Championship Streetfighting: Boxing as a Martial Art

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CHAPTER ONEWHY BOXING?Think of any bar fight orstreet fight you’ve foughtor even witnessed, becausewe often learn as much from the fights we watch asfrom those in which we participate. (Being less immediatelyconcerned with blood and survival allows for the luxury ofdetachment and clearer analysis.)Think only about real fights, ones in which real peopleget really hurt. As someone once told me when I said that I’dbeen in a fight, “Is anyone dead? Is anyone in the hospital? Ifnot, then it wasn’t a real fight. It was just fun and games.”That means you must eliminate all the false and potentiallydangerous nonsense you’ve seen in the movies. Forgetall the chop-socky stuff of Chuck Norris, Steven Segal, andJean-Claude Van Damme. Forget about the spinning roundhousekicks to the head, the leaping sidekicks that topple300-pound goons, and all the rest. It may look great on thescreen, but it doesn’t work in real life-or-death, down-anddirtyfights for keeps on the street.While you’re forgetting about the martial arts movies,eliminate all the examples of fistfighting that you may haveseen on-screen. I’m thinking of the barroom brawls in JohnWayne westerns or the fistfight in Shane. You know the type:repeated roundhouse swings to the head and no one breaks1
his hands or suffers damage to the head more serious than atrickle of blood from the corner of his mouth and somemussed-up hair.The movie brawl is meant to entertain. And it doesentertain, especially in Wayne films (nobody beats TheDuke, even today). Movie brawls don’t represent bloodyreality, however.So now you know the kind of fights we’re dealing within this book. We’re dealing with the real thing. And in every realfight, win, lose, or draw, in which I’ve participated orwatched, the issue was decided by a punch, usually a punch tothe head.In other words, in genuine fights in bars, alleys, and otherwiseunsupervised areas, the winner fought like a boxer. Heused hard punches to put the loser on the ground. He usedboxing skills in hand-to-hand combat.Nevertheless, nowadays, when the average Americaninterested in developing hand-to-hand combat skills thinks ofa fighting system, he automatically thinks of everythingother than boxing. He may consider Japanese karate,Chinese kung fu, or Korean taekwon do. But he almostalways thinks of some Oriental system of bare-handed combatinstead of good ol’ American boxing.Such wasn’t always the case.BOXING: THE OLD-TIMEMETHOD OF SELF-DEFENSEIt wasn’t until World War II, when the United Statesfought the Japanese, that more than a handful of Americansthought about martial arts or Asian methods of hand-to-handfighting. For purposes of propaganda, the average Japaneseinfantryman was portrayed as a kind of Superman. His skillat the sly tricks of Oriental fighting made that slight Japanesemore than a match for an all-American boy a head taller andCHAMPIONSHIP STREETFIGHTING2
Page 2 and 3: CHAMPIONSHIPSTREETFIGHTINGBoxing as
Page 6 and 7: 30 pounds heavier. (Such tales made
Page 8: heavy armor obsolete, they also mad

Championship Streetfighting: Boxing as a Martial Art

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