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ADVICE FROM FIGHTING MEN

Left and right. Mary Evans Picture Library

‘Boxing is the first necessity for a gentleman, unless he wishes to be imposed upon whenever he comes into the company of rough men, stronger than himself. It is necessary, if he wishes to be able to protect a lady from insult, a position in which a man often finds himself.’

Colonel T.H. Monstery, Self-Defense for Gentlemen and Ladies

‘Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.’

Mike Tyson, former world heavyweight boxing champion

Many years ago, a friend of the authors got into an altercation with a group of six men outside a pub in London. The friend was young and fit, but he knew he couldn’t possibly take on so many. As the leader went for him, he sprinted away – and, of course, they followed, howling, in his wake.

Men run at different speeds. When he risked a glance over his shoulder, he noticed they had begun to string out over distance. The slowest were quite far back, while one keen young greyhound was right out in front of the rest. Our friend slowed just a touch to let the man in the lead catch all the way up. He waited until his pursuer was almost on top of him, then stopped suddenly. The one chasing was not ready for the move. As he skidded to a halt, our friend hit him twice in the face and knocked him down. The ones behind were closing at high speed by then, so he set off again, sprinting away into the night.

Some time later, the same beads-on-a-string effect could be observed, with a different pursuer in the lead. Our friend knew he’d be less likely to surprise them a second time, but it had worked once and, frankly, had delighted him.

In short, it worked again. He stopped, hit the man rushing at him – and then raced away. The rest of them gave up the chase. Now, our friend couldn’t possibly have survived a battle with six opponents. There are few men alive who could. Yet with tactics and a steady nerve, he surely won that battle, and lived to tell the tale.

Years passed between hearing that true story and meeting a 5th Dan Aikido master named Stuart Akers – perhaps the deadliest man I have ever encountered. Stuart trained for long, gruelling sessions every day, working with weapons and multiple opponents. He and I discussed the beginnings of an idea that fighting techniques, as told by truly dangerous men, might make an interesting and unusual book. We’d have to travel around the country and interview a range of trained people to see what advice they would offer. We lined up serving members of the SAS and the Brigade of Gurkhas, a former British boxing champion, Tae Kwon Do and Karate masters, and even experienced nightclub bouncers. The question – some variant of ‘What advice would you give to someone in a fight?’ – was for the most experienced, for the ones who had survived dozens or hundreds of violent events. We also thought that there was a good chance there would be many stories like the one above, just on general principles.

The problem revealed itself very quickly. Regardless of the particular martial art or even war experience, the advice was very similar. Over and over again, we kept hearing the same things. It became obvious that there just wasn’t enough material for a book. It was possible, however, that there might be enough for a short chapter.

Here is what we were told. It is offered, not as an instruction manual on how to beat someone up, but as an insight into self-defence that you might one day find useful. A boy – or a man – should be able to defend himself to a degree, as a matter of pride and self-respect. After all, one simple truth of being a boy is this: you will be punched in the mouth at some point in your life. Possibly just once, possibly many times. How you react to that event will be something you chew over in your memory for years afterwards – in humiliation and regret, or enormous satisfaction. So try to get it right.

Please note: We do not recommend any of these comments for use. They are for academic interest and nothing more.

The first point is this: men who knew they could fight and win, who were not insecure about themselves, kept responding in the same way: ‘First thing is, I’d walk away, if I could.’

Every fight involves some risk, and the recovery from injury is painful and takes for ever. No matter how confident you might feel, you could still slip on a bit of mud and lose. So if there is an opportunity to get clear without fighting, take it. You might also consider that walking away will remove an opponent from his place of choosing, and perhaps also from those who might support him, but in the main, it removes you. I cannot stress enough that this wasn’t cowardice. One of them called it: ‘turning the other cheek, but from a position of strength’. This was the most common first response from men who had fought a hundred times and who had nothing to prove.

An unexpected response was the reluctance to use kicks of any kind. The advice was: unless you are actually a martial-arts black belt with hundreds or thousands of hours of sparring behind you, you must not raise your leg above knee height in a fight. What worked for Bruce Lee does not work in the real world. There’s just too great a chance of an opponent grabbing the leg – and once they have a leg, it’s all over.

One old boy, who’d received World War II commando training, was still keen on a short, sharp kick at the other man’s knee as he rushed in. Bear in mind that he was in a war and his opponent would have been trying to kill him, but the idea was that he could maintain eye contact with the enemy, while lashing out very low down. As he put it: ‘Worst case you’d just cause him to stumble, but a good strike to the knee will ruin his day.’

Another friend of ours used to enjoy fighting in pubs. Red-haired and well over six feet tall, he preferred to end a Friday or Saturday evening with a massive battle and someone calling the police. There was never any malice in it, though it is true he spoiled a wedding or two in his time. He tells of one incident in his youth when he was jostled by a stranger. Our friend was around eighteen at the time. Without a thought, the red-haired one hit a man in his thirties twice in the face: one-two. The man was driven back a step and went down to one knee. He raised a hand to his lips and examined the smear of blood. He nodded, looked up at our friend and said, ‘OK, son, you’ve shown me what you can do. Now I’m going to show you what I can do.’ As you can imagine, what followed was a beating the likes of which he had rarely known.

In summary, then, the advice was that if all else fails, if an attack cannot be avoided, don’t muck about. The best defence then becomes a steadfast and determined offence.

If an opponent falls over, or quits the battle to lie down and quietly consider his life choices, the advice varied as to whether it was ever acceptable to continue the fight after that. In such a situation, we’d like to think the calibre of our readers means they would do the decent thing. We would like to believe in a world where no one ever ‘puts the boot in’ to a fallen opponent. Spite should certainly be resisted, especially in moments of high emotion. Try to imagine your father standing at your shoulder and act accordingly – unless he would be trying to kick the fallen man himself, obviously.

Practice is key. Our red-haired friend got into fights almost every week for years and years, so he was actually pretty good at it. Yet as a rule, a trained man does not fear an untrained man, that’s just the truth of it. If you want to survive or win, visit a boxing or kick-boxing class and be honest – say that you don’t know how to fight and you’d like to learn. Or take up a martial art – every single one involves sparring, and though they are rarely as aggressive and fast as a real-life encounter on the street, they’ll help you to stay calm for those vital few seconds. Honestly, a lot of it is resisting the urge to freeze up after a blow. The first reaction is absolutely the wrong one – it holds you in place for the follow-up punch. So always keep moving.

A martial art will also improve your fitness, and that is no small thing. Fighting is the most exhausting activity known to man, though chopping wood is a close second, for some reason. One reason most fights last less than ten seconds is that untrained men are usually exhausted by then. If you’re not exhausted after ten seconds of adrenaline-fuelled scrambling, you will be in a pretty good position to make them regret ever starting it.

As a final point, if you ever see a group beating up just one person and you call to a crowd something like: ‘Come on, lads, let’s lend a hand,’ check they are actually coming with you before you arrive as guest of honour to your own beating.

Another friend of ours once joined four others in a car to drive to where they had been challenged by a gang in Harefield, England. When they arrived at the designated spot and time, they were dismayed to find perhaps a dozen young men waiting for them. Full of youthful enthusiasm, our friend leaped from the car – and then watched in amazement as it was driven away without him. He chased that car – and the gang of lads chased him – for a long, long way. So choose your friends carefully as well.