Hamed and Jones actual punching technique was within the constraints of textbook punching. Their technique was correct. The way they fought, the angles they produced, etc, though, was different from the norm. For instance, it is normally said not to lead with an uppercut from the outside, yet Jones did it frequently, and it obviously worked. It worked because it was unexpected. The actual uppercut itself though, was textbook stuff. The movement, timing, and when it was thrown was not. So I don't think that was a great example. Watch Jones throw a lead left hook, then watch Mayweather, and they will look pretty much the same. This is because it is 'textbook' as you put it. The way they do it is obviously the most effective, otherwise they wouldn't do it that way. Their styles of fighting however, are different. The topic of this thread was the punching demonstrated and how they were thrown. What piece of evidence am I relying heavily on, and what am I dismissing? I didn't get that bit. I know thugs that have knocked people out. But it doesn't mean they have good technique, and certainly doesn't mean if they had a punch-up in a pub with a trained fighter they would win, because they almost certainly wouldn't. They fight other idiots, so what does that prove?
Dude, you've got your mind made up. And that's fine. It's not like I'm drawing royalties from the guy. Nor do I think he's the second coming. If you think these video clips are rubbish, that's fine. My view differed and I said as much. Going round and round in rhetorical circles isn't going to resolve this. Personally, if I were airing this sort of critique, I'd want some firsthand experience with the guy to work from. But that's just me. Stuart
Well that's about it.Dennis Jones is a trained fighter and most of the people he fought were not trained fighters.That dosen't make them any less dangerous as most of them had a different skill set to martial artists,far more sneaky and not playing by any rules.As Dennis has told me,there are no Bruce Lee's in the street,just scumbags who are out to mess you up.Good technique dosen't come into it.The real requirement is technique that works and lets you go home in one piece. Properly? Is there a proper way of holding the hands when walking around in a pub?
No. That wasn't the point. The point was being able to punch correctly from wherever your hands are. I wasn't refering to how the hands are held, although reading back on what I wrote I can see that maybe I wasn't clear.
VERY WELL SAID - That's it - if your martial art teaches you that then job done and keep practicing. If it doesn't teach you that, keep looking and practicing. Either way keep practicing All the best. Robert.
In reference to the YouTube clips discussed on the ‘Dennis Jones’ thread I would like to add a few comments: On guard! Hands high or low? As many people know an answer to such a question depends upon the ‘situation and environment’ that they might find themselves in. However, it goes without saying (even if I am saying it!) that if your sport is boxing or whatever you would enter into the bout/fight using the protocols and proven strategies of your chosen sport. For boxing it would generally be (especially when in striking range) hands held high to protect the head and elbows in to protect the ribs etc. (And no flapping of elbows when punching!) When I first started training in Kyokushinkai karate in 1973 we were taught, in preparation for ‘dojo knock down fighting’, to fight one hand high and one hand low. Training under some of the Japanese, as well as, some top British instructors they all used one hand high and one hand low to pretty good effect. Yet by 1978 everybody, or so it seemed, were punching whilst at the same time using the opposite hand for a face cover. And with the advent of ‘knock down tournaments’ Kyokusinkai practitioners using both hands held high to protect the head, were by the late 1970s training like western boxers with kicking and kneeing thrown into the mix as well. However, we still trained to fight at a particular distance, not as close as Judo and a little further apart than boxing…What is the primary distance of a street fight? Bouncing and street fighting One night in 1980 when I first started bouncing I was working at the back of a night club. Working on one side of a pair of fire escape doors, my job was to stop customers coming in and out through the fire exit. On the other side of the doors was a long flight of stairs that went from the third storey down to the car park and safety if a fire happened inside the club. Half way down the metal stairs was a landing. Around closing time a fight had gone off involving 5, 6 or maybe 7 people. They had fought by the fire doors and then down the stairs on to the landing. When I and a couple of other doorman got to them, we barged the lot down the remaining half flight of stairs and away from club. Very quickly it’s over for us and I am standing with my colleagues at the top of the stairs enjoying the fight of which I had no intention of trying to stop. I had now become a passive observer. However, what happened next forced me to re-evaluate certain aspects of my training. The fighting and arguments had stopped and one of the combatants then casually walks over to a skip and discreetly picks up half a house brick. With his arms at his side he walks over to one of the other guys and without taking a fighting stance, a high guard or a split second pause to get his balance, he just hits this guy full in the face with the half house brick. The man got a quick glimpse of what was coming but the half house brick just ploughed through his attempted guard. He went down like a sack of **** and the fight had gone from a brawl between a group of squaddies (British soldiers) and civilians into something far more serious. Everybody stopped fighting and even though I was not involved my heartbeat went through the ceiling. The guy that used