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Comment by charlieglass | Hacker News Reader

Cagefighting came into existence as a way to test the efficacy of traditional martial arts. So much of what is taught is complete rubbish ("lethal techniques" that only ever practised against compliant opponents, etc.). All the beautiful movements and choreographed dancing of traditional martial arts fly out of the window when you face a skilled fighter that is trying to hurt you.

The fighters know exactly what they sign up for, and probably would not want it any other way. They are consenting adults having fun. :)

Regarding the brutalization of judo: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there. Thinking that a martial art should not be brutal reveals a special kind of first-world thinking.

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> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas

The article paints a very different picture, an upper-class family dynasty developing the martial art.

Yes, he is mistaken. BJJ is certainly practiced in favelas, and there are people who use it to give youths something to do, as a way to keep them away from crime, drugs, etc.

See the Tererê Kids Project, for instance: http://fightland.vice.com/blog/social-change-through-jiu-jit...

No, it was not born in the favelas. The article is right. The Gracies were never poor and never lived in favelas. I'm a Brazilian with a pretty good knowledge of BJJ history (my father watched Helio's fights, etc).

> Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there.

Do you know the difference between martial arts and martial sports?

Fundamentally if there is competition, it's a sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques. Also differentiate between lethal and brutal.

There's a lot of vitriol between people who practice different styles, with a lot of guys from traditional styles (karate, tae kwon do, kung fu, etc.) claiming combat sports are worthless in a Real Fight (TM) because it's just competition. Completely inaccurate in my experience - people who compete in full-contact combat sports will almost always beat the people who don't, other things being equal. The techniques don't have to be lethal to completely destroy your opponent, and BJJ was made for choking people out or breaking their limbs so badly they literally cannot continue the fight. Not to mention there's a plethora of illegal techniques ranging from neck cranks to spinal locks, removed from competition because they're far too dangerous and can kill or paralyze you. The best tournament practitioners are a lot more likely to know these and be able to apply them than people who sit around theorizing about them.

But there's still a lot of big ego'd guys who can't fight and like to impress and intimidate people with statements like, "This technique is far too dangerous for me to actually demonstrate, but I could use it to destroy sport fighters any time I wanted! Don't make me hurt you to prove it." It's a lot of BS, and easier to perpetuate because grapplers can still beat you without hurting you that bad, whereas if you challenge a boxer and he caves your face in people don't get right up and say, "One more try, I can do better next time!"

One of my best MA memories was getting my ass kicked in 5 seconds by a guy half my size who was only using one arm because the other was broken in a recent grappling tournament. Don't fall into the "combat sports aren't real" mentality. BJJ, judo, and wrestling guys will mess you up if you're not trained in how to defend against them.

> BJJ, judo, and wrestling guys will mess you up if you're not trained in how to defend against them.

This has been made painfully aware to me on enough occasions that it feels ingrained as instinct.

That said, too many people assume that violence is an easily categorizable thing. Most people simply don't have a lot of exposure to the risk of a violent encounter between exactly 2, largely similarly sized, unarmed belligerents, that you can't talk your way out of or run away from.

Quite contrarily if you are going to experience violence outside of a military or professional context in most parts of the Western world it is overwhelmingly going to be either domestic violence or a surprise attack with multiple attackers and/or weapons. In many of these cases the absolute worst case scenario is ending up on the ground.

The point being that grappling/boxing/etc are fun activities and are great ways to win a fight, but honestly you aren't likely to get in a fight.

> traditional styles (karate, tae kwon do, kung fu, etc.)

those are all to some degree combat sports. Also most of those would be pretty useless in a street fight.

> Completely inaccurate in my experience - people who compete in full-contact combat sports will almost always beat the people who don't, other things being equal.

Can you explain to me why generally armies teach their soldier something like Krav Maga which doesn't really have competition rather than boxing or BJJ? Don't get me wrong, armies sometimes teach boxing or BJJ as well but it's definitely not the main martial art.

