Where Reality-Based Self
Defence Meets
Cage Fighting:
NON-SPORT MMA FOR THE STREET
(Please note that this article was written when the class was called 'Street MMA'. The training we do has since evolved, but the article is still a worth-while read)
It has become one of the most debated topics in the
martial arts community in the guise of various titles; “Is MMA suitable for
self defence?” “Who would win in a fight, an RBSD practitioner or an MMA
fighter?”
It was when searching for a name for my
‘reality-based self defence’ class (after being asked several times “what are
you guys doing?” and not really having a simple answer to respond with) that I
realized that what we were doing looked remarkably like ‘MMA’. And so after
taking a long hard look at what MMA and RBSD actually are, that I realized what
I was teaching was MMA… in a way.
So first, let’s look at what MMA and RBSD are...
What is MMA?
Mixed Martial Arts (also known as cage fighting) – is
exactly that; a mix of martial arts that work best at winning fights in the ‘no
holds barred’ or ‘cage fighting’ sports. Through a process of elimination,
early NHB events such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship revealed that for
winning these fights (by knock out or submission) contestants would be wise to
cross-train in the individual arts of Boxing, Muay Thai kickboxing and
Grappling (namely, freestyle wresting and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu).
In recent years, this mix of martial arts has, to
quite an extent, become a system unto itself that is referred to as MMA.

MMA training with Eddie Kone
What is RBSD?
Simply put, reality-based self defence (RBSD), also
known as ‘combatives’ is any system that teaches techniques and tactics
specifically for protecting one’s self in every day life (a term referred to as
‘on the street’) without adhering to any particular tradition. The idea is to
use science (namely, body mechanics and neurophysiology) as the basis for all
techniques. Some systems are better at this than others.
The better RBSD systems will also include large
amounts of awareness tactics and psychology for verbally de-escalating
dangerous situations.

Kelly McCann, the epitome of 'combatives'
Set Responses vs Attributes
Even if you take away the petty differences between
RBSD and MMA (such as the fact that one group trains in jeans and with their
shoes on while the others wear shorts and train barefoot on mats), the
fundamental difference is of course the fact that MMA is a sport that adheres
to rules and RBSD is about surviving and escaping violence on the street.
However, for me, this difference is so fundamental,
so obvious that I can’t believe martial artists still have debates about ‘which
is better’. And so, I’m not going to go there. Instead I’d like to point out
another difference.
Something I’ve noticed with many (not all, but many)
RBSD systems is their fondness for teaching ‘combat scenarios’ which revolve
around having a set response to any given form of attack. This is known as
fighting by the numbers.
The idea is that if the attacker does this (insert any given form of violence
here) then the defender should do this, that,
and then grab here and proceed to
do this until the attacker is unconscious. And then
run away.
One problem with this type of training is that it’s
largely based on the assumption that the attacker doesn’t know how to defend
against this or that. And so, the chaos of combat, the improvised aliveness that is
typical of fighting has been largely ignored. Another problem is that when
these set responses are the main form of training, less time has been spent on
developing in the student the individual attributes needed for doing this or that under pressure. So what you’re left with is a student who will
kick ass as long as the attacker responds in exactly the same way their
training partner did when getting hit with restrained punches and kicks etc
during class. But if their attacker resists, if he or she then counters the set
response, then you have a student who may - not an absolute, but they may –
panic under the pressure of having to improvise a defence.
MMA doesn’t have this problem. The central theme of
MMA training is skill and attribute development.
An MMA fighter who is being trained for a specific
fight will most certainly be trained in certain set responses; if, for example,
they are going to be fighting an opponent who has won many fights by a left
hook, then they will work on a set response defence against that left hook. But
this only happens after the fighter has spent hours upon hours of developing the
overall attributes needed for fighting in general. These range from the
technical such as footwork drills that teach you never to cross your feet when
fighting, to the general such as exercises for developing explosiveness in
strikes and stamina to delay exhaustion.
The main attribute that I see MMA fighters being
conditioned for is a psychological attribute that I feel should be central to
all RBSD training: forward drive (also known as aggression) Whether you’re talking about the cage or the street,
fighting is an ugly business… much like unblocking a toilet. And just as you
have to motivate and psyche your self up to unblock a toilet, clean up some
puke, or change a baby’s leaking, steaming diarrhoea-filled diaper (or ‘nappy’
for us Brits) or any other ugly business, you will have to be in the right
psychological state to fight your way out of a violent assault. MMA is very
good at this and so are the good RBSD
systems.
I sometimes wonder if the fighting-by-the-numbers
type of RBSD schools buy into the Jason Bourne image of the hero who dispatches
his attackers with snappy karate-chopping precision whilst remaining as cool,
calm and detached as a Buddhist monk. Perhaps nobody told them that fighting is
ugly and that the law of the jungle rules.