the brick took to heels and did a runner. Quite simply what I had seen was as far as I was concerned an assassination attempt, which was also incredibly effective in its simplicity. Not long after that I saw a similar drama unfold in which the assailant used a claw hammer. In both cases nobody, not me nor any of the bouncers that I was working with thought the ‘armed man’ was at a disadvantage because he kept his hands low and slightly behind his back as he walked up to his victim! Nor did we take it upon ourselves to think that we could easily defend ourselves against such dangerous people. But what I saw that night (and on many other occasions over the years) was an effective pre-emptive strike. It was executed without a pause, without a stable static stance and interestingly quite a few of them started with a small leap-which covered distance very quickly-into the intended victim. Driven by hate it seemed to me that the antagonist only had to satisfy two criteria: • Full intention to use a weapon • Full intention to carry out the attack. Having made the decision none of them, so it seemed to me, were concerned about being able to adjust their game plan once the wheels of motion were brought into play-it really was a case of ‘I do what I want!’ From such experiences in the early 1980s I decided that I must ‘try’ and develop what is known in traditional karate jutsu as the one punch kill, but I’ll digress first. Thugs, drunks, coke and pill heads When confronted say by two guys in a nightclub, pub (bar) or in the street it ‘should’ be obvious by the way they carry themselves, their language and demeanour that they have evil intentions towards you. You are forced, because you have no way of extracting yourself from the situation, to take the ‘first’ one out of the game. However, it has always struck me as being foolhardy to put your arms up into a guard position a moment before you launch your attack. Not only are you ‘arresting’ the momentum of your hand technique but you are also telegraphing your intentions ‘long’ before you execute the technique. And it is just as foolish to put your guard up if you have to walk a few yards towards an opponent and especially so in a crowd where, because you have identified your intentions, you could easily get sucker punched or bottled from the side or from behind by one of his mates! And anyway once a punch is on its way towards the offending face/head then by default there’s your high guard for you! An argument has been put forward where ‘leaping in’ and hitting a pad with an elbow technique (YouTube clip (3:18) is impractical. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iRmv1LEk5E&feature=related"]YouTube - Dennis Jones Street Defence Seminar part 1[/ame] ‘Using the “wrong technique” because of how far I am away from the targets’ has in my opinion not been full understood. Irrespective of where I am as I launch my attack, or even if I am 10 yards away from my intended target and I have to walk up and then launch my attack, it is obvious that at the point of contact I am just an elbow distance away from my target. If that were not so I would miss or hit the opponent with both my shoulder and body weight! As one strategy amongst a number of strategies I have ‘jumped in’ [It was executed without a pause, without a stable static stance and interestingly quite a few of them started with a small leap-which covered distance very quickly-into the intended victim.] on many occasions in a nightclub/bar fight to good effect. In a fight or even a brawl balance is always dynamic-it is on the move. Good balance or even bad balance changes from split second to second and in a nightclub in close proximity to numerous other people with some trying to grab and punch you, being stable in a static position could prove highly uncomfortable even if you maintain a high guard. Keep on the move and constantly change position and preferable to your own advantage so that in the melee you set your opponent/s up. It should be noted though, that even running away requires ‘your’ dynamic balance to be successful! Irrespective of what martial art you practice it is not common for anybody whilst fighting in their chosen discipline to end up on a life support machine or even dead. The risk on the street or in a nightclub can be far greater and scarier than many people care to consider. It is not about punching a few drunks to get a name. Doing that is easy but even that can be more dangerous than you think-who is their brother, their dad or their friends? It’s only mug bouncers that do that sort of thing. Yet, on the other hand try imagining what it’s like to fight a drunk that’s trying to shove a broken bottle in your face! Alcohol is one thing but the biggest problem since the early 1990s is drugs especially cocaine, now imagine fighting one or two guys out of their faces on cocaine. Immune to pain, having no fear, full of hate because of their ****ed up minds…Flesh and blood cannot fight numbers or weapons ‘that well’, and as a bouncer I have learnt to live with that reality for 26 years. Punching In the link: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TYI3ClpP9c&feature=related"]YouTube - Power Punching for the street.