The Martialist: The Magazine For Those Who Fight Unfairly

March, 2005:  So there I was, surfing the Web
innocently enough, when I stumbled on a link to an FAQ file at Bullshido.com.  If
you’re not familiar with Bullshido.com, you needn’t be;  it’s one of the
more notorious troll sites on the Web.  More specifically, it’s a
discussion forum peopled by a collection of ignorant, angry teenagers – a sort
of Lord of the Flies for the virtual age, complete with a few token
adults attempting to run the asylum from within.  The site’s members,
believing themselves to be smart enough and experienced enough to “out” various
frauds, fakes, and freaks in the self-defense community, have applied a unique
mechanism for so doing:  they simply make fun of everyone and everything. The exception
is sportfighters;  the site is essentially a fan club for
mixed martial arts (MMA), the current fad in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), and the
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

There’s a commercial for an
employment agency making the rounds on television as I write this.  In the
spot,
a hapless office-dwelling fellow explains on the phone that he works with a bunch of monkeys. 
The camera pans back and we see that he is indeed surrounded by chimpanzees,
hooting and slapping and scratching and generally making a lot of noise while
accomplishing little.  The imagery immediately brings to mind the denizens
of Bullshido.com.  Never have so few said so much so loudly while knowing
so little.  Over the time the site has existed (it started life as “McDojo.com,”
but was forced by legal threats from McDonalds to change its name) it’s managed
to ridicule just about everyone in the Reality Based Self Defense (RBSD) and
martial arts scene in general, sparing no one save the select number of MMA
types whose approach is greeted with acceptance by the
chicken-wire-and-shoulder-pad clad denizens of this Thunderdome of the Internet.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the site was run from a
server room
inhabited entirely by hyperactive chimpanzees in diapers.

You can imagine my reaction, then, when I discovered an entire
Frequently Asked Questions file devoted to me and the participants of
Pax Baculum, The
Martialist’s official discussion forum.  I was dimly aware that the
denizens of Bullshido.com spent a lot of time fretting over and complaining
about me, endlessly linking to pictures from The Martialist.  What I
hadn’t realized was how thoroughly obsessed they were with my publication, its
editorial perspectives on self-defense, and my own credentials as… well, an
ordinary guy who’s never claimed to be anything but a private citizen.  You
could say that about the time Bullshido.com has taken the time to print a
ridiculously long screed about how wrong you are, you’ve arrived on the
self-defense scene.  I knew I must be doing something right when I read all
this.

Still, dedicated as I am to
objective
philosophy, I’m not inclined simply to let this badly reasoned piece go
unanswered.  It is very long, so this refutation and rebuttal is very long. 
If you manage to get through all of this you’ve got the patience to wade through
the Bullshido.com forum.  Be warned;  studies conducted inhumanely on
rabbits, mice, and Republicans indicate that reading that forum kills brain
cells.

As I read further into the FAQ, my bloodshot eyes grew wider, my
eyebrow arched higher, and my countenance grew more incredulous. While not
written as poorly as I would have expected, the FAQ clearly shows how easy it is
to mask one’s bias and one’s willful ignorance behind a collage of
self-important rationalizations. Mildly remarkable for its pretentious style,
the FAQ is also noteworthy for the great lengths at which it strives to
expose… well, things I’ve already told everyone publicly.

The original file is a turgid list of claims, counterclaims,
quotes from the demigods of the Bullshido universe (if you’re curious, these are
usually any of several sportfighting and MMA/BJJ personalities), and spurious
conclusions based on the illogic of the author(s). For ease of reading, we’ll
take the salient points one by one here, separating each one in bold from my
response to it.

This is a bit of an oversimplication but points to a very
specific point I’ve made at The Martialist – that sports are not
fighting and that sport training is not primarily self-defense training. 
The topic was the subject of a
point-counterpoint editorial.  There are few arguments in the FAQ, if
any, not addressed by my portion of the editorial, but we’ll go over some of the
same ground in the course of this write-up.

I don’t have anything against sports training as such; it
certainly has benefits for the practitioner. As I said in my portion of the
editorial, however, sports training is not self-defense training. My interest is
in pragmatic self-defense, not in sports or competition. The Martialist
is devoted to realistic self-preservation and not to whatever ego gratification
one derives from competing in sporting bouts of the type favored by MMA
enthusiasts.

It is these child-men trapped inside the buff bodies of professional athletes
who epitomize the Bullshido.com mentality. The sportfighting mindset is
basically an immature and ego-driven outlook on life – the arrogant belief that
one can be the strongest and the toughest (and that one proves so in competition
against others) coupled with a deep and abiding insecurity about one’s
abilities. Thus such people dismiss the utility (and the need for) weapons of
self-defense, believing that they can be tougher than any armed opponent (or
they dismiss the notion entirely as a “waste of mental energy). Thus such people
believe the way to “prove something works” is in the controlled conditions of
one-on-one sporting bouts. Anyone who disagrees with this approach is therefore
perceived as attacking the sportfighters’ senses of self. My failure to see
their sports as proof of their self-defense prowess (of how tough they believe
themselves to be) is a personal affront to such critics, who lash out
accordingly.

This attitude also expresses itself in how such people perceive
my own published work. Because the sportfighter’s central concern is asserting
his toughness, his machismo, his ability to fight others, he views all other’s
efforts through this same lens. Thus, when I post a picture of myself in
illustrating an article, or when I make any statement of opinion, the typical