> The techniques don't have to be lethal to completely destroy your opponent, and BJJ was made for choking people out or breaking their limbs so badly they literally cannot continue the fight.

They also concentrate on fighting on the ground which is pretty fucking useless IRL. It's also useless against say multiple opponents. Or are you expecting them to wait for you to choke them out one by one?

> Not to mention there's a plethora of illegal techniques ranging from neck cranks to spinal locks, removed from competition because they're far too dangerous and can kill or paralyze you.

Yeah. So what? Are these practiced in BJJ or what? Because they are in other some arts.

> The best tournament practitioners are a lot more likely to know these and be able to apply them than people who sit around theorizing about them.

You have no clue how some of the more lethal martial arts are practiced. The good schools definitely aren't just 'theorizing' and sparring is an essential part of the training.

> if you challenge a boxer and he caves your face in people don't get right up and say,

A boxer learns to fight in accordance with some rules. With those rules being absent IRL, he's at a disadvantage because he's not expecting someone to say kick his knee out.

> One of my best MA memories was getting my ass kicked in 5 seconds by a guy half my size who was only using one arm because the other was broken in a recent grappling tournament.

What am I supposed to do with this statement. Maybe you are just a shit grappler.

I'm curious if you'd care to mention exactly what "more lethal martial arts" or "good schools" you're alluding too. I also specified "full-contact" previously, meaning live training - would be quite surprised to find legitimate schools practicing "lethal techniques" at anything close to full speed.

>Can you explain to me why generally armies teach their soldier something like Krav Maga...

The US military's combatives program is based mostly on combat sports[1], e.g. BJJ, judo, muay thai, boxing, wrestling, etc. The training is adjusted to their particular use cases, like trying not to lose your weapon, since soldiers with guns who can shoot are a lot more valuable to the military than ones who can grapple. That aside, and if you don't believe me fine, but most military guys will lose quickly to even an average BJJ blue belt. I've seen it many times, and anyone at an MMA or grappling school near a military base should be able to confirm as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatives#Modern_Army_Combati...

>They also concentrate on fighting on the ground which is pretty fucking useless IRL. It's also useless against say multiple opponents. Or are you expecting them to wait for you to choke them out one by one?

Except it's completely not. Sure, ground fighting works best (imo) in a one-on-one fight against unarmed opponents, but if you're attacked by a team of people with serious weapons you're probably screwed anyway. BJJ (if that's the one we're focusing on) also involves a lot of wrestling, judo, position control, etc. No one forces you to go to the ground, and a lot of the actual Gracie self-defense stuff involves standing escape type techniques - "break the grip and get away." And again, it doesn't take long to choke someone out, a few seconds if the grip is right, and even less to just rip a shoulder or break a wrist. You can finish a kimura standing, for example, it's just easier to get out of if the person knows how to defend it.

>A boxer learns to fight in accordance with some rules... he's at a disadvantage because he's not expecting someone to say kick his knee out.

Opening up leg strikes certainly changes the game, but experienced boxers will have extensive practice in controlling their position, distance, making angles and avoiding strikes. If this comparison is still between people doing full-contact styles with live training, versus people not, he still has a huge advantage over an opponent with no practice in an actual combat situation.

You seem to be alluding to styles where people somehow practice "lethal" techniques in an effective manner without neutering the effectiveness of their training, but provide no suggestions of what styles and schools those are. If you could provide some examples it would be more convincing.

>What am I supposed to do with this statement. Maybe you are just a shit grappler.

Maybe drop the attitude? It was one of my first days of class, against someone with years of experience. I'm not really interested in debating it if there's no intention to reach consensus and just toss insults instead.

> I'm curious if you'd care to mention exactly what "more lethal martial arts" or "good schools" you're alluding too.

That's actually a pretty complex question because I'm not sure I can really draw the line along the different styles rather than along different dojos/masters. I would say that generally e.g. Krav Maga, Japanese Ju Jitsu (including some of the derivatives like Small Circle Ju Jitsu), then something like Wing Chun, Musado and many others are pretty good. Note that minus Ju Jitsu, I have only limited experience with the others so my impression of them might be wrong but they seemed pretty good.

