A few years ago, I attended a one day seminar featuring one of the most well-known Silat sifus in the West. I had traveled to New York City for the seminar and a few competitions and went to the training seminar hoping to learn new things from the master teacher.
The attendees of the seminar were from all walks of martial arts life. Some were obviously businessmen or white collar types, others were long-time martial arts trainers like myself, and at least two were professional fighters. One person in particular caught my eye, however.
He was a large man, but not overly muscular, just naturally titanic. His hair was cut short and his face was like looking at a war zone. He had scars on his cheek and brow, his nose had obviously been broken more than once, and he was missing at least two teeth. He spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent. His name was Greg.
By his manner and the way he moved when shown to the mat for demonstration, it was obvious that he was not a trained martial artist. He took no fighting stance, his attacks (both kicks and punches) were unorthodox and definitely had not been taught to him by any sifu. Yet of all of us, he was the only one who the Silat master was not able to knock to the ground.
After the day was over, as we walked to the parking lot, I overheard him say to someone on his cell phone "That was a [expletive] waste of money and time. Guy didn't know [expletive]."
I, on the other hand, had thought I had learned a great deal from the day's workout and training. I thought the guy was being cocky and belligerent, but wondered about his never falling down that day and his strange way of reacting nearly instinctively to the attacks made upon him, no matter how unusual or different they had been. So I approached him.
"Excuse me, Greg is it?" He turned and looked at me suspiciously. I convinced him to sit in a pub with me for a drink to talk about self-defense. He told me to follow him and we drove to "his place." This turned out to be a bar in Brooklyn that he was partial owner of. It had been open for quite a while, but he took me to his office after grabbing some beer on the way through and saying hello to several regulars.
It turns out that Greg started out at the bar as a bouncer (now usually called "security") and had eventually worked his way into ownership. His face, as he pointed out, was his textbook and test scores from his schooling as a bouncer and self-defense expert. In other words, he learned everything the hard way.
For the next few hours and then the day after that in the gymnasium where he'd invited me to come work out with him, I learned more about self-defense than my twenty years (up to that point) of martial arts training had ever given me. This was the beginning of my awakening to the "law of the street."
From Greg that day, I learned that only another martial artist will attack you with what most martial arts instructors teach you to "counter." Everyone else attacks with whatever they've got, which was probably nothing they learned in any dojo or gym.
I learned the importance of awareness, of reaction, of understanding how a person moves when they're carrying a hidden weapon, and more. In short, I was introduced to the world of real, bare knuckles street fighting and self-defense.
Greg was a man who had never completed the eighth grade, had never been to university, and had never received any formal instruction in a studio or dojo. His only formal training had been Westenn Boxing classes for one year at a local gym. Everything Greg knows about fighting came from growing up on the streets, lying about his age to get a job as a bouncer, and then spending most of his nights getting attacked, beat up, etc. and most of his days patching his wounds and running, jumping rope, and lifting weights.
I formed a good friendship with Greg and every time I visit New York City, I pop in on him for a couple of pints and maybe an afternoon in the gym. In my more than 29 years of martial arts training and instruction, Greg is one of the most well-educated street fighters I've talked to.
He taught me the most important lesson I've learned in self-defense: martial arts and self-defense aren't the same thing. Once I learned that, a whole new avenue of training opened to me.
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