Uechi-Ryu.com

1) most fights end up on the ground.

3) regarding deaths involving mutiple stab wounds -- the fatal wound is usually delivered near the end of the attack -- or, the first few stabs are not necessarily fatal.

4) stabbing victims often don't realize they've been stabbed until after the fight is over.

4) stabbing victims often don't realize they've been stabbed until after the fight is over.

A Chinese doctor shows a knife which was taken out of Lu Fuyan's brain at a hospital in Yuxi city, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Feb. 12, 2011. The patient, who complained for years of headaches, was found to have the four-inch dagger blade embedded in his skull.

Edeilson Manoel do Nascimento holds an X-ray showing a knife that was inside his skull, at the Hospital das Clinicas in Recife, Brazil, Sept. 23. Nascimento is recovering nicely after a team of surgeons removed the 4-inch knife that had remained lodged in his head for three years after a bar fight. Severe headaches led him to have the knife removed, according to press reports.

Street fights are very unpredictable but thankfully there is some very useful research that we can draw upon that really does dispel the myth that 90% of street fights go to the ground. Bakari Akil II (Ph.D), who is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Middle Georgia College and a no-gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu martial artist, conducted a study to find out what percentage of fights go to the ground. He viewed hours of CCTV footage examining a variety of street fights looking for patterns in the violence. In summary the study discovered the following:
• 42% of fights ended up with both people on the ground while 72% ended with at least one person on the ground.
• Where at least one person was grounded 57% went down due to a throw or a take down, 7% were pushed, 35% from being punched and 1% were downed from a kick.
• The person who hit the ground first lost the fight 57% of the time, while 33% were a draw (no discernable winner) and 8% went on to win the fight. These figures were reversed for those who hit the ground second or stayed standing.

While I do have questions about the research I do think it is still solid enough to learn from. It demonstrates that while the figure of how many fights go to ground is exaggerated it is still extremely high and therefore highlights the importance to have experience of ground fighting.

We consider a street fight to be any fight without rules.
• On the streets we don’t know the intention of the other person – does he want to just injure us, mug us, knock us out, kill us, maim us…?
• We don’t know how many people are going to be involved – it might begin with one and than another person joins in, it can be simply someone who comes to stop the fight…
• On the streets we don’t know the surroundings – are there rocks or stones on the ground or floor, are there broken bottles lying around?
• Does the other person/s have a weapon, if he does, does he intend to use it?
• And so on…
A Street fight can catch us in different situations:
# When we’re the initiators or attackers to begin with
# When we’re just the first to strike, but didn’t initiate the whole situation
# When we’ve been attacked
# When we’re defending some one else
# Either way…
A street fight can be any one of these situations, either together or on their own – as long as one thing remains unknown –

What are the rules
When we don’t know the rules the best and safest thing is to assume there aren’t any.
We must assume the worst.