I don't know shit about martial arts.
I live in Germany, and sure you all know the Oktoberfest, but that's not the only feast we have, every greater town has its own one, and the one from my town is called "Cannstatter Wasen".
When I was about let's say 16 to 19 (many years ago, everything already barred), I had a friend who used to hang around with some older fellows, who were... well... not really the "high school" crowd we were supposed to hang around as high school students.
And perhaps you know how this feels, you are stuck between puberty and being a real grown up, you want to be taken seriously by the other matures but you aren't, and last but not least you are a young male and there is not a single accessable pussy for you wherever you look. (And HELL! You WOULD finally want to know how that thing feels like!).
So what do you do?
You drink masses of alcohol, and start barging people on that feast, always hoping they complain. If they complain, you beat the shit out of them.
Now the point of this little, not really glorious history of mine: sometimes there were guys who appearently did martial arts, though of course I can't say how good they were or anything more concrete, as I was drunk and in a brawl you don't have the proper overview to judge how those guys performed, but every single time we saw one of them they got beaten badly, and this was NOT because they got overwhelmed. Usually one of us (never me) took care of those guys, and you could see how they TRIED to use a special grip or throw or something, but every time it didn't work like in the movies, it looked everything else than smooth, my mate somehow turned himself out of the grip (they were both fighting more with the jackets than with the other guy), and in the next moment he rammed his fist, elbow or head into the face of that martial "artist", which every single time surprised them totally, they dropped, protected their body with their arms and legs, received a few kicks and got ignored for the rest of the brawl.
From my - limited, I didn't do this more than three or four times (= days, with a few brawls, ended by running from the police) as I got an overwhelmingly bad conscience, I really felt pity with some of those guys - experience I can say that the martial arts that are tought here in Germany in the usual martial arts schools are far away from being suitable in real brawls.
I bet it is "easier" to predict the actions of someone who is trained in martial arts, as they will fight by certain "rules" (not rules to stay fair, but rather both of them knowing what is the most effective action and the best counter), unlike some drunks, who will just kick and box as good as they can. But yet I was kind of "dissapointed" of the performance of martial arts, as drunken aggressions were enough to beat them.
Did we only encounter bad fighters? ( I think so). Or is it because in the schools they only train these "sportive competition"-styles?
