| Would YOU walk away from a VIOLENT fight |
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I was scared like hell. My hands were trembling. How, on earth, did I put my self in *that* situation? Just one minute earlier, I was walking in the park with my friend and we were chatting happily about something. Not very far away from us, a group of guys were sitting on a bench. One of them looked toward us. Our eyes met. I held my eye contact because *nobody* looks at me like that. He would back down and I knew that. Problem is that he thought exactly the same. Seconds past but they were all dressed up like centuries. One. Two. Freaking long three. "What the f-u-c-k are you looking at?", he said to me with a tone that would make De Niro hide in a corner. At the moment, it seemed very funny to listen to that phrase. I mean, you listen to it all the time in TV. But there was nothing to laugh at, when he said the next one: "Hey you, asshole. I will BREAK your face in two..." as he said that, they all started moving aggressively our way. I got confused and stopped. I looked at him: He was shorter than me, quite athletic, and he had a small cut on his left eyebrow. His face was tilted backwards and he had a cold metal look in his eyes that would make Stallone hide under the table. I was definitely bigger than him, but all the years of sprinting and weight lifting I had done, they didn't seem to have the usual effect on him. Clearly, he was not intimidated by muscles. And then it came to me. This guy really meant business, and i realised that I had never trained in martial arts. Suddenly, my breath became more shallow, my stomach felt many kilos heavier, and my hands were definitely more sweaty. I wanted to leave but I neither wanted to leave embarrassed. This was not a fight or flight response. This was fight AND flight response. I wasn't in neither side of the river and he who swims in the middle, sooner or later, drowns. He came closer to me. "Do you have ...a lighter?", he said in a very low tone that sent Scarface hiding in the closet. "No... I don't smoke", I said with a voice that I could hardly recognise as mine. I was deeply scared of that guy. He took a long look at me and he put his hand on the side of my neck. I panicked. I said "Leave me alone", and I tried to push him but... *CRACK!* . ..his fist met my nose and they both had a bloody Mary at the local pub. I don't remember what happened next. I think, I got pummelled. I tried to hit back but none of my fists connected. Soon, me and my buddy, we were down and the bastards were kicking us. Really good. It took us a good half an hour to get back up. I was in shock and I was shaking. This was my first one. But the worst was neither the bruised eyes, nor the bleeding: The worst was, how I felt for the next two weeks. I don't know, how it feels to be violated, but this was the closest I've ever gotten in my life. I felt less of a man. And I was angry. No. I was not just angry: I was furious, I really hated someone. Had I not violated the street etiquette and this incident would have never occurred. But I violated the very basic and first rule by staring constantly at another guy. I invaded his personal psychological space and I tried to dominate him using my eye contact. However, when he came to ask me the reason I was so afraid I could not keep eye contact. That was ten years ago. What was WRONG with me? Victim mentality or how you lose a fight before it even starts. When a bad ass guy enters a room most people don't even notice him. From the people that finally do notice him, there are two kinds: The ones that look at him and get back to what they were doing before, and the guys that can't help them selves but keep staring at him. The latter ones, they are the ones that the bully will try to pick on. Because he knows that they will accept their frame game and they will not try to call for help. Again there you have two flavours: You have the active victims and then you have the passive victims. The active victims are the ones that keep staring at the tough guy and they feel challenged by the mere presence of the guy. They have no confidence what so ever and they feel compelled to prove them selves worthy men. They want to show that they can dominate him. Their ego is bruised before even the fight starts. If the guy seems more tough or more muscled than them makes they feel menaced. Usually they are practicing some kind of sport and it is usually either body building or some kind of martial art. In the latter case they don't really have a good knowledge of it because if they had, they would never try to prove them selves. Train for longer than a year all week long and suddenly fighting seems boring. The most strange thing with these persons is that they think that every other person in the room shares the same opinion with them. Even if all of the people around think that fighting is dumb, they will keep believing it is time to start screaming "This is Sparta!!". You see people have two kind of validation points: Internal and External ones. People that follow the first ones, they don't really care what society thinks about them, while the persons that follow the second ones are always over sensitive to what other people will say for them. On the other hand, the passive victims are more afraid than challenged by the guy and usually they have less or none training experience. They are the ones that keep looking nervously towards the bad guy, to see if he is looking at them. The other face of the same coin: Bullies. Bullies are usually victims that succeeded to become what they were afraid of. They manage to feel more important by dominating other people. It can be about fighting or it can be winning frame games they have imposed. Frame games is a term coined by people of NLP. It is not very easy to win a frame game that someone else has set because he controls the game. People play these games constantly. When someone tells you "Are you tough enough?", he wants to pull you in his frame of mind. If you answer anything else than "I don't care about your little game", it means you accept the game and all the meta frames that come with it. The meta frame is that he is already tough enough and that you have to prove yourself to *him*. You are fighting your self up hill: Game already lost. So people would never try to play a game if they were not absolutely sure that they would win it. And here collapses the first myth: "Man, this guy he is so crazy he would pick a fight almost with any guy in the street. He is afraid of nobody." This would be like saying that Napoleon was tall. All bullies are afraid. They pick on people that they are sure they can win. They will never pick on someone that would risking from losing. Remember they want to feel good about it. And the risks in a fight are big. If you seem extra strong and someone picks on you,then there are two cases: Either he is a really good boxer or he is carrying a freaking Jedi sword with him. (Some people, clearly less educated, prefer calling it a knife) Which brings us to the reality of street fighting. Street fighters, Knife fighters and the Loch Ness monster. I am not a martial arts expert but I do practice martial arts. As in every other art, you have two sides and in the middle flows a river. In the one side you have very few people. They are the experts. They have mastered the art in such a level that their work is considered a masterpiece. At the other side you have the thousands of people that have no clue what so ever and they know it. They stand on their side of the river and make stories about what happens at the other side of the river. Every once and a while people start swimming the river to get to the other side. But the river is wide, strong and very cold. Most people quit in the middle and come back to tell to their friends what they saw as they approached the other side. Once per year the river gets really nasty. When this happens, all the people that are swimming across the other side, they drown and become food for the mythical Loch Ness monster. Martial arts are not different from this; As my father says, "Better knowing nothing of an art, than knowing it partially ". Because so many people start a martial art hoping they will become a Street Fighter. Well my friend, however good is the dojo you chose, however hard you trained, there is *nothing* that can guarantee you can fight another guy in the *street* and survive from it. Every martial art has flaws and simplifications, that strip it from its excellence. They either come from the level of training or they come from the very form of the art.
