Jan 02 Dennis Jones – The Part Luck Plays in a Fight..

Samurai On The Door

This interview was published in May 2007 

SR  Someone recently asked what were the worst injuries you had received working on the door?

DJ  Haemorrhoids Steve!  (Laughter)

SR  Well it does get a bit cold there on the door Den, and you know what your Mum told you about sitting on a cold step! 

DJ…I remember once some top karate guy said that in a fight you can’t rely on luck, but I have to say Steve there can be a lot of luck in nightclub fighting!  We even discussed this once in a previous article when I mentioned about someone throwing a bottle at me in a fight and how it just missed my face, touching my nose as it flew past… that was luck!

Luck and skill has kept me safe.  A ‘bouncer’ friend, who was a very good amateur boxer, once said that I must have an angel looking after me.  He said this one night after we had a big fight because of the way I had managed to stay relatively injury free and not only in that confrontation but also in many others I was involved in.  I never really thought about getting hurt,  it was a fact of life.  I saw lots of people, including bouncers, get injured but I had the same attitude that an old friend of mine had.  He was in the army stationed in Ireland and his patrol got caught by a sniper.  There were a few rounds whizzing about the place and another soldier standing a few feet from him was hit in the chest.  I remember asking him what he thought when it happened and he replied, “…Dennis, I was just glad it wasn’t me!”.

SR  My Father was a signaller commando during world war two and was strafed by a German plane whilst riding a motor bike behind enemy lines, it missed him, but he later found that a bullet had gone right through the petrol tank!  That’s lucky!

DJ  If it’d got him I wouldn’t be talking to you today Steve!  Seriously though, over the years in various melees I have been head butted, kicked, punched, grabbed, wrestled, bitten, had my neck twisted and yanked, my face scratched, been bottled and glassed, but luckily the injuries have generally been quite minor. Nothing more than  broken ribs, some deep bruising and aches and pains from getting a bit of a kicking, some blood and a few stitches.  And on the odd occasions though, when I’ve been hit really hard in the head, I’ve had a headache that lasted for at least a week.  Oh and I mustn’t forget that I once had my own tooth head butted through my top lip, it gave me a neat scar that I can feel to this day.  When the guy nutted me I instinctively moved back with force of the blow.  If I hadn’t  I would have lost a few teeth.  Now was it luck or skill or just a natural thing to do, like pulling your hand off a red hot surface that saved me from losing half my teeth.  That particular incident developed into a serious fight and I broke both his cheek bones and came through it with only a damaged lip.  We both declined police involvement! You have to accept that if you’re in the thick of it you cannot help but be caught out now and again.

SR  I remember the huge bruise you had on your shin from kicking a guy in the face!

DJ  (laughs) I used to break baseball bats with my shin, shows what happens with age and when you’re trying not to hurt your opponent too much.  But I wouldn’t have had an injured shin if I had caught him with my boot instead of the shin!  I was trying to be nice to him.  As I’ve said before, I’ve had broken ribs and have been belted in the head from the side and behind and once took a good ‘sucker punch’ from the front.  That one gave me a headache for nearly two weeks!  I did return the favour ‘with interest’ and instantly, however!  Once a woman tried to take my eye out ‘glassing’ me with a broken wine stem and another time, I actually got stabbed with one.  Luckily having spotted him out the corner of my eye I managed to deflect it away from my face, but it still cut the side of my head open.  Again that was a pre-emptive attack but from the side.  It happened in a noisy nightclub and I was lucky I saw him make his move.

I’ve had too many friends who have been seriously injured over the years, but like the soldier we were talking about earlier, thank god it wasn’t me!

SR  I think that some people get injured more in a karate club than they would out in the street!

DJ  If you don’t go out or you’re good at avoiding trouble in nightclubs and on the street then as you said Steve you can get more injured doing karate.  The problem out in the street is that it can go ‘off’ at any time, people talk about ‘zanshin’ but it’s so easy to get caught out.  A bouncer where I worked was stabbed in the stomach with a screwdriver as he walked out of a nightclub – and the two scum bags then ran away, leaving him bleeding and slumped against the fire doors.

