I recently coached a knife counter-measure clinic for a karate class and when I suggested taking out the knifer's eye with a spear hand or finger jab instead of punching it was as if I had urinated in church next to Sister Mary Morose. The reason why the Green Beret below was using a finger poke in sparing, was, I think, misguided. However, the accidental effect speaks for itself.
First, there are many an historic precedence for eye-jabbing:
Egyptian stick-fighter/boxers used the spear-hand to the eye
There are two extant illustrations of Hellenic boxers thrusting to the eye with spear-hand or jab.
Of 20,000 gladiators tested by trainers in Imperial Rome, only a handful could keep from blinking when a sword was thrust at their eye and stopped short.
Why eye-jab instead of punch?
1. The extended hand reaches further than the clenched hand.
2. A non-leveraged blow is quicker than the leveraged blow, all effective punches being leveraged.
3. The fingertips of an unclenched hand begins trajectory closer to the target than the knuckles of the fist.
4. An open hand is deceptive and may permit a sneaky strike, as the hand is used in conversation.
5. The open hand is more versatile, able to grasp, push and palm strike to the hard skull and other hard-to-defeat targets.
6. The absence of a leverage requirement permits this strike to be effective while moving off line—and not having a knife run up into your guts—as this empty hand blow does not fix the striker's position.
7. The fist engages the musculature and tends to dull tactile sensitivity in all but the most experienced boxers, making them more susceptible to edged weapons.
8. Three in ten men cannot be reliably stopped with a punch.
9. One in ten men take minutes to be beaten senseless by skilled punching. What if this caveman has a knife in his pocket?
10. The toughest boxers and MMA fighters in the world grovel, even cry, like a spanked toddler when they get their eye poked in the ring or cage, accidentally.
Yeah, nothing seems to take all the fight out of a guy quite like catching a digit in the eyeball does.
-Jeremy
Green Beret Vs Peruvian Special Forces
Posted on April 18, 2017 by Anonymous Conservative
A good example of a man with a plan making a lifetime of training useless:
Martial arts are good training, but they are also conditioning. Do Karate for points, or Judo competitions, and you will, without thinking, grow used to fighting without expecting an eye-gouge like this or a pencil jammed into your ribs to puncture your heart as you grapple on the ground.
Oddly enough, if this account is right, the Green Beret didn’t expect it to go that way either:
Read more and view the video below:
Being a Bad Man in a Worse World
Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival
Part of the problem with modern Martial Arts training is that all of them have been diluted to the point of relegating them to being a sport. BJJ is the latest fad and is touted as the ultimate self defense system. And, while formidable, I wonder how effective it would be against someone that was willing to bite off an ear, or gouge out an eye, or crush testicles in a death grip.
Much of the problem is our litigious society. Having to stand in front of a judge and explain that you ripped someone's eyeball out of their head because that's what you were taught at Sum Gai's Ultimate Fighting Dojo is a pretty sure path to spending months or years honing your skills behind bars.
Be it in business, food gathering, or self-defense, our society is biased against people acting on their own behalf.
Thanks. I mean even the Berkeley antifa girl who got a right direct into her forehead with plenty of bodyweight behind it was only stunned. Probably hurt the guy's wrist also as much.
Tiger's claw or face mash, isn't it called?
An interviewer once asked Bruce Lee what technique he would teach someone if that person had to fight for their life in 10 minutes. The answer was the eye jab.