(This article was originally written and published in a newsletter for Jiu-jitsu black belts)
You punch and strike someone more than once in a fight and yet they keep coming. You and I have seen it in boxing bouts, MMA fights, street fights and perhaps it’s even happened to you. Someone gets hit once and then again and even four or five times and yet they’re still in the fight. It happens all the time. Every now and then, someone catches a good single shot and they drop like a sack of potatoes, but by far, most fights consist of a bunch of strikes and still continue on.
Think back with me to yesteryear—1991 to be exact and the infamous Rodney King case. For those of you younger people who don’t know much about the case, look it up and be sure to watch the video. It’s quite enlightening in regards to what you’ll be reading here. In a nutshell, this is what happened. After a wild police car chase, King, got out of his vehicle and apparently did not comply with police officers on the scene who were telling him to follow their commands. At this point, numerous LA police officers kicked and clubbed King, 56 times. Full baton swings and full power strikes. And not getting much success while doing so because King kept talking, moving and not doing what the police wanted him to do. It was terrible police work in that it was not a good way to control a combative or non-compliant individual and the case led to major rioting in California. What this case clearly shows us is that numerous strikes do not work against certain people or at certain times. In fact, most of the time, one or two strikes will not end a fight or an attack.
A few weeks ago, I was teaching a private class and a new uke, Butch, was helping me. I told him that we would be doing offensive chokes during the evenings training and that I knew that he wasn’t very familiar with them, so, I choked him showing him what he soon would be involved in. When the private student, a brown belt working towards his black belt started doing chokes on Butch, he stood up quite well against some tough chokes by a very proficient student.
During a break in action, Butch, a hardened man in his 50’s who is as rough and tumble as anyone in his 20’’s and who has been in his share of fist fights said, “Wow, getting choked like these chokes will end a fight in an instant.” Butch went on and said, “If I never learn another technique here, I’ve gotten my money’s worth. These chokes take me out in an instant and knowing how to do them will take someone else out in an instant, too.”
He told that when applied on him, he immediately became disabled. He said, “My neck nerves, on both side of my neck get sort of shocked real fast and hard and then immediately, the blood in the arteries on both sides of my neck are completely shut off. I’m done right away and it takes me awhile to get it together afterwards.” Butch said that it works so well that he feels it should be the go-to technique in a serious confrontation.
The moral of this story is that a choke from the rear or even the side can instantaneously end a fight or a life and death struggle. I used it against a 25 year-old convicted rapist who had just been released from prison when I was a cop. It went down one night starting in a car and then spilling over into a cemetery. A few weeks earlier, he had threatened a fellow officer’s wife and on the night of our altercation, he had broken a law that I was attempting to arrest him for when it turned to shit.
It started when I put my overhead police lights on as I pulled the subjects vehicle over. It was a dark night and the street had little traffic as he pulled over in front of a cemetery. I told him why he was stopped, the charge against him and that he would have to come out of the vehicle. He was having none of it and started getting physical while still in the car. Greg, my partner that night tells people that I pulled him out of the vehicles window in a quick swoop and he thought that was kind of cool, but truthfully, I don’t remember much about getting him out of the car. That was no big deal. What I do remember and teach about to this day, has to do with a rear choke. From the second that he was told that he was under arrest and that he had to come with us he was off the charts violent.
Once out of the car, he fought Greg and me with full force, vigor and strength. We spilled into a cemetery grassy area and I remember thinking that any woman fighting off a rape from this extremely strong rapist would be lucky to survive. He was solid muscle and wild as can be. Gregg, was about 6’1” and weighed about 230 pounds and was a tough guy. I was 6’1” and weighed about 210 and we were having the hardest time of just holding our own against him. Two against one and just getting by! That is, until I put a rear choke on him.
We were all on the ground, kind of on our knees and crouching with punches flying and grabs being attempted when I got behind him and put a choke on him. And please listen close here, when I applied it, with full force and vigor, he immediately froze all of his physical activity. He completely stopped everything. I hollered at him that if he doesn’t fight anymore, I would let up on his neck. He complied and I let up a bit, but at the same time, I was completely ready to turn the faucet on again, and he knew it. At this point, Greg was getting ready to hit him again as he didn’t really know where everything stood. I hollered to him, “The fight is over . . . no more.” I continued to hold him around the neck, right at the edge of full force ready to go, until Gregg cuffed him.
Without that choke who knows what would have happened. Deadly force? Perhaps. But the choke ended it just like Butch said, instantly.
Chokes, rightly done, work wonders in combat. I’ve experienced it. I recommend to learn them well and know how to do them with a burst of force along with good technique. These chokes are not the cutesy, ‘Hey let me show you a sleeper choke’ that I’ve seen people do to each other almost like they’re playing a parlor game where they apply a slow steady squeezing action putting the subject to sleep. Those chokes do work as stopping blood flow, for the right amount of time, works, but these are not the chokes I’m talking about. No, I’m talking about chokes that burst with ferociousness, strength and technique. And anyone who knows how I teach chokes knows that I teach to dialogue when choking someone. If I wouldn’t have dialogued with the man in the cemetery he might have been killed. If I would not have given him an option, he would have continued to fight for what he thought was his life, like anyone would. And consequently, a continued choke, may have caused him more harm or even death.
Know your chokes. Know them well. They can be a complete game changer.
Steve's a three-time survivor of violence in his youth, a former police supervisor and a graduate of The Police Executive Leadership College (PELC) and was also an award winning part-time college Criminal Justice instructor.
For several years, Steve did written and radio political and current event commentary and was the former host of the long running 'The Kovacs Perspective' Internet radio and TV talk show.
Steve presently owns a small businesses in Ohio--The Mayfield Academy of Self-Defense.
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