Street-Fighting-Techniques.info

I’ve been racking my brains over the past few days to think of a single technique that I would describe as being a classic street fighting move, as opposed to something from traditional martial arts or modern combat sports. It had to be something which couldn’t or wouldn’t be used in an MMA competition, and which you would be unlikely to see in a traditional class of something like karate or kung fu.

What I settled on in the end ticks all these boxes and highlights an important difference between real life self-defense situations and fighting with gloves in a ring or cage.

You might think, quite naturally really, that getting hit in the face is always a bad thing that you want to avoid. But once you are in a violent confrontation this might not always be the case. Here’s the basic principle: Knuckles are relatively small and intricate joints, which are more delicate than larger more solid bones, and include ligaments and tendons that can be damaged. Your forehead, on the other hand, is a large plate of solid bone whose sole purpose is to protect your body’s most vital organ - the brain. It’s just simple common sense that in any collision between a fist and a forehead the fist will always come off worst. More often than not a strong punch which hits the forehead will lead to a broken hand and only the mildest of bruises on the person being hit.

As anyone who has been in a sparring match or full contact confrontation will know, moving quickly enough to dodge or block a strike is much easier said than done. And this leads to what I think is the classic street fighting technique - headbutting a fist. It sounds crazy but it is actually one of the single most effective techniques around. If someone swings a punch towards your face it only takes a small movement to tuck your chin in and put your forehead down onto the oncoming fist, so if you have the balls to try it, it isn’t difficult to do. When it connects they will be hurt much worse than you will be, by moving forwards into their attack you gain the initiative and momentum and set yourself up for a counter-attack, and you will definitely get a 10 out of 10 for the surprise and intimidation factors.

The only refinement of this ‘kiss the fist’ technique is to make the headbutt diagonal so that rather than just stopping the fist with your head you make it glance off to the side. Very simple, very reliable, very effective and pure street fighter.