I guess I’m careful to the point of paranoia.  I remember seeing a girl nearly killed with an egg!  A car drove by fast and someone threw an egg out of the window, it hit her in the face and at that speed it was lethal.  I saw a policeman flattened by a 50p piece.  It hit him in the eye and took him straight out, leaving him unconscious on the pavement.  I didn’t like that one, it was a nasty thing to do and the guy who threw the coin disappeared in the crowd.  So when I work, having had coins, bricks, roofing tiles, concrete, metal bunting poles, bottles and glasses thrown at me I prefer to use a door or corner and just peer out at the customers from, as the army say, behind cover. You often don’t get the chance to ‘put your hands up’ – the most dangerous things can come straight out of the blue and take you clean out!  So like a good boy scout – ‘be prepared’.

Fights that don’t look dangerous can very rapidly get out of control.  If a weapon is produced it becomes very difficult for you unless you also have weapon.

SR  So you’re basically saying that it’s difficult to train for the ‘real thing’ in a Dojo?

DJ  You’ll be good at whatever you train for and bashing the hell out of each other in a dojo is fine for some fights – but it probably won’t prepare you totally (unless you’re that way inclined) for the ‘instant life threatening violence’ you might encounter in the street.  If you are training with a reasonable amount of body contact then I believe it’s got to involve lots of wrestling and hitting.  Striking should fit in between the wrestling except the pre-emptive strikes that always comes first!  Anybody that’s had a hum dinger of a street fight will know what it feels like to be ragged around a bit.  You need to include some real life scenarios if you want to stand a chance on the street. The contact doesn’t have to be full-on but you’ve got to learn to feel someone else’s body weight, their strength, their breath and so on.  ‘play fight’ to use the words of Steve Morris, is an ideal vehicle; learn with your body not your mind.  You use your mind for something else. 

SR It’s like this (Steve produces a live blade very quickly and makes a stabbing motion).

DJ  Yes Steve weapons change the whole game!  I remember someone producing a ‘sharp edged weapon’ as the statisticians like to call them, anyway the guy that I was working with picked up a barstool and pole axed him!  Mind you I’ve known some bouncers when they’re having a hard time against two or three fellows use a bar stool, even when the other guys don’t have any weapons.  It is logical though, because nobody wants to get hurt and I reckon that’s what it’s all about – any strategy to survive.  And sometimes that means taking a smack in the mouth! 

The defences against weapons that some martial arts practitioners use are stunningly naïve!  But then I guess most of them will never have a weapon used against them.  I still maintain the best defence against a weapon, if you can’t escape, is to use a weapon of your own and preferable a better one than your opponent has, or give them what they want if it won’t harm you too much.  A lot of times perhaps 9 times out of 10 people just threaten someone with a weapon.  Often they have no intention of using it; they just want to establish some sort of control over you, even if it’s only to shock you enough to give them time to run off.  If I have to fight unarmed against an armed assailant, I’d generally use my left hand to control and my right to hit.  I guess that comes from my general skill outside of martial arts, like carpentry where I would hold a nail with my left and the hammer with my right, or hold a piece of wood with my left whilst I saw with the right. 

Martial artists often talk about weapon defence in a causal manner like its no big deal and they work that way in the Dojo, but the real thing produces unparalleled fear.

SR  I’ve been stabbed twice.  Both times in a martial arts club!  Once in a demo with a live blade – I was stabbed in the head – and the other time I was stabbed in the eye and nearly blinded with a rubber knife!  Who needs to go out into the street!

DJ  That’s why many of the kali practitioners wear eye protection.

SR  I’m not surprised, at the eye hospital they told me that I was less than 1mm from being blinded!

DJ  The problem is that if someone is really out to stab you – you probably won’t even see the knife!  You get what we call a ‘walk by’ stabbing.  Maybe we should run a competition of a picture or film clip with a ‘who’s got the knife’ caption!

SR  When we have two or three people on to one scenarios at my dojo I often walk round and surreptitiously give out plastic bottles and rubber knives so that the person ‘in the middle’ doesn’t even know that there are weapons around and they get the surprise element.

DJ  If you’re training ‘easily’ in a dojo with someone who is relatively easy to disarm or is using the weapon in a manner that doesn’t resemble what happens for real, you can practice a technique thousands of times and be effective every single time.  But when you have to do it for real – it’s totally different.  Can you create that reality in a dojo?

SR  A good question for next month Dennis….

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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