You have a black belt in a martial art. A mugger with a knife confronts you in an alley. Do you run or fight?

Answer 1

thats a common misconception though about black belt super mojo power. the black belt doesnt mean the person is street wise, only that they have a level of skill related to the belt colour.

belts dont equal reality outside the dojo.

anyone worth their training would be taught environment awareness and threat avoidance skills. the fist is the last resort weapon, the brain the first.

if it happened and you couldnt talk him out of it, run, but only if you can run fast. just because he has a knife doesnt mean he cant fight well. good fighters get lazy too, and a weapon is instant control of the weaker.

only fight a knifer if you are cornered and cant escape, then use your first weapon as the tool to survive, and think fast.

Answer 2

Bushido, it seems that there are very few with wisdom.

To yoiu SW, if one really is a "black belt", which in many martial arts is not actually the highest rank, then one would not be in that alley in the first place. When one gains mastery in a an martial, it has nothing to do with what colour his belt is, in fact he doesn't need a belt to be a martial artist. The master of martial arts would never be in that situation, and second, if the master did ever get himself in that position his reactions would prolly be so quick he wouldn't have time to ponder whether to run or fight.

Fight or flight. Oldest question of time.

If you really think that the mugger will kill you, and running is not a good idea in the cercumstances, then it is bbetter to use the first weapon, the brain. Ask the mugger what he wants, if u have it, give it to him.

Now if he isa a crazy mofo, then you can open a can of kung fu whoop asss. But remember that it will never be the Jacky Chan scene that you imagined, prolly, you'll end up with a minor wound on your arm, but possibhly it can be worse and you could die, like that, in a matter of seconds.

I personally would not fight anybody untill they have allready attacked me.

This is the nature of Aikido. It is to use the energy of the atacker against him to ytour benifit. Well that is the martial art of Aikido. The philosophy of Aikido would be not to go into that alley way in the first place.

Answer 3

Depends on the certian situation, but:

If I could see clues about what was going to happen (ie: I turn into a deserted alley to see a guy with his hood up and right hand in his pocket loitering around where I planned to walk) then I'd try and avoid the route altogether.

If I couldn't tell what was happening and I got a bad feeling about the mugger approaching me and there was still at least 10 feet between us, then I'd try and run.

But if caught by surprise at close range, or if I was with a girl or a buddy who couldn't move quickly, then yes, I'd fight.

There are ways to overcome a knife-wielding opponent. While having a knife is an offensive advantage, it doesn't make someone tougher, and it definately does not make them a superman.

So if I pretended to be afraid and meek and then suddenly let loose a suckerpunch to the jaw, the fact that he had a knife wouldn't really help him. What you really want to avoid is grappling and wrestling around, because knives are an immense advantage on the ground. The ideal solution would be to use some kind of improvised stick-weapon. Man-to-man, the reach and power of the stick, club, or baton has very favorable odds against the shorter knife. Strike his arm or hand with a good stick swing and see if he hangs onto that knife.

Don't have a stick? Do what you need to do. It's not easy, but the general idea is to get a good grip on that knife arm and hang on for dear life as you use your other limbs to strike at him until he's down. I come from a sort of non-traditional, somewhat WWII combatives martial arts background.

Whether or not you want to submit to the dangerous criminal is up to you, but just remember that cooperating with a mugger is not a guarantee of safety. There was no contract signed in which your local mugger agrees not to stab you even after you appease him. It's not realistic to assume that they are reasonable people. After all, the very fact that they have a knife pointed at you is a threat on your life.

Who do you trust with you life? You, or the unsavory character who holds a knife at your belly and demands your wallet?

Answer 4

I love these questions.

If I have a black belt it must be in my pocket. Chances are I took it off of some proclaimed MA master and I choked him with it in hs own McDojo in front of his students.

Anyway I size up the situation. Depending upon how I am clothed, (leather jacket and jeans or shorts and sandles)

I make an assessment of how much of a threat the opponent is, (sober or drunk, big knife or little, two edged etc.) I also want to see how he is weilding the knife.This can all be done in a second.

I make up my mind flee or fight. Given this scenerio, there is a chance two people get choked with the same belt on the same day. But I would not let the knife attacker tap out.

I love these questions because now you have my answer. Now I can read all of my friends responses.

Answer 5

You all talk a good game, but anyone who confronts a knife wielding opponent when you had the opportunity to run is a complete and utter 100% certified idiotic Darwin Awards winner waiting to happen.
#1) Black belt doesn't mean squat. I've seen Tae Kwon Do "masters" that get smoked by a good street fighter, let alone a knife fighter.
You never know who the person is, or what he knows.
For all you know, you are facing someone who trained in Arnis, or just flat out grew up knife fighting and has the scars to prove it, but you can't see them under his clothes.

Run if you can, and if you have to fight, fight as if your life depended on it (because it probably does). If you are a martial artist, you have one, and only one advantage. . . and that's the element of surprise.
If you don't catch him off guard, you will get cut.

Answer 6

Run. i am fed up with this pre adolescent "i am so bad a**" crap anyone getting mugged knows it's no joke, and if you can run then you had better, the martial art would come in if you couldn't run or he catches you. Think you're all that with a black belt? What if he has a friend, what if he hangs one on you because he's quicker? And it only takes one lucky hit and that's your right eye gone, or your vocal chords torn and you're speaking with one of those things they stick in the hole in your neck. That's not even forgetting that maybe you could DIE!

Give up the macho crap, if you can run then do it, I'd rather lose some pride but keep all my limbs and organs working, because I'm a green tag in taekwondo and I've hung a lucky hit on a black belt when he was ready for it, so there's no gauruntee

Answer 7

considering that black belt has no meaning for skill anymore (except in bjj- which tightly regulates that they give black belts only to those truly deserving) you might as well give the guy a rubber knife and the black belt might have the same chances.

If the black belt got his belt by doing katas and tip tap sparring (point sparring) then he isn't really deserving of a black belt or any ranking equivalent of a different style that doesn't use belts.

Fact is, even an untrained person with a knife is a deadly threat to the best unarmed martial artist. Fact doesn't change- HE IS UNARMED and at a severe disadvantage.

Answer 8

Run-How do you know the guy with the knife isn't a knife fighting expert who had cut the guts out of any number of black belts?

Answer 9

Consider it this way: Someone who has brandished a knife at you can reasonably be assumed to be attacking. In this case you'd need your MA training *and* your gun.

An attacker with a contact weapon such as a knife or club can close distance with you astonishingly fast. You'll need to avoid him (hopefully your instructors have trained you to never retreat in a straight line. If not, get new instructors) fend him off, and/or control his knife hand before you can even think of drawing your own weapon. Aiming kicks at a target as small and quick as a hand is a recipe for disaster, and knife wounds are statiscally harder to survive than gunshot wounds.

Google the "Tueller Drill", it's what convinced me to seek MA training in the first place.

And stay out of alleys.

Answer 10

Me? Running as fast as I can is option #1. I don't have anything to prove to anyone in the street. Times are different nowadays, given the crimes that happen out there. But running should always be option #1. Because in a knife fight, the only one that wins is that person that bleeds the least, if they are that lucky.