Street fights are unlike your gym sparring or drills in that they are very chaotic. They are spontaneous, they have trigger points and bad things can happen in an instant. There are however certain principles that must be known when it comes to street fights – or so the Gracie Combatives Student concluded after watching over 100 separate incidents on youtube.
The man in question is Louie Martin – Louie is a black belt in Seibukan Jujutsu, Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, and Enshin Itto ryu Battojutsu. He’s certified in Gracie Combatives and is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu blue belt under Daniel Thomas.
1) Fights often have no clear winner
The most surprising outcome in fighting seems to be no outcome at all. 48.4% of the fights ended indecisively.
In short, the best option is to avoid an altercation all together if there is a way
2) Knockouts happen in the first ten seconds or not at all
Much like in mixed martial arts there’s no guarantees there will be a knock out. No word on what percentage of them featured no touch KOs
23% of the fights ended in a knockout (which I defined as a single blow that incapacitated a participant). What was interesting about these is that more than half, 64%, occurred in the first ten seconds.
3) Women always clinch
4) Bystanders usually let fights go on
Nowadays the crowd is possibly more interested to film altercations than to get involved and help.
The good news is that only 26% of fights involved a third party getting involved. This means that most fights that started between two people, stayed between two people. The bad news is that when other people did get involved, it was more often than not (68% of the time) the classic “friend jumps in” to join in the fight.
5) Almost all fights will go to the ground and stay there
It’s an old cliche that “all fights go to the ground”. And basically, it’s true. Participants engaged in ground fighting 73% percent of the time. When you take out those ten-second knockouts that make up so many early finishes, the number jumps up to 83%.
6) No one uses “dirty fighting”
Obviously, I did see a LOT of hair pulling among females. But as for the other things, not so much. Hair pulling aside, only 16% of the fights I recorded contained what I considered “dirty fighting” tactics. Interestingly, they were done by females about 80% of the time.
You can read more of the excellent study of altercation by clicking here.
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