Why do so many people, including sport fighters, think self defense is nothing but "fighting dirty"?

Many people are driven by ego. That is the main force behind their daily actions and their philosophical beliefs.

Fighting has been around as long as we've been alive, and fighting for sport has been around as far as we know... as long as civilization has. I agree with the poster who mentioned fighting tactics in sport are geared toward audience appeasing showcases. Some techniques are effective, but the point is not necessarily the technique's overall effectiveness in dispatching the opponent, but in it's effectiveness for creating an ego crushing blow. The audience is not going to see the fingers being broken in a close grappling encounter during the fight, nor are they really going to see muscle and tendons being torn from a joint bending technique. What they will see, is the larger joint bending techniques which force the entire body to swing into motion, or the hail mary punches, or the body slam, etc.

There is no such thing as fighting dirty, that's just BS ego driven propaganda.

As another earlier post also mentioned; the goal is to exploit a hole or weakness in the opposition in order for you to come out of the event as healthy as possible. That means eye gouging, ripping of ears and mouths, checking the oil, groin kicking, biting, spitting, hair pulling, breaking of bones, breaking of bones and attempting to tear off the extremity, stabbing, shooting, striking with any object, punching, kicking, tearing of joints, drowning, burning, etc... The list of things to do for SURVIVAL is endless, and that is the reason and goal of real fighting, nothing less.

Simply because one is in a self defense situation and must fight, does not mean that they will now resort to eye gouging etc, but they will use whatever means that are necessary for them to leave the situation as unscathed as possible. I've been in numerous 'fights' and self defense situations. Not once did I need to gouge out an eye, or crush a throat. Oh yes; I did kick somebody in the testicles!! I've also done it to their bladder, their diaphragm, their legs, and their head. I've broken limbs and other bones too, but alas I have yet to gouge an eye. The opportunity never really arose.

In self defense, when the hole opens up, you fill it. That is it. There is no such thing as dirty fighting.

Self defense I must also add, does not only consist of person to person violence. Self defense, starts long before that with being aware and avoiding possible situations. Self defense also includes vocalizations... Scream into somebody's ear at the top of your lungs if you must... Shine a light in their eyes, Vomit on the street before they can get to you, etc.

Self defense ends when the threat is no longer viable, and the actions one takes to subdue the threat must be able to be articulated to the justice system. Anything beyond is no longer self defense and becomes aggravated battery.

Because most martial arts don't train people to fight in realistic scenarios. Don't get me wrong, some do, and some people whom train, train to the same condition as they fight. And all those years of studying the art of war, killing, detaining and capturing, human anatomy and physiology, body mechanics, techniques and conditioning have led to the realization that certain techniches are very very effective (tho now they are classifed as "dirty fighting") The reason why they are thought of as dirty or cheap is because they are easy and effective, and therefor do not look good to spectators when they are paying to see someone fight. That's the reason the UFC has evolved to what it is today, same as boxing and other fighting sports. Some used to have a lot less rules, but its no fun paying to see a fight when you know the one guy is going to use the same move over and over (kick in grown or gouge eye, or hit in a preassure spot on neck) So they banned those. Dirty/Cheap shots are only considered that way because you can't make money off of them (hence why they are cheap shots)

I've TU'd Sarah's justly right response.

But, I understand and believe in the fundamental of Martial Art as I know it:

avoid conflict unless it is unavoidable. That means, walk away, run away like a _________ (fill in the gender of your choice), regardless of what people may say or think of you, or otherwise do whatever it takes to not be in a position to be harmed / to harm.

Since I am not trained (at all), if I found myself cornered and with no possible exit from the situation, I would 'fight dirty' or whatever it takes to avoid being hurt, harmed, wounded, maimed or killed.

You might be that rare duck who went into martial art as a physical and mental discipline who did not have 'anger management issues.' It seems to me, so many (in the States, anyway) who are attracted to it are those who find themselves making or inviting conflict on a regular basis, or they grew up in an environment of bullying and violence / crime and their motivation to learn was in order to be able to defend themselves. Often, their initial idea is they will go around 'whumping' all the bad guys..

If the training (whichever discipline) takes, I have heard firsthand that there is a transformation of behavior where the student shifts to the sense of "avoid the conflict unless it is truly inevitable."

EDIT ADD: Music performance, even of ones own compositions, has self-expression so far at the bottom of what the actual intent and 'job' are it is an infinitesimal fraction of a fraction of a percent of the whole. Self-expression is almost always, in the mis-conceived notion, = self-indulgence. Ditto composing, writing, etc.

Best regards..

First, you know my attitude about sports and games. They are played for ego and exercise. The classical martial arts are about life protection skills. Yes, they overlap, but still muay thai (the best of the "fighting sports" IMHO) is but a game. A rough game, with similarities to martial art.

Now, martial art is about survival. Fighting for real is just dirty business. People are trying to do harm to each other. Sometimes you have to hurt somebody to stop them from doing something worse. There is nothing dirty about living another day. I can do much more than gouging eyes, but I would do that in a split second if it was needed to survive. My roundhouse kick may be 'fair' in tournament play, but in a defence situation it will also break all ribs it contacts. Is breaking bones with 'accepted technique' dirtier than a groin shot? It is the pure sport folks that perpetrate this dirty thing, and it is just more misinformation.

