WRESTLING AND WRITING

Reader of my blog may know, but others might not, that I am a part time professional wrestler. Besides being a wrestler, I have studied martial arts extensively, and have been inducted into the United States Martial Arts Association’s Hall of Fame 3 times.


My wrestling name is WAR, and it is derived from my initials. As WAR, I created a persona where I would wear armor from different periods of time. As I entered from the curtains to the ring, I have would wear a samurai, Spartan or a knight’s armor. Of course, my attire would include the appropriate shield and/or sword.

These experiences as a wrestler and martial artist allowed me to write realistic fight scenes in my novel; "Legend of the Mystic Knights". 

Over the next couple blogs, I will describe these experiences and also how they are shown in the novel.

As an instructor in Martial Arts, I often taught my students how to defend against a knife attack.  There are two forms of defense when you are facing someone with a knife.  First one is a robbery; the defense for this is to give them your money and valuables and let them get away without an incident.  Remember, when someone is robbing you, they want your money, that’s it; give it to them and they have no more interest in you.

The 2nd type is when the attacker is trying to kill you. I taught these techniques mostly to military or police personnel. These personnel might find themselves facing an attacker who has a knife or other edged weapon. The simple explanation for the defense of this attack is to avoid the blade, and then disarm the individual.

Learning defense techniques made me examine how to fight with a knife. I soon found out the concept of knife fighting to be very limited; most people, who carry one, do not know how to use it properly.

Almost everyone thinks you take the pointed end and stick it into your target. With the exception of a stiletto type knife, designed specifically to stab, this is not the case. Instead of holding it as you imagine you should, a knife should be held in a “revere grip edge out” method. This is where the knife is held like a reverse hammer, but the blade is outward along the inside of your forearm. If you want to see an example of this watch Steven Segal and Tommy Lee Jones knife fight in "Under Seige".

The reasoning for holding a knife in this manner is that a knife is not necessarily a stabbing weapon; it is a cutting and slicing tool. You use the blade to slice into the vital sections of your opponent, striking arteries and tendons which are near the surface. Imagine having a large Bowie type knife, compare it with a smaller knife; stabbing with the point of the Bowie knife, you have now eliminated and negated the advantage of the blade length of the large knife.


The reasoning for us using what is a typical style of a knife fighting may originate in ignorance and historical fighting. It is simple to pick up a knife, and stab someone with it; this is the basic way we fought as cavemen with a sharpened stick. Also, when military personnel had to sneak up onto a sentry, using a stiletto-dagger type commando knife (most famous type is the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife) and stabbing the person in the back is the most reliable method. In the middle ages, daggers were designed to strike a knight between the slits in his armor. All of these reasoning are the basis why people still use the typical stabbing technique of a knife.

After, I learned about knife fighting, my education evolved learning about techniques with swords. As a part of my “education” I began to collect swords and this led to collecting other types of edged and blunt weapons. After obtaining these items, I then researched how each of them was used in combat.

We will continue with wrestling, martial arts and writing in my next blog.



NEXT TIME: More WRESTLING AND WRITING