[/ame] the leather bag weighs around 94 lb, the bottom half has the density of Granulated silver spoon sugar. Prior to this I had spent many years punching a makiware and had also spent around 3 years punching a concrete post and about the same time on a sand filled Wing Chun wall (3) pads. I also spent many years, on and off, training on boxing pads as well as light and heavy punch bags. At the time of this training session (1993) I was working on correct body alignment for delivering maximum power through two knuckles (seiken). I had been working as a bouncer for 13 years and had by then been in many fights. (Experience-what looks like me doing body shots on the bag are in the main head shots. People bending over-it happens a lot in street fighting!) For me it was obvious, I needed to have as much impact in my punches as I could possible generate from ALL MY BODY-tendons, muscles, nerve connections and connective tissue and also my full body weight (approx 200 lbs). My knuckles had to be tough and hard to take the tremendous stress, and the bones in my arms had be in perfect (punching) alignment so that I could use my body weight, both in sliding and jumping, to its best effect. I have never considered myself the hardest hitter around but I know that there ain’t that many people who could hit that bag bare knuckles as hard as I could. I never grazed the skin on my knuckles nor broke my hand which on that bag was a very easy thing to do especially punching the bag without bandage wraps and bag mitts. In reference to grazing the skin, I rarely skimmed the bag with a punch either left or right hand. My seiken would dig into it feeling as if the two knuckles were reaching into the middle of the bag. Although I worked on other ‘stuff’ like wrestling, grabbing, locks, kicks etc., my martial art for self defence has always centred on hand techniques. In 1973 I was taught a basic karate punch and following the traditional precept of continual training, practice and tempering with experience, I have, some millions of punches later-1000 punches a day for three years started me off-evolved into what I am. I don’t swing my punches-they come off tangent from a sphere, and have proven very effective on many occasions over the years. My karate is as simple as walking up to somebody and hitting them, something I saw some 29 years ago. In my younger days I wanted to be just as lethal as the man with the brick, but be able to do it unarmed. In my journey I have learnt a few things yet one thing that does stand out in every fight that I have ever seen or been involved in: There are no rules in a street fight except your own morality. And as I got older I have learnt that there is more to martial arts than fighting. Regards Dennis Jones
Mr. Jones, Thank you very much for taking the time and effort to write that insightful post. It's an honour and a privilege to have you here
Excellent post,Dennis. ....and our man with the brick is alive and kicking in 2009 and still full of hate. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00599/Birmingham_3__599665a.jpg The photo was taken at a recent "anti fascist" demonstration in Birmingham.Thankfully there was a line of riot police between him and his intended victim.This is what you are up against,sneaky people who haven't got an ounce of moral conscience and aren't worried about the prospect of a long prison sentence.
well i totally agree, In the past 6 years ive had a very healthy obsession with power generation in my strikes, ive found that any system i tried always held me back because of their restrictions and set rules, so alot of my time has been spent working out for myself what works for me, my search was always for improving openhand techniques, the problem was all i found was poor basic techniques, so i started looking at punchers it was only when i saw Dennis on his woma clips i noticed something different, after chatting to him and working and adding what i could from his movement, i found a huge difference in the power i was generating, When i trained with him at the seminar this year i realised the depth of his knowledge and because he wasn’t in it for the money and honesty was his only drive,it was simple and two the point, with none of the “fillers” you get in various systems, very much how i saw it but he did it a lot better. What i also found different was rather than making his MA fit on the street, he learnt from the street for the street and only found links to his karate through his experiences of violence, he hits like a train and id say his power generation is by far the best ive seen, if your looking for power striking this guys been perfecting it for years for real and i think hes taken the ”one shot kill” to a whole new level and while it might look simple its got a hell of a lot of depth I would recommend him highly and ive not seen anyone that comes close to him when it comes to real Self Defence cheers karl
Well, my opinion hasn't changed through anything that has been said to be honest. I guess it was inevitable that people would sign in to sing praises. I am however, interested in a couple of things. I think it was mentioned Dennis, that you have had over 2000 fights, or 'violent incidents'. This sounds like a stupid question, but how did you arrive at this number? Surely noboody would have any idea of how many incidents there have been when talking of such a number? I've tried to recall how many actual fights I've had, but I don't know. It sure as hell isn't anywhere near 2000! The only way I can think of you remembering is to write every incident down. But I don't think anyone would do that would they? I know you have to fill out incident reports, but not every time. I think I worked it out that if you had 2000 fights at a rate of one a day, that works out at about 5 1/2 years of your life fighting everyday! I watched a Man U game the other day where they mentioned Ryan Giggs has played over 800 games since 1991 for them. So you have had way more than twice the amount of fights than Giggs has United games. I find that incredible. I have seen two other sites where the guys on there also say they have had over 2000 fights. Surely this number is not common place? Also, the other thing I was interested in was the law. My mate who I mentioned earlier in the thread, said it is a nightmare now, because as soon as you touch someone they play up and call the police, saying you abused them. He says everyone knows what they can get away with now. So, I wondered how if you have been taking everyone out, how did you avoid getting arrested? In 2000 incidents you must have been in trouble a few times, whether it was your fault or not?