The most important question is whether they teach you e.g. where on the body to strike to kill and then prepare you physically and mentally not to freeze when you get into a situation when it's needed. Another thing I have noticed is that the better dojos are very eclectic and pick and choose from other martial arts if it makes sense.

> The US military's combatives program is based mostly on combat sports[1], e.g. BJJ, judo, muay thai, boxing, wrestling, etc.

The fact that they pick and choose is exactly why it's effective though. They don't teach pure BJJ because pure BJJ isn't that useful IRL.

> will lose quickly to even an average BJJ blue belt

I'm well aware of that. But remember, none of these matches were to the death (I assume).

> but if you're attacked by a team of people with serious weapons you're probably screwed anyway.

If they have weapons, your martial art should teach you how to get the fuck out of there ASAP. If they don't have weapons, self-defense is not unimaginable. Harder, but not impossible.

> Opening up leg strikes certainly changes the game, but experienced boxers will have extensive practice in controlling their position, distance, making angles and avoiding strikes

He's prepared for a different type of opponent. Boxer will do well in mid-range but not so well in a clinch or on longer distances.

> It was one of my first days of class, against someone with years of experience.

Right. So maybe it wasn't the best example to bring up if you didn't have much practice.

sport ergo they don't teach you the lethal techniques.

A blood choke is probably one of the most lethal move in all of (unarmed) martial arts and is also one of the most standard techniques in BJJ and Sambo and also taught in Judo and most other grappling arts, all of which are "martial sports".

Cool. But there's like a billion others.

There are the neck cranks, but that's got a fairly low chance of actually killing someone. There's the curb stomp, but that's hardly martial arts "move". I suppose a piledriver onto a hard surface could kill someone. Other than that there really aren't any moves I can think of that can realistically be considered lethal with any sort of consistency, despite the claims some less reputable martial arts sometimes make.

Care to enlighten me?

Here's a couple of locations where to strike:

* temple of the head (and the head in general minus the forehead)

* "Rabbit punch" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_punch

* Adam's apple (and throat in general)

* solar plexus

* heart (if you punch strong enough you will confuse the heart in a way where the single muscle fibers won't be contracting at once and thereby stop the blood circulation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commotio_cordis

I said a billion because there's a ton of ways to cause trauma to these.

> can realistically be considered lethal with any sort of consistency, despite the claims some less reputable martial arts sometimes make.

Yeah, it's not 100%. But for example the Rabbit punch is extremely dangerous.

You're moving the goal posts, from "lethal" to "painful with a small outside chance of death or permanent injury". For the throat and solar plexus I can't even find any serious indication of them causing deaths in healthy individuals, and a strike to the heart is only really deadly for children and young teenagers. Hell all of those except the rabbit punch are perfectly legal in most full contact martial arts competition and hardly have a history of causing death or even serious injury. A solid Muay Thai kick to the head as a greater chance of killing than a strike to the solar plexus, and thousands of those land in sporting events every day without incident.

Yeah, it's not 100%

It's almost certainly not even 1%. If your martial art teaches that a move is "deadly" and the move isn't a blood choke, then they are almost certainly at the very least greatly exaggerating.

> You're moving the goal posts, from "lethal" to "painful with a small outside chance of death or permanent injury".

I never moved a goal post. I still maintain that the chance of death is pretty large ~80% for some (it's pretty low for the heart).

> For the throat and solar plexus I can't even find any serious indication of them causing deaths in healthy individuals

You most definitely can kill people by punching them in the throat. Google around, the consensus seems to be clear. E.g. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/865277-overview

> Hell all of those except the rabbit punch are perfectly legal in most full contact martial arts competition and hardly have a history of causing death or even serious injury.

E.g. throat punches are considered fouls in UFC and K-1.

> It's almost certainly not even 1%. If your martial art teaches that a move is "deadly" and the move isn't a blood choke, then they are almost certainly at the very least greatly exaggerating.

Google around first.

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