone who was dedicated to training a striking skill set, and was willing to put in the time and effort, but it was another thing entirely to do that with someone who was brand new to unarmed fighting, and may have physical issues (smaller, permanent injuries, lack of time to train, etc.) Striking is incredibly inconsistent and unreliable. Anyone who has spent much time training it can give example after example of hitting someone with a perfect shot and they shrug it off. Can it work? Sure, but it also fails far more often. Even with a professional fighter who spends hours every single day training, they cannot be sure that the hits will have the effect they want them to have. This is a perfect example. A trained and elite professional fighter hit a smaller non-professional time after time, and it almost completely failed. It took a lot before the struggle ended. Imagine if a 140 pound woman, whose entire training of striking had been in a weekend seminar, found herself in that situation. The ending would have been far worse. I strongly feel it is crucial to have a working, functional knowledge of striking, because there will absolutely be times when it will be the best answer, but even then, it is completely unreliable in its effects, and you better be prepared for that eventuality. In other words, be ready for failure, and have plan B.
Third, just having a weapon, even a gun, in this situation would have meant little. The smart people in this community all make fun of the person who treats a gun as a talisman or a rabbit’s foot, and that just having it without the software behind it is foolish. However, there were a number of comments about this situation, and sometimes made by people who I thought knew better, where some people seem to suggest that it IS a talisman and that just being there would have produced a different outcome. A number of comments were along the lines of “well, this is why you need firearms”, as if just having one available would have altered anything about this encounter. Those who have said that, I ask you to take note that a weapon WAS involved at one point – a knife – and it served no purpose, because the mindset behind was not there. He did not know what to do with it, and did not have the mindset to use the weapon in the best manner. Any hardware or gear, regardless of how super tactical it is, is meaningless without an understanding of why it should be used, and then how it should be employed. And further, I would argue that if the good guy did have the right mindset to use a weapon appropriately and correctly, it might not have mattered because then he would have used his own existing fighting skill set, which is tremendous, to end the violence much sooner regardless. This is not to dismiss the gun at all. Anyone who knows me will tell you how adamant I am that a gun is a key component of a self-defense plan, but let’s not get into the view that the presence of one would have solved this any better without extra things being present as well.
What won the fight was dominant positional control – i.e. grappling. There are different end strategies that can flow from there, but position before the finish was paramount. Striking eventually prevailed, but it only succeeded because the good guy was able to control the bad guy long enough for the hits to add up. Without that grappling component, this fight might have turned out different.
And, as a couple of people have pointed out, make no mistake that the good guy DID win. The bad guy went to the hospital, and the good guy (and all his family) walked away without any injuries and avoided any medical problem. Further, he will face no legal repercussions, either criminally, or even in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the criminal’s surviving family. Anyone who has had to deal with these things, even successfully, will tell you that they are devastating emotionally and financially. If you can win against a criminal, and never have to experience these consequences, it is certainly a fantastic win. While we may want the encounter to have ended more quickly, or more decisively, or we can critique to learn of any mistakes, do not for a moment misunderstand this for what it is – a complete and utterly successful self-defense situation where the good guy has no lasting damage, and the bad guy does. That, my friends, is a happiest of endings.
