“Interrupt your opponent’s force before he generates it.”

“It makes no sense to train your solo forms in school with others. There are better way to train in school. Some CMA guys just don’t understand the difference between school work and homework.”

“If every training session you push yourself so hard that you hate to do it again than that will not be good. You should stop your training when you feel great and you still want to continue but you force yourself to stop. This way you always look forward to the next training section.”

“The opening that you can “see” may not be true opening. It’ could be a trap – raise guard to invite a kick, drop guard to invite a punch. The opening that you can “feel” will be the true opening. This is why one needs to build up bridge (making leg/arm contact) before futher commitment.”

“How do you expect a girl to go to bed with you if you never say ‘I love you’? You say ‘I love you.’ She says ‘I love you too’. Then you get to say ‘Good, let’s go to bed!’ That is using and then borrowing force. First, you give, then you take.”

“What’s my style? ……My style is the style that can beat the shit out of you!”

From the New York Tribune, April 4, 1920: Johannes Josefsson, Who Fights With His Feet in Ringling’s Circus, Craves Meeting With Bandits
[From the New York Tribune, April 4, 1920]

A certain degree of timidity is excusable in almost any person, owing to the increase of thuggery and crime in this city. But there is one man in town who not only refuses to quake when in dark and dangerous byways, but who actually craves the excitement that might go with a brush with a hold-up man.

Johannes Josefsson, the Icelandic wrestling wizard, is the intrepid one, and he has thrilled or will thrill you as one of the star attractions with the combined Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden.

Josefsson thinks with his feet, and can reduce a robust athlete to a frayed-out wreck in the twinkling of an eye by mauling him with his heel and toe. He is so confident of his skill with his feet that he would meet Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey in the same ring and would guarantee to toss them both off without drawing a long breath.

However, neither Jack nor Georges being a “feet fighter,” this ambition of Johannes’s life will have to go unsatisfied.

To get back to the Icelander’s indifference to the lurking highwayman or his gang. One has only to see the blond giant of the North in action to realize how much out of luck a fool outlaw would be to tackle him. The glima, the native word for this form of wrestling expert would simply “pile up” his adversary with one or two dexterous kicks and then dance an old fashioned breakdown on the hapless thug’s neck.

Josefsson explained his art yesterday in his dressing room just before his exhibition.

“There is not a man in the world who can subdue a clever glima exponent,” he said, “unless he does it with glima. It is simply the art of using one’s feet and legs instead of one hands. I finish five men at every performance, and, let me tell you, their attack on me is not staged the same way every day. They are continually trying new “stunts” to get me, but it never takes more than two minutes to stop them all.”

“Have you ever met a boxer?” the Icelander was asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “I have fought many. Roche, of France, a heavyweight, was unable to stay more than eighty five seconds with me, and a Belgian heavyweight, whose name I have forgotten, was still easier.”

Josefsson is a catch-as-catch-can wrestler of no mean ability himself,
and he claims a victory over one of the Zbyszko brothers at Lodz, Poland. This bout lasted forty-seven minutes and was ended by Josefsson getting a toe-hold on his opponent. But perhaps the most notable victory In his record was scored by Josefsson in a “grudge bout” with Ota Gawa, a jiu-jitsu expert, in this city in April, 1913.

Josefsson is thirty-eight years old and is the undefeated glima champion of Iceland.

& modern

1.   Butting with the head.
2.   Eye gouging of any kind.
3.   Biting.
4.   Hair pulling.
5.   Fish hooking.
6.   Groin attacks of any kind.
7.   Putting a finger into any orifice or into any cut or laceration on an opponent.
8.   Small joint manipulation.
9.   Striking to the spine or the back of the head.
10. Striking downward using the point of the elbow.
11. Throat strikes of any kind, including, without limitation, grabbing the trachea.
12. Clawing, pinching or twisting the flesh.
13. Grabbing the clavicle.
14. Kicking the head of a grounded opponent.
15. Kneeing the head of a grounded opponent.
16. Stomping a grounded opponent.
17. Kicking to the kidney with the heel.
18. Spiking an opponent to the canvas on his head or neck.
19. Throwing an opponent out of the ring or fenced area.

Wow, it’s like a Rosetta stone for defending yourself against an MMA-trained mugger.  In actuality, the above is a list of the fouls that the UFC  prohibits because they’re too harmful to the fighters.  I’ve been thinking about self-defense (as opposed to dueling) lately.  Some of the above goes beyond what’s legally acceptable for self-defense. But turn it around — how do you defend against these things? Hair pulling, back attacks, slamming into walls, and stomping are all standard procedure for crackhead muggers, street thugs, and other predators. The fouls later in the list are also thought-provoking:

20. Holding the shorts or gloves of an opponent. (using their clothing against them; grab their sleeves, collar, pants legs.)
21. Spitting at an opponent. (as a distraction?)
23. Holding the ropes or the fence.   (using the environment as a shield or weapon)
24. Using abusive language in the ring or fenced area.  (intimidation, psychological assault)
29. Timidity, including, without limitation, avoiding contact with an opponent, intentionally or consistently dropping the mouthpiece or faking an injury.   (elusiveness, trickery, running the fuck away like a smart guy)
30. Interference by the corner. (If you’re male, you’ll never get jumped by just one person.)

It’s interesting to track the evolution of the UFC rules.

(* I swear the UFC created rule #7 especially for Forrest Griffin; in his book he recommends a technique he calls “The Asian Dart”, where you… ugh, no, it’s too nasty, I’ll spare you the details.)

Muscle grabbing Chin Na hurts just to watch:

Presumably Dr. Yang has crazy grip strength from all the White Crane conditioning exercises he’s done.  In his book, he mentions that you need to be considerably more skilled than your opponent in order to use any Chin Na effectively.  If you’re evenly matched, it’s better just to hit them — “In such a situation, to show mercy to your opponent is to be cruel to yourself.”

The whole collection: http://www.youtube.com/user/ApocalypseJournal

Anyways, I thought this was interesting conceptually.