Wife defense with a Poor Man’s Takedown

For the first time ever, I got into a self defense situation. Actually it was more like a “wife defense” situation, but it turned out to be a 1-1 between me and a drunken fellow. We were walking at the streets of Helsinki in the broad daylight, then suddenly this dude walks towards my wife trying to grab her. After I got involved, he turned towards me trying to hit me. After some hand fighting, I had both of his wrists and I started pulling. Once he gave me some pulling reaction, I switched to pushing for a second to make him lose his balance. Before his but touched the ground, I started to pull again, nicely placing him on the ground. I tried to convince him that it was not a good idea and let him go (stupid?). He did not seem to get it and once he got up, he tried to continue the “fight”. I was ready to grab the wrists and used the same takedown again. This time I made the conclusion that this guy needs a break, so I kept him down until the cops arrived. (My wife took the picture to be able to describe the nature of the situation to avoid possible trouble later.)

I have not really trained Martial Arts for self defense purposes. Although it helps in such rare occasions like this, but defending myself or my family (at least to my experience) is not really a big concern here in Finland. I am not claiming to be self defense expert as such and the following is just my opinion.

Many of the street fighting scenarios can be avoided by doing two things; 1. Not being an asshole yourself 2. Not joining the game with another asshole(s). There might be also scenarios where a group of people or a person with some weapon attacks you, but in those cases you are not really safe even though you know all the Martial Arts (unless you are Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris).

Then there are these scenarios when someone is attacking you with no clear reason (most cases I would guess has something to do with drugs or alcohol). For those cases it might not be that difficult to win, but the way how I see it, it is about trying to lose as little as possible. This was the case here.

First, you should be able to minimize the risk of getting hurt yourself. So no matter how harmless your attacker would be, you don’t want to end up being stabbed by a needle or a knife. The risk of such things is clearly present and you should definitely be awake and win the battle early. Although good at the gym, I would skip single legs and double legs here if possible. However getting dominant grips over the attacker is clearly a good idea.

Second, there is value of not seriously injuring the attacker. So high amplitude fancy throws are not really good in that sense (they come with some risk of hurting your self too). The more controlled take down you can use, the better.

In this confrontation, the amount of BJJ or Judo skills that I needed, were something that all of you readers have. The concept of “Poor Man’s takedown” however was the solution to manage the situation with the least risk. If you don’t already know that stuff, perhaps you should study BJJHeadStart more. It clearly has applications for the street too ; )

Poor Man’s takedown concept is explained in the free guide (<30 min video) available on this site. Hurry up and save your wife like James Bond would do!