"Reality of Combat"

 

A video recently gained some attention for its demonstration of the brutal nature of close quarters combat, and how even in the modern day, personal combat with a grenade and rifles can quickly end up in an up close and intensely personal knife-and-bite fight. 

There is an incredible amount of absolute nonsense put out there in EVERY facet of the martial arts community. People have forgotten the difference between the things they are training and what is seen on this video.  Some of the most verbose pontificators, including highly regarded teachers, blathering on "the reality of combat" have never even been in a fight, let alone actual personal combat. If they can't begin to understand where they are wrong, how can they know where they are correct?

The places I've seen this video shared is on combatives sites, maybe some jiujitsu pages, probably because the most significant portion of it is on the ground. It is NOT jiujitsu by any stretch, but valid discussion can be had as to what elements of jiujitsu may have assisted either man in this death-struggle. It's a study in the usefulness of biting in a combat situation, something I have never been a fan of though I've had it done to me - with points pro and con there as well. 

I specifically did not see it on classical martial arts pages - though I may have missed it. This is interesting because many classical jūjutsu methods have patterns specifically addressing this exact set of circumstances - one or both on the ground, one or both with knives - yet they do nothing resembling it in practice. 

While some may view sharing the content of such a video as obscene, I counter that the real obscenity is acting something like this out, while completely removing the reality of it, performing it as one would for a crowd of spectators, and making the movements seem "elegant." 

Certainly most of what we do in the martial disciplines, even the koryū būjutsu,  has nothing to do with any battlefield and never actually did. But in the barest essentials of some of them,  there is often something potentially useful for the kind of encounter we see in this video. At times it may be necessary to take a step back and consider it.