To answer your question directly, it is the fruit of your training, as you put it. The carrot, and the brass ring too! This frustrates us all from time to time, but all we may do is post our feelings and knowledge, and hope it helps someone along the way. If you were able to tell just who was learning what from whom on here, I think you would find that the ones who learn the most have 10 or more years of real training. They are also the ones who teach the most. Go figure!

I think that "fighting dirty" has become associated with self-defense because you tend to lose your code of conduct when your life is threatened. I'm not saying this is my way of thinking but there are certain attacks that society has deemed as "dirty", biting and curb stomping the groin are not generally accepted, even in a street brawl. I bet many people don't think punching and kicking are acceptable but it is obvious that there are certain moves that pass into a certain category of brutality.

Many sport fighters look at these techniques as dirty because they're not allowed in the ring. In football, grabbing the face mask is considered playing dirty and breaking the rules. This is similar with sport fighters and eye gouging.

I believe you should do whatever it takes to survive but I wouldn't intentionally knee someone in the nut sack unless my life was threatened. I think it is partly because of society, groin shots are looked upon as cheap therefore I subconsciously wouldn't use them unless I was prior instructed.

I think self-defense is about defeating your enemy and walking out alive by any means necessary.

One more thing, sport fighters are also taught to take advantage of weaknesses they just hold back on the ear ripping. Also the vast majority of MMA fighters do not "wildly punch and kick until KO", most of them are very technical and precise. I've never heard of someone taping out when they've been pinned. You seem to have a strong bias against MMA, I friendly recommend you watch a fight before making such statements. Good question though.

SD has to end from between under 5 seconds to under 30 seconds.

Not only will the SD user not have the time to use any fancy moves, they won't even use more than 3 specific techniques in that time space.

Thus the ability to have a wide variety of techniques is no longer necessary. This is not martial arts training for the purposes of fighting other trained martial artists. This is not using one technique to counter another technique. Thus SD can be distilled down to a couple of basic things for simplicity and training purposes.

While there are many targets, one would receive training equivalent to a 10 year martial arts belt if they learned how to access most of the targets on the human body. SD, whether legal or training purpose, doesn't need nor will train people to that level. Because a person has to react well and on time, they don't need to know all the targets. They just need to know how to access the targets they have available in front of them.

This is transmitted through 2 different ways.

Specific Target

Method to access specific target

The Left eye is one target, but there are multiple methods to access that target.

This is where multiple techniques in TMA come in. They should be proficient with all techniques that they know, but it's just not true. A TMA practitioner is going to know a lot of things, but they're not actually proficient in all of them. Or even most of them at the bottom to middle levels.

For the purposes of SD, they should self limit themselves to the stuff they actually know how to use and are confident enough on to bet their life on. For most people, they have confidence in eye scrapes and groin kicks. For more trained practitioners, they can be confident on more fancy maneuvers and may choose to use those in a situation.

Dojo yaburi

The purpose of knowledge is for it to be used for the benefit of humans. Between 2-30s, you can't use a goodly proportion of human knowledge on war and physiology.

Encounters longer than 30s is no longer Self Defense (SD). It is now either war, mass murder, or some other derivative like say, being murdered.

I guess J that some people just have not expanded their horizons and been exposed to anything more or beyond just dirty tactics or dirty fighting that they learned in traditional classes from their instructors. I was pretty active in and around law enforcement as well as carried a side arm so I was exposed to a lot of things beyond just those dirty tactics and I think your question brings out the point that self-defense is just allot more than fighting dirty. Unfortunately unless you have an instructor with a strong law enforcement and and strong self-defense and martial arts background then that is all you are taught in general in a lot of cases is just dirty fighting tactics.

Things like attacking nerve centers and knowing what vulnerable areas to pinpoint your attacks to, how to break a person down, how to get back up off the ground if knocked down or when to stay on the ground and how to fight from the ground, and awareness and what tactics and strategies should be employed to make yourself a harder target or one that is more capable are all things that should be taught in a martial art but yet they are not taught as well or as much as just those dirty fighting tactics like what you refer to is what I have observed. This is one of the reasons why I teach the things above as well as things about firearms and knives to my students and have incorporated this into their karate and jujitsu training for many years now as well as have them for testing requirements.

Self-defense is an added benefit or fruit of good, comprehensive training in martial arts but unfortunately not all instructors or students take their training to a high level. The good ones will though.

I do not, never have and never will consider martial arts a "sport". Unfortunately, MMA has convinced the masses that martial arts means fighting in a controlled setting, against someone of the same weight class, on a predetermined date, and abide by the 23 (or whatever it is) rules governing it. Martial arts are for self defense. Part of defending one's self means that any possible strike to stop the threat of an assailant is fair game. No sense in bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Because of the level of training most askers who ask about self defense have, the answer is going to be simple. It works and beats having to explain a fancy technique that they won't be able to pull off anyway unless they had adequate training. A lot of people here can't even understand that you can not learn martial arts from youtube!

There is no such thing as "dirty fighting" if someone is trying to kill or maim u. The rules in competition fighting are there to protect the fighters from serious injury. It essentially trains the survival instinct out of u.

The main point of self defense is to neutralize ur attacker as quickly and as efficiently as possible.