“I was rereading Don't Get Boned and your statistics on kickers who inflicted KO's on their opponents intrigued me. Do you remember the types of kicks used (rear leg roundhouse, lead leg switch, front push, spinning back etc.) and do you have any recommendations for those of us who may find ourselves in the boned zone who prefer to kick as opposed to throwing with our hands?”
Sean
In the November 2000 issue of TaeKwonDo Times I published Self-Defense and the Knockout: An Analysis of Real Fights. This is the piece I can find that best addresses kicking in survival situations. This was an isolation study of the 134 KO’s from my initial survey of 460 violent encounters.
21% of unarmed KOs were inflicted by a significantly larger individual, mostly bouncers throwing people, and aggressors holding and hitting twerps and women.
21% of unarmed KOs were inflicted by significantly smaller individuals, mostly trained fighters, punching and kicking aggressors. The most common tactics of short men were the arching punch to the chin and the side-kick to the torso.
There are two main points to take from this:
1. Size is not a KO indicator
2. Trained fighters engaging in survival situations generally dispense with setup techniques and go directly to finishing bows.
There were two back leg round kicks, a back kick and a front kick that I recall. Most of the kick KOs were sidekicks, including one instant death in a hotel lobby, when a tall Jamaican kicked a short American black in the chest with a standing side kick.
Think about it, if 22% of smaller defenders dropped their opponents with a sidekick to the body, what do you think the tall kickers did? That’s right, cut guys in half with their feet. The martial arts kick—almost always a side-kick against an approaching aggressor—had the highest single strike KO rate in the survey, beating even guns, knives, bats and automobiles, with a 90%.
Keep in mind, though, that the greatest indicator that a person would inflict a KO was that he had a violent past, which typified 94% of successful KO artists in altercations.
Here is one example from the article:
This man earned his TaeKwonDo purple belt from an instructor of the ROK Tiger Brigade while reporting for the Army Times in Vietnam. The belt was torn from medical scrubs.
Jay, a mild mannered Tae Kwon Do master, was unlocking his car when he was threatened by a large drunk. As he turned, the man charged. Jay met his charge with a hopping sidekick to the torso. Jay sounded almost sickened as he recalled how the man’s body folded around his foot. He turned and drove off as the man lay in a heap.
Since I was interviewing East Coast kickboxers who competed in the 70s and 80s, they were almost all Tae Kwon Do black belts, including the Wing Chun instructor that wrapped your ankle this past Sunday.
Keep in mind, that almost all unarmed KOs are inflicted with leg strength, whether they are punches, kicks or throws. Kicks tend to be best against a single charging opponent, with punches and poor leverage throws [by gigantic dudes] accounting for most KOs against members of groups.
Time to start practicing my stepping side kicks in boots again. It makes sense because whenever I have fought or boxed one of these kids they are always susceptible to body shots with the lean back lunging forward fighting style they learned from world star
Only time I ever got in trouble during a fight was allowing myself to get suckered into that and while reaching ate a huge right cross to the chin. That and I allowed them to setup. Learned my lesson that time I did.