583 - (FREE TO READ) Mailbox: Reality Bites / Always Cheat

Two reader contributions on the subject of biting

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I had two emails this week that were both to do with biting, so I’ll cover both of them here.

1 - Reality Bites:

By email:

“Since blood can carry some of the same diseases that can be transmitted by sexual activity or intravenous drug use (such as HIV*), can biting one’s attacker
(For example, if the attacker is attempting to murder or inflict GBH)
harm the defender doing the biting if the attacker bleeds and some blood touches the defender’s gums?”

Thanks. A common “What if…?” question: if somebody has a disease and you bite them while defending yourself, what if you then get infected?

Well, I think that this is a case of if this is actually happening to you and in that moment, then it’s a question of:

“What if?” versus “What is.”

You are being assaulted and with this comes the possibility that these might be your last moments of life if that assault is extreme enough and depending on context. I says this as someone you stays out of trouble with people at all costs and doesn’t espouse consensual fighting in any form, rather survival fighting only.

You are facing your own imminent murder or life altering injuries – it’s a special feeling I can tell you from personal experience when this hits you . I don’t really feel that there is any deliberation at all about whether or not you’d want to have literally anything possible on the table that’s going to get you out of there.

It just wouldn’t be a question.

You need you need to survive the encounter.

You need to do whatever it takes to do that.

The question about what if? - well, I guess it’s, you know, do you want to “Buy now?” or “Pay later?”

OK, a deliberate an unapologetic pun, I know, but, that really is the question.

If you are infected by somebody through biting them, blood contact, whatever else, that’s something that you can deal with, at least at a later date, with medical help, stuff like that.

What quality that medical help will be, will be another matter, and that obviously depends on a lot of factors, socioeconomic positioning for an example.

But at least you would have more longevity than you would have if you just allowed that person to do whatever it is they want to do to you.

So, I don’t really even see it as a question. It’s very straightforward.

You do whatever you need to do. That’s what survivors do.

Another thing that I was thinking of when I read your question is that I’ve had experiences where I’ve had to deal with people through work where I’ve had to get people out of a premises and I’m talking about people who were on a few occasions, covered in blood , some had pissed themselves, others stank very strongly of shit and seemed to have shit on their hands and clothing.

That’s another thing I can tell you, you know? Stinky people is one thing but shit really is the worst, it almost repels you physically from feet away to actually have to get anywhere near somebody like that, it’s really incredibly unpleasant.

So, there may be factors with biting somebody where one of those things might be there, and that’s obviously going to slow your instinct down to do that.

But to go to that question - what if you get infected?

I just think it’s just too bad you know? Life’s a spin of the roulette wheel on a daily basis as it is, let alone when trying to counter an assault.

There’s no guarantee with things and if you’re in an extreme enough situation where you think you’re about to lose your life or be raped because for whatever reason some asshole, some scumbag is picking on you, then you’ve got to do something about it.

I taught a woman once who had been attacked. She had fought her rapist off and escaped by biting his genitals and leaving him screaming while she ran - absolutely fucking outstanding - I hope she crippled the evil cunt.

These are the ugly realities of surviving the worst of experiences.

2 - Always Cheat:

OK, so the second part of this mailbox bite double bill is this picture which was sent to me, which is from a social media post by a lady who was competing in a BJJ competition and she complains in her post along with the picture of obvious bite marks on her forearm, that the brown belt in the competition that she was competing against had bitten her and she didn’t know about it until the end of the match, at which point I believe, she’d won anyway, but biting would have been a DQ obviously under their rules.

Well, the first thing is that obviously it’s the difference between sport and survival thinking.

In survival thinking, biting is perfectly normal, teeth and nails are natural weapons a natural impulse to bite to defend yourself. As the saying goes:

“Nature’s red in tooth and claw”.

Is it a catch all solution? is it a panacea? Absolutely not.

I recommend biting to new students immediately from their first lesson because it gives them something they can use effectively, like right now, TODAY! So if somebody attacks them in the car park after they finished their first hour or two’s training with me, I know that they’ve got something, a toolbox of something, attacking the eyes, biting, hurting vulnerable areas.

This stuff just needs to be learned first.

That’s it.

Is it a replacement for being able to escape escape classic wrestling or striking setups?

Of course not.

But people have got to have something up front so that they can at least feel that they have some weapons going forward straight away. Not all people are physically able to defend themselves either , the way a 20 year old athlete would ignorantly take for granted, what about them?

Bite pattern

So the thing that struck me about the sports photograph though, is that if you look at the bite pattern, whoever this brown belt was, you know they obviously haven’t got a clue how to bite, it’s just an impulse while they’re losing.

If you bite with an open mouth, it’s very risky for you. So, specifically if somebody’s trying to strangle you from behind, the radial bone of their forearm’s gone around your neck with the wrapping arm and let’s say you’ve managed to drop your chin down, and you are now with your mouth open trying to bite their forearm, well... what will happen is is that they will choke you unconscious

And I mean a choke not a strangle. They will suffocate you by stopping the air Coming into your body.

They just have to pull in and literally force the radial bone into your mouth probably with little risk of damage to them and you will be unable to breathe.

Especially under adrenaline, good luck trying to get all that air through your nose!

So, it’s not a smart way to bite in this case and it’s not particularly effective.

If you know your old school VHS Vunak tapes, then you know that it’s recommended to create a very small gap between the teeth and gnaw into fleshy areas, and this can have absolutely devastating results. You can very easily break skin, even go into flesh. But then we need to obviously think about that that needs to be appropriate and justified, as I have to say, ad nauseam as it’s a UK published article that I’m writing and it’s an online communication...

So, I’m not just advocating you bite people, but in a survival situation for your your life? Gnaw into them, hurt them, get away from them!

Open mouth biting is risky, if you’re going to bite, bite properly or not at all.

On that subject…

554 - (FREE TO READ) Liver Eating Johnson vs Carl Cestari

A couple of other thoughts to wrap up…

Firstly, look at this video, which I also saw this week. It’s a good example of what I said earlier that biting, eye gouging and other tactics are just not an excuse to not learn to fight, not to learn wrestling movements, not to learn striking, and so on and so forth - you need to learn everything. And no, it won’t guarantee to get you out of a late phase submission perhaps, but it’s part of your toolbox so should never be discounted.

For every one that the keyboard warriors claim doesn’t work, there’s one that seems to work just fine, like this recent Tom Aspinall fight that was stopped due to a claim of eye injury:

Secondly?

I’m not interested in sports or fair play.

Always cheat.

Always.