He worked 25 years on the door,i think it was 6 nights a week,works out around 7825 nights on the door if my math is right? things have changed alot now adays though,its not like it used to be,i have a friend who work the door for a few years never got into a fight once
you must have been in trouble a few times, whether it was your fault or not? Yes. <please do not publish phone numbers on open sites.> ring me up or tex a number and I'll ring you up and I'll be intrested in you telling me about yourself, how you train, the street fights you've had, your nightclub experience and finally your name, which obviously is not puma. It's always better to talk or even meet up...it's easier to keep things honest that way. Regards Dennis Jones
I can imagine that a doorman working 3-4 nights a week at a particularly bad club in a bad town could have to deal with maybe anything from 0-20 violent encounters a week. Maybe more if he was the sort of bouncer that was sent to problem doors that need sorting. Over a 25 year period that would give an possible violent encounter number of anything from 0-22500 (assuming 6 weeks holiday a year...which depending where you go could include violence too). I imagine that Dennis is looking back on his time as a doorman and making an estimate of how much violence he had to deal with based on an average night of aggro. Hell...1 violent incident a week for 45 weeks a year works out as 1125 violent incidents over a 25 year career. 2000 might even be a conservative estimate for all we know!
puma wrote, with my obsession with power generation i am genuinely interested in seeing some of this bag work,is there any chance you could put up some clips of what you consider to be good bag work/power generation? id love to see it i tend to use or try to use a good kinetic chain to build power much like Dennis.lts the best way ive found to build power here's a clip of me and a few mates training and playing around with some drills we got from Dennis,we all use the same basics for power gen but there is differences due to body shape and training influences(I'm the one who refuses to close his hand) [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP0weCcy2Ho"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP0weCcy2Ho[/ame] cheers karl
hey that gardens won awards....or was it fines but i think training in an uneven restrictive enviroment makes it alot more realistic,if your used to dojos you could be in for a shock when it kicks of in night club or a crowd theres less room in my garage so its like training on a football field to me
Well, my name could be Puma. You never know! To be honest, if I did tell you my name it wouldn't make any difference. No one knows me. I don't teach, don't run a club, or anything like that. I don't know anyone on here, and I quite like it like that. As for my training, well, I could do more. Couldn't we all. But with work and family, well, you know. As for my 'fighting experience', well, I would imagine like most people on here, I've had a few scraps, especially when I was younger. One particular friend used to get himself in trouble that he couldn't handle, and always needed help. But I am pleased to say I haven't had a fight for years, and I would like to keep it that way. I am a family man. That's it. So I am irrelevant. I only asked you because you are the one doing lectures and bag clips and stuff. I wasn't being rude by the last questions, but maybe it came across that way.I was interested in your claims, that was all. It is sometimes hard to judge 'tone' on a keyboard. But if you are uncomfortable with my line of questioning, I won't do it. No more questions or comments from me. Karl52, I don't have any clips, but if you mean in general, I saw a good one of Manny Pacquiao the other day. Before anyone says it, I know it is boxing and not 'for the street'. Very fast though. I'll try and find it later.
Puma wrote For what its worth Dennis wasn't offended by your questions but just wanted to clear one or two things up.I haven't been in a lot of fights myself,around half a dozen in the last thirty five years despite working in some seriously dodgy areas.Street fighting is dangerous and best avoided but anyone who practices martial arts and hasn't had a lot of experience of doing it for real can only benefit by speaking to someone like Dennis.Picking up the phone isn't difficult and he isn't going to bite your head off.
