Interesting, very interesting...especially the part about him never being in an actual witnessing a street fight and him bashing on how streetfighters are fake....now lets take a moment to think, one someone said..."On the whole I think the trained fighter has the advantage by far." Well all i can say is duuuhhh, of course! becuase the trained fighter is TRAINED. And the joe lewis guy, he says he's never witnessed an actual streetfight....lets just say for example that me..who has NEVER been to a martial arts contest...'WEll those competitions are fake, with all those rules, i mean come on i could take any of those guys on the street and beat them to a bloody pulp on the street... PLEASE CUATION THIS WAS AN EXAMPLE...PLEASE NO HATE WRITING IT IS A WASTE OF TIME AND ELECTRICAL USAGE OF THE INTERNET... I AGREE ON SOME PARTS WITH JOE LEWIS AND SOME PARTS NOT...I JUST TEND LOOK AT THINGS IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS SO THAT I CAN ASSUME MY OWN IDEAS. And Mr.Lewis is right a lot of these 'street fighters' all come down to just plain talk. But i'm going to start from the beginning, first of all I'm going to say what a street fighter really is in my opinion, I saw that in the article he never addressed what a streetfighter is, well except that they are worthless punks who use cheap pos attacks, the one incident he described with his brother... to me that was a bar fight not a street fight.

Again to me, a street fight is a fight that takes place in a street(a.k.a to some: Urban Combat) So I take the words streetfight and assume that a streetfighter is someone who fights in the street. The more I read it i find it that Mr.Lewis took the bad apples and not only threw them out but had 99% percent of the focus on them. What about those who have no other choice but violence, such as those in the ghettos where if a kid tries to play in the street has a gang approach him and have him become one of 'them' becuase they own the territory or else the young kid will be beaten or killed. Also, I have found that many of these kids who live in these areas go into a gang or start to cause trouble to sort of...relieve the anger or tension within the household do to poverty,child abuse, domestic violence etc. What i am saying is that many of these 'street fighters' had no choice but to fight to either relieve some of the tension, well i bet your saying, why can't they just find another way of relieving the tension? well they are too unaware of this and like mr.lewis said, they are taught that violence is the way to solve problems becuase their direct role models do it.

And personally i luagh at those who say they are street fighters and when it all comes down to it...they suck. They are many people (who self acclaimed themselves streetfighters) like to boast or brag about how bad they beat a guy, well i see this as a way to intimidate other people. But now we must all think and come up with a definition of a street fighter and then we can judge if they are all bad or good. I am still to stubborn to believe that all street fighters are bad people...there HAS TO BE SOMEONE, and I see that many of these people who would be considered good are just plane acting out self defense. (hint hint)
Raven

P.S. good article but like i said earlier there are things i totally agree with and some other things that i disagree slightly..but remember, slightly.

Sorry for making these loooooong [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/frown.gif[/IMG] I seriously need to find a way on how to shorten these.

[This message has been edited by Raven (edited 08-31-2003).]

First of all, I really liked this article, but there was one thing that it failed to mention; the usual justification given by so-called "street fighters" as to why they are better than ring fighters. These people usually simply state that the techniques they use for street fights are not allowed in ring fights; So these fighters assume that these techniques must be better for a street fight than techniques used in ring or match fights.

Nearly every martial art teaches some techniques that are not allowed in ring fights, usually for safety reasons: kicks to the knee side, groin tears, throat strikes (by the way i do not follow UFC fighting very much, so if any of these techniques are allowed in UFC or other ring fights, please don't overreact, they are just examples off the top of my head.) But the thing to remember, even though SOME "street techniques" will not transfer to ring fights, ALL techniques used in ring fights will transfer, usually quite successfully, to street fights. This means that while a "street fighter" has a minor advantage over a strict ring fighter in one sense; you must remember that proffesional ring fighters spend a hundred times as many hours training with these 'ring techniques'than nearly all street fighters spend training at all, let alone focusing on the techniques they usually say would give them an advantage because they are "street fighting moves".

The bottom line, ring fighting does have a slightly (very slightly) limited arsenal for street fight scenarios, but a Professional ring fighter has a huge advantage in just his physical shape, experience and extensive training. And this, I think, would ofset the extremely minor limitations of his lack of 'dirty fighting' techniques, and the odds would nearly always be in favor of the professional fighter.

Professional fighters are tough-as-nails, and any "street fighter" who wishes to test that should think twice.

Ring fighters are just those of us who have taken their fight training into the ring. It's STILL combat with another human being.

If you train for self-defense, there still is no excuse for not training athletically. If it's groin shots and eye "boinks" that you want, wear a cup and eye protection. Doing it that way is STILL a lot more effective than doing it against cooperative partners.

Don the eqiupment and go for the groin shots...as long as your partner is attempting to do the same thing to you, at the same time!

-John

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[This message has been edited by PETER (edited 06-01-2004).]

Well said Peter...

As far as the article goes, People are just too wide of a spectrum to group as "ring fighters" and "street fighters"
experience does count for alot, as does training(you could get into fights everyday and still never learn to fight, you'd learn how to take a hit but, not nessesarily how to deliver an effective punch)
on the flip side of the prevervial coin, all the training in the world will not be as effective without some real world experience.

Now as far as underestimating your opponent
goes...........

There is one guy I can think of off the top of my head, let me see
he would be about 5'6" or so(not so big)
maby 145-160 lbs(not so big)
I think he was an author(not so tough)
and an actor(must be a fake)
he would fight in the streets(streetfighter)
so, at this point any "trained fighter"
or "tough as nails fighter" would say sure I'll take him on... maby....

oh yeah he also invented his own style of fighting(would that make him a "master"?, in my book it would)
and tought it (sensei)
who is this masked avenger?

some called him Cato
most know him as Bruce Lee
definately not someone I'd be willing to fight.
I guess my point is wouldn't Bruce Lee be considered a "street fighter"?

Yes...Bruce Lee could be considered a street fighter. Your point is??

-John

John, I didn't mean that non-ring fighters don't or shouldn't train athletically, I just meant that the degree of athletic training most people who train for ring fights do is simply a lot more than most people who train for self defense purposes, and this extra training time gives ring fighters an added advantage over other people; the so called 'street fighters' I think you would be hard pressed to find someone on this site who puts in the 8 plus hours a day training some ring fighters do, we all spend too much time on the internet [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG]

That's the thing though...you don't have to put in 8 hours to train athletically! You just have to train athletically with WHATEVER time you have!

-John

I recently bought all of Joe Lewis' tapes and watched them, and they are the best instructional tapes on combat fighting I've seen -- and my library has over 100 tapes. My respect for Joe is as high as can be, and only superseded by Bruce Lee.

In fact, much of what Joe teaches is heavily influenced by his two years tutelage by Bruce. I cannot recommend his set of tapes (around 12) more highly. They cover material that most tapes do not, and his method of explaining techniques is clear and effective.

Joe's the man.