So you’ve trained in your colour-coded jumpsuit, done your dances, whizzed your 540 spin kicks for years. You’ve shelled out megacash for your lifetime-membership (which earned you that jumpsuit) and paid, again and again, for those promotion tests.
But have you attained Bullshido? Have you experienced that moment of purity? Well, sometimes, those MA fuckups which signify that purity can happen spontaneously…and to anyone. We all have our hall-of shame moments (except for you perfect fighting machines who never make a mistake–and who the hell’s talking to you? STFU).
Well, here’s one of mine:
Early eighties. Front door of downtown Toronto nightclub. My job. Although it’s years before UFC, it’s already well-known that many gi-wearing TMAs get you pounded on the street. Those of us who trained in them–but work in real situations–know we have to change our striking…especially the defenses. After years of supplementing my Judo with a kind of Karate thought tougher than other styles, I’ve been working for a few months on defenses more in line with Boxing.
Closing time. Most patrons have filed out, when out comes a tall-and-skinny with chipmunk cheeks instead of a jaw and chin. I’ll call him buttface. He’s all frustrated and swearing at the women coming out of the place, saying they’re all “lesbians” because none of them were interested in going home with him. A woman responds with some comment or other and then he’s running to grab her. I catch him and hammerlock him against the wall long enough for her to leave sight, but he starts yelling very specific and graphic death threats at her. As per the workplace SOP, buttface now has to be held and the police called.
I hand him to another doorman and get out my IR book. While I’m writing it up, buttface manages to wriggle out of the other doorstaff’s grip. He runs at me, launching a looping overhand left. Not having any time for a thoughtful reaction, I go instinct and catch him coming in with a straight left of my own.
The sad part? Even as he’s dropping, that overhand left gets me on the top of the noggin. Why, you ask? I asked myself the same thing. I looked down at my right hand, and where was it? Fist clenched, palm up, underneath my armpit with the elbow sticking out the back. That’s right, I’m not kidding. At Kyokushin position–not as far down as Shotokan or TKD, but every bit as useless for defensive purposes. I squeezed my eyes shut, let my chin fall to my chest, and then let my hands drop. If buttface had had any buds there, they could have wailed on my head until the other bouncers dragged them off…and I would have let them, because that’s what dumb fucks deserve (ask Darwin). Months of trying to change, but when there was no time to think, the previous years of habits kicked right in.
The only thing that saved my ass was that Buttface had no training, his hands weren’t bareknuckle-conditioned and he weighed maybe about one-eighty, so I had almost eighty pounds on him. Even, so, if he had come in with anything other than a stupid looping-overhand, I might have caught one on the button instead of being ineffectually tagged up top.
He ended up with a concussion, a glass jaw and a sprained wrist. You can bet that, long after he’d recovered from those, I was still being called “grasshopper” by my smirking colleagues at the door. At least it was before “karate kid” terminology became common, so I didn’t have to put up with “wax on, wax off”. Not that I wouldn’t have deserved it.
sighs, hangs head in abject shame Wish I could have had anti-stupidity counselling, but there were no LARP-anon chapters nearby.
Well, there it is. My hall-of-shame moment. One of them, anyways. How about anyone else?
C’mon, fessup. Share your attainment, your moment of bullshido purity. Please.