Dog Brothers Public Forum

Cricket bats?

I'll be there.  Last time I only fought with knives because I was there by myself and didn't want to get injured that far from home all alone.  This time I'll try to do something with sticks or some other weapons.

     I have a couple stories where I've seen some pretty interesting street weapons used:
     I used to spar with a group of guys outside at a rec center in San Diego.  One day there was a big circle of guys from the local high school in a big circle.  They were a gang and were having new members fight each other inside the circle.  We sat at a distance and watched probably five fights with lots of haymakers and double legs with horrible posture.  Anyway, I noticed that a number of people at the edge of the circle had weapons.  About ten guys had those small novelty basesball bats that are about a foot and a half long.  One guy had a long sock with something heavy tied in a knot at the end, and one guy had a balisong.  None of these weapons actually came into play.  At some point some other group of guys came over and started arguing with the first group.  Group 2 starts walking off, yelling that they'll be back later.  At that point we decided we should leave, since we figured they might be coming back with some more sinister weapons. 
     Another time a bunch of angry teenagers were causing a scene on the trolley.  One of them had one of those small bats and was pounding on the trolley handrails, scaring a bunch of kids and pissing off some dads.  I tried to reason with them to avoid a brawl and some chaos ensued. 
     When cruising around Mira Mesa I happened to see a fight where a guy was hitting another guy with his belt, swinging downward strikes with the belt buckle.  The unarmed guy shields his head, rushes forward and grabs the belt, and starts punching with his free hand until the first guy lets go of the belt.  They back away from each other and exchange some angry words, then part ways.
     One other time I was walking next to a little stream going into the bay (a little area called Rose Creek).  There's always a number of homeless guys hanging out there.  Across the creek I saw two homeless guys start fighting.  One was sitting down and the other started hammerfisting his head with a beer can.  It was pretty loud.  As he's getting beaten, the guy starts standing up and I could see that he was bigger than the guy with the can.  The bigger guy throws some wild punches to the other guys face, and when the guy leans forward big guy snap kicks him in the face.  As big guy advances forward with a sort of guard up, smaller beer can guy picks up a rock a little bigger than a softball.  He holds it up like he's going to throw it, and big guy starts covering his head by shifting between a crazy monkey and dracula style guard.  Small guy sees that he can't hit the guy's head, he tries to throw the big rock at big guy's kidney area, which bounces off without much effect.  Big guy finishes with another haymaker followed by soccer kicks to the ribs of the other guy.  It goes to show you that pre-empting and using weapons doesn't mean you're going to win.

I used to carry a comtech stinger on my keychain, but I gave it to a girlfriend a few years ago.  They're a neat little weapon that's easy to carry around:
http://www.jamesakeating.com/catalg3.html

Here's an article detailing all sorts of brutal street weapons used in Romania:
http://www.donrearic.com/romanian.html

I think if material is taught in a broad context, the student learns that its just not a good idea to get into armed confrontations.  They learn that its very iffy to get into a fight involving knives without getting cut at all.  They learn that there are legal and psychological consequences to armed violence that are things nobody wants to deal with.  They see that real fighting isn't just like the movies where the kung fu badass disarms a huge knife wielding attacker with a shihonage.  If a student learns about real violence it will probably discourage them from going out and seeking it.  Of course there's always exceptions that a trainer will come across and have to make decisions based on their experience.

I'm gonna try building a medicine ball tomorrow.

Hey all.  Sorry if this has been covered before; a search just yielded some discussion on the karambit vs push dagger vs straight blade.  Anyway, I recently made a push dagger trainer and I plan on doing some sparring with it on Saturday.  Does anybody do any training specific to the push dagger, and if so are there any particular training methods you recommend?  I'm just sort of modifying some regular knife work with boxing technique.

Its interesting that they mention drums.  Drums seem to come up regularly as part of stickfighting in lots of places.  The value of rhythm, I suppose.

Hi all.
I'm also new to the forum.  I fought at the last gathering (only knives) and was a padholder at the one before that.  I'm the guy that broke a folding training knife on another guy's mask.  I decided to make lemons into lemonade by taking that blade and making it into the smallest training knife I own:
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g309/RossMakoske/shank.jpg