Two unique videos of William Fairbairn instructing in knife and unarmed hand to hand.These were OSS training videos that were produced for insurgency groups.The first is in Greek(?) and the second is rather bizarrely in German.English subtitles are provided.I have seen both videos in full and I am afraid this short clip dosen't do justice to the material.Previously I had only seen short clips of Fairbairn and wasn't that impressed but these videos present him in good light and show him to be as good,or at least in my opinion,even better than most modern combatives instructors.His speed of movement for a 60 year old is excellent. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWSLXXdg9Bw"]Fairbairn Youtube Clip.mov - YouTube[/ame]
Fairburn - its like the JKD before JKD the guy really got into a ton of knife fights my uncle was in the royals and i asked him about what he learnt of the faurburn-sykes methods. he said their training in the knife and unarmed portion was limited because modern military combatifs superior weapons and tactics and there was less need for such close quarters. he said the royals mainly sponsor boxing and judo (there are a lot of demo's made at schools of royal marine judo, ill see if i can find the link later but its funnt seeing kids getting all bloodlust watching it) god knows why yankee marine think excessive groundwork is a good idea
Maybe because learning how to fight and move from a position of disadvantage when you've got a load of kit on is a good idea? With the amount of weight they carry I would think maintaining balance whilst engaged in close quarters would be problematic, especially considering they may not see the bad guy before hand.
good point. i have seen some of the groundwork royals do and they have defences for when the other guy has a gun and is in your guard... groundwork with a pack must be bloody painful
Apologies for spelling Fairbairn's name incorrectly.Perhaps the mods can alter it to the correct spelling?
Arresting and fighting indoors in a policing/capturing role would be my guess. Worked for the Russians in Chechnaya and Afghanistan anyway. Corruption and poor oversite screwed those operations but Sambo definitely earned its stripes. Where Sambo's perfect throw concept makes clearing space to escape or draw a weapon part of training, I think the emphasis in MAC is on pinning and using multiple teammates to control and subdue/kill as the case may be. Purely an amateur drawing inferences from what I've seen though. I'm no authority.
Both the American Marine and Army programs emphasize surviving long enough until your buddies with guns arrive. H2H training is primarily to develop aggression and a warrior mentality. At least when I was in the Marines we were taught our primary role was as a rifleman.
William Fairbairn was in Police Officer in the Shanghai Police during the 1920's, ge was the "Originator" of the Killing House and SWAT type teams, he radically changed his Officers training in both firearms, tactics and unarmed combat which he called "gutter fighting". He was involved in many many REAL gunbattles and fights with the local criminals and his Officers wore body armour yep even in the 20's. In world war 2 he taught Defendu to many military units, including the paras and commandos etc.
I have seen the clips; I though all this stuff had long been lost, amazing. For those who are interested a very good late friend of mine Pete Robins wrote an excellent Biographical book about Fairbairn call ‘Gentleman and Warrior’. I think it was going to be a 2 volume as this book is titled ‘the Shanghai years’. The book is a classic, the research exemplary, tragically Pete died short before finishing it. He acknowledgments in the book alone show the detail of the research and reads like a who who of close combat related to those times. Pete had a CQB training group in Essex and he linked in with others both hear and aboard who had trained in Fairbairn methods. I think his side kick Paul Child still keeps the training group going.
The training group mentioned is "CODA" (Combined Oriental and Defendu Arts) as far as I can recall they only train one Sunday in each month.