For example: Tae Kwon Do cannot handle grapplers, boxers often break their fists in street brawls because they don't know how to hit without a glove; Most grapplers are not trained to fight guys that would hit their head crack open on the floor or guys that would be willing to bite their nose off. And it goes around and around. There is no such thing as The Perfect Martial Art. And if it there is one, chances are, that you have not got a level of excellence to fight anybody. Because a guy in the street will try to cheat. Be sure of that. The old notion of chivalry is gone - If it ever existed. People will hit you from behind, they will hit you while you blink or they will pull a knife in order to win you. I once saw two people arguing at a bar and suddenly and without even turning his body away, the first guy grabs a bottle and smashes it on the poor guys head. There goes chivalry out of the window. Street fighting is not worthy but you can always try to do a simulation. Take a pair of dice. Roll them. Imagine: Every time you get double aces you go to jail (And you know what happens in jail). Every time you get double sixes you go six feet under. These are the probabilities of street fighting. Do you still feel fighting? Let's talk about another mythical creature. The Knife Fighter. The mythical guy that managed to win, empty handed, another guy carrying a knife. But before we do that let's have together a nice musical break. Hit play por favor!
What to do to avoid the fight. No one can attack directly. Even bullies enjoy toying with their victims before they perform their acts. It is there where you must show assertiveness. You must maintain a good body language, strong eye contact and good voice. If not, they will dominate you.
If he finally attacks then have a look here. Not attacking him doesn't mean he will get away. His nose can be broken next week also. Society will alienate him and someone will do the dirty job it for you. I learned that first hand from Alex. I met Alex through training. He was short, very fit and had a military haircut. I remember he smiled a lot and he was quite friendly with me. He was an engineer and his parents were wealthy but divorced. But under his skin there was an inferiority complex that would made Napoleon look almost happy with his height. As a teenager he did 3 years of bodybuilding, followed by some years of kick boxing and his latest love was sprinting. He was simply eager to be better than anyone else in any form of competition he could lay hands on. Most martial artists, they test their knowledge in the ring. He wanted to test them in the street. I remember, when once we were out in a bar and a very tall basketball player was sitting close by. I told to him: "Gosh, that guy is TALL!". He looked at me, smirked and told me "You haven't seen yet how nicely that guy can fold in two.." and he gave me a very graphic representation of an uppercut. Once, we were driving through a bad area of the city and a junky was walking, minding his own business. The moment he looked our way, Alex hit the brakes, stopped the car right in front of the surprised, poor guy and asked him, why he looked our way.... However, what I'll never forget, is the time he found himself trying to separate two guys who were calling names to each other outside a nightclub. One pushed Alex. Now, I know a mistake when I see one. And right there was one, staring straight at me. He landed a good jab on the first guy, bringing him straight to the ground. Then he jabbed the second guy, and he immediately launched a good right hook, than found him at the jaw, sending him for a sleep. His later commentary was: "... Did you see the guy? He didn't dare to fell with the first punch". He concluded his act performing a UFC-style-choke on a third friend of theirs, who had just came to their rescue. He did all that, in front of the surprised eyes of all the people waiting to get in the nightclub. Even the bouncer looked surprised and you know that doormen have seen a lot of fighting in their lives. Apart from that, he was completely normal. :) The pincer A year later from the above incident, I called him to see, how he was doing. He seemed to have less and less friends. When, after several times of me calling, someone finally responded, I was surprised to find out that it was his mother. And she seemed deeply worried. She told me that I should visit her son who was at the hospital. From what I understood this was what happened: He tried to pull the same old tricks to some tall guy. He really enjoyed doing that. But this time he got stabbed, had two ribs cracked in and his jaw was seriously broken. If he had been stabbed two inches more at the left, the doctors said, that he would be dead. He stayed at the hospital quite long and his mouth was blocked by a metal bar which he would have to wear for more than a month if he wanted his jaw to heal. This was done to avoid his mouth from opening too wide. For two months in the row, he could only eat soups. But the final touch was the pincer. When I asked him what was it for, he told me that if he wanted to vomit for any reason while being in that condition, he would first have to cut the metal bar because if not he would drown in his own vomit. Nice. He became quite calmer after that incident. A bit depressed but definitely more calm. I learned that the ribs kicked in a nasty asthma. Last time I saw him he was still quite fit and I learned he was now practicing the noble sport of tennis. Final thoughts Life is a Game. And as in every game you can win it only if you think out of the box. To be able to walk away out of a fight, even when you were insulted, needs a very strong inner game. You must know who you are.As self-defense expert Marc Mac Young said: “self defense is not about fighting, it’s about not being hurt by physical violence”. The whole thing happens only in your mind. It is up to you to be able to win that game. People that are rigid in their beliefs are depended to those beliefs. People that adapt, they will inherit this planet.
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