And so I discovered that the reason my class resembled
an MMA class is that apart from relying on a similar physical style of fighting,
we were training that same psychological attribute of forward drive. But of
course, there is that fundamental difference of sport vs. ‘the street’ so I
wouldn’t want to describe my class as an ‘MMA class’…
Non-Sport MMA
From here, we’ll refer to regular MMA as sport MMA,
as this is where we will look at Non-sport
MMA or MMA for the street.
What’s the difference? There are several.
Despite starting off in the early days as ‘no rules’
fighting matches, mainstream mixed martial arts tournaments such as the UFC
have evolved to have several categories of techniques that are illegal such as
eye attacks, groin shots, small joint manipulations (breaking fingers), stomping,
throat striking/grabbing, head butts, kicking or kneeing a grounded opponent,
hair-pulling… the list is actually quite long but all can be summed up by UFC
rule # 22: Engaging in an unsportsmanlike conduct that causes an injury to an
opponent.
The reason these and other ‘moves’ are illegal is
simply because they are too effective
in the combative sense. And that’s exactly why we train to do those things; in
order to end the altercation as quickly as possible.
However, although an entirely new article could be written
on the subject of ‘dirty tactics’, I feel it’s worth mentioning that contrary
to popular belief in many RBSD circles, the above mentioned dirty tactics do
not change the nature of fighting to any great degree. Used individually, these
types of techniques are what I call ‘close quarter inserts’ and don’t end
altercations by themselves. To find out how they can be used to maximum effect,
I highly recommend you study Richard Dimitri’s ‘Shredder’ concept.
Unsportsmanlike
conduct is of course not only something that can be utilized by the RBSD
practitioner in defending his or her self, but is most likely what they will be
faced with on the street. The most obvious way this manifests is when we are
faced with more than one opponent or ‘attacker’ in the case of self defence.
And in non-sport MMA, this not only means that we practice drills for fighting
our way out of a gang attack, but creates a very distinguishable gap between
the approaches to ground fighting.
With the
guarantee of never being attacked by a second, third or fourth person, the
sport MMA fighter can afford to roll on the floor looking for opportunities to
submit his opponent by joint crank or choke or to land a strike (but only one
of the legal strikes of course). The
fact that he will be rolling on a matted surface also creates the opportunity
for this approach to ground fighting.
On the street,
the fact that any fighting on the ground will most likely mean rolling on a
very hard surface (with the possibility of gravel or broken glass to make
things worse) and that you can only ever fight one person at a time on the
ground means that in non-sport MMA, we train to get to our feet again as
quickly as possible if grounded and don’t focus much on submissions.
This doesn’t mean
no grappling however. As Richard Grannon correctly said, “The best
anti-grappling system is grappling”. Grappling doesn’t have to mean
submissions, but does mean positions. Some of our drills will involve rolling
around on the floor, but only so as to ingrain the attributes needed to getting
out of that situation as quickly as possible.
Weapons are also
the kind of unsporting type of threat we are likely to face on the street, and
so this subject is something else that separates sport from non-sport MMA. Through
pressure testing, I have personally found that there is no system of weapon
defence that can be separated from learning to fight in general. There are VERY
few techniques that are unique to defence against knives or guns at close
quarters that don’t rely heavily on the attributes needed for fighting an
unarmed opponent. However, the fact that we even have rubber knives and guns in
our box of training equipment instantly causes an obvious separation from sport
MMA.
With the luxury
of not only knowing that he will be fighting only one opponent, but also
knowing exactly how long the maximum amount of time the fight will last for,
the sport MMA fighter can afford to take his time. On the street, once we know
that a physical response is required (after verbal de-escalation attempts have
been exhausted) then we have no option but to respond with forward drive and
maximum aggression until the threat subsides to make good our escape.
This means that
in non-sport MMA, we practice very little evasive manoeuvring. We can’t afford
to play the pugilist’s game of bobbing and weaving. By back-peddling on the
street you could easily find yourself tripping over a kerb or any other object
and falling onto your butt.
You’ll rarely
find toe-to-toe sparring in our class, simply because self defence doesn’t
really happen like that. I don’t teach a specific fighting guard other than
“keep your hands up and bend your knees” because the truth is that if you find
two people squaring up to each other with their dukes up, then it means they
have both CHOSEN to enter into that situation. It’s not self defence when you
could have walked away.
We train for
ambush type street attacks, in which case, you’ll be lucky to have time to put
a guard up.
Overall, fighting
is fighting. And nobody can argue that MMA tournaments aren’t fighting and that
its athletes aren’t fighters. And so, just as it’s now widely understood that
the dancing, acrobatic styles of martial arts don’t really prepare you for self
defence, if your RBSD class doesn’t look like an MMA class, you may want to
re-think what you’re doing.
Sharif Haque
www.NorthLondonSelfDefence.co.uk