Letters
Some 'streetfighting' questions
1 September 2004
Firstly, I'd like to know if you think that kata serve any useful purpose at all when it comes to preparing for a streetfight type of situation. Do you think that they can be used as "libraries" of technique, as some people suggest? Do they really contain grappling methods as is now being advocated in some quarters, or is this just a means of attracting interest back to what seems to be a languishing area of martial arts? Please note that I'm not asking these questions as a)a karate practitioner or b)an advocate of kata. I'm neither. I'd just like to know what your thoughts are.Particularly as you are regarded as an authority on Sanchin. -- Dylan Hemsley
Let's put it this way. On the basis of the most sophisticated interpretations, as in Indonesian silat, katas contain entry, breakdown, takedown applications and optional finishes.But, from my experience, nobody started really seriously working at grappling applications until NHB came along. Also, because there's only so many movements the body can make, you can more or less interpret a move to mean anything you want. So who knows: maybe they do contain grappling, maybe they don't. But the way people are practicing the kata, they're not resembling anything real. Unlike shadowboxing, the moves are ambiguous. There's nothing ambiguous about a left hook: it's obvious to the viewer what the guy's practicing and he doesn't need to have the secrets revealed to him in a special bunkai class.
But I've dealt with this question in my bio, where I talk about being unable to separate the combative content from all the other stuff that ends up getting crammed into the form.
With Sanchin, if I was to say that it had training benefits, then it could be easily interpreted as an endorsement to practice in Sanchin. But the truth is, with regards to my authority on Sanchin, that authority was all information I put INTO the form--not information I got out. And people tend to think that it was somewhere in this esoteric boxing form that the information has been gained, and it wasn't. It was just that I saw the similarity between the sanchin posture and boxing/wrestling/Muay Thai and applied the principles I knew of reflex and behavioral patterns to the Sanchin so as to enhance the neuromusculoskeletal structure. I only did that as a bait to hook martial artists into my method. That was the whole purpose of the Toudi Kempo stuff; not to endorse the forms, but to try to get their practitioners under my influence where I could teach them and change their direction. I only ever used the forms as a device, and when that didn't have the desired effect, I dropped the sanchin but I didn't lose anything by doing so because all it was was a shape to hold my ideas. That's why you'll see me wearing a gi in some of the films. It was just an attempt to connect with the traditionalists.
Do you think that martial artists/fighters/practitioners without street expereince are missing a crucial element in their development?When you look back on your own experiences,are you glad that you had them or would you choose to do things differently if you could go back and do it all again?Would you be the same animal now without your past streetfights,or are they integral to the fighter that you have become?
The streetfights didn't just happen, they were the result of my personality. I went looking for them. Would I do it again? I wouldn't have any choice. Even at 60 I'm confrontational. That's my nature. They were essential to my combative development only in the sense that if I picked up an idea I needed to test it out and see if it worked, not on some compliant training partner or a drunk on the door on a Saturday night, but against somebody who could fight and, like me, was looking for a challenge.
I can't see anyone with a true fighter's personality going through life without having a street fight at some point. Their natures are confrontational, they look for challenges. It's rather a question of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? It's not that you should have streetfights, it's just that in most cases, the streetfights are part and parcel of the fighter's personality. They come with the package.
Do you ever practice techniques such as knife-hand,palm strike,nukite etc in your personnal training. I realise that they are not utilised within the NHB arena,but do you think that open hand,finger type strikes are useful for streetfighting?
I don't practice what I can't use against a partner in training, and that includes fingers to the eyes, throat, etc. If I can't practice it, I'm not going to rely on it or advocate it for others. I do know my punch works. Plus, going for small targets is like threading a needle in a storm. And given the blink reflex, it's not always so easy to get in there with the fingers or thumb as is sometimes portrayed.
I wonder if you would elaborate on one of your real confrontations?I remember reading (in Traditional Karate,in 1994) a mention about you disarming two poachers who were both armed with guns, and of course the incident is mentioned in your bio.I obviously don't wish to offend,or pry, but I'd be interested to know more about his incident,and any others you feel could be relevant in more detail.I feel that disarming two armed men at the same time is an exceptional feat,and I'd like to know what you were thinking,how you felt,and what led up to the situation.Also,have you ever beaten someone in a fight and felt guilty about it?
The poachers weren't disarmed simultaneously. I was coming back to the house in Horsham from the stableyard, heard a rifle shot in the woods a hundred yards away, and knew we had a doe with her fawn in one of our fields nearby. I ran down, saw a guy levelling off for another shot with a 303 rifle, and ran at him. The deer saw me run and took off, so the guy missed on his second shot. He stood up, and I hit him with a full-body charge, knocked him straight off his feet. He'd wrapped the shoulder strap round his shoulder and elbow to steady his shot, so he was holding on to the rifle. In order to free it, I had to break his wrist.
The second guy, who turned out to be his father-in-law, had a pump-action shotgun. He started to run off, so now carrying the 303, I went after him. Caught him up, smashed him down. In the ensuing struggle for the gun, I dislocated his shoulder (don't know how). Now I had two guns.
Then I shouted up to Bob Ashing to call the police; in the meantime the two of them had gone staggering off through the wood and I'd lost sight of them. But I knew if they were on our property there was only one place they could have parked their car, so I took a short cut across the fields and was waiting to greet them when they got back to their car.
In the meantime, the police arrived. They started to arrest me, and then after I put the guns down and quickly explained, they still wanted to arrest me for GBH but eventually thought better of it. The poachers got £1000 fine and were sacked from their jobs at a hunting yard.
What was going through my mind? Not much. Like I explained to somebody the other day, in combat you've got two gears: full speed, and fuck it. I just hit the fuck it gear. No, I wasn't sorry. Never have been: everybody who ever got a beating from me got what they deserved.
Are there any other incidents? There are lots of others, but none of them are really 'instructional'. You can only pass them on as a story--you can't pass on the way this kind of brain works. For example, when I was in an out-of-bounds area of Nairobi in my car, being chased by the Snowdrops (RAF police), I pulled off the road, opened the front door as if I'd run away, and hid in the back. Or, on another occasion in an Out of Bounds bar being raided by MPs, I ran into the toilets and the stall doors were half-doors, so I hung from my fingertips behind the door with my feet off the ground and the door partially open, so the stall looked empty. When they shone the torch light in, there was nobody there. (Everybody else got arrested and afterwards when I suddenly appeared from the toilet, all the Africans were screaming with laughter and buying me drinks). These stratagems were unpremeditated. You can't teach that. I have no idea where that ability to think like an animal came from or how it got there.
And there's a reason why I was called 'Mad Morris'. I seem to be somebody who just attracts trouble. People seem to find it difficult to comprehend--or even believe. I sometimes wonder if everybody else is having just plain boring lives, or if mine is exceptional. In a bar over in the East End when I suggested that the late Gary Spiers, Brian Waites and I should take on the whole pub for fun, Gary said, 'Whenever you're around, Morris, you make me nervous.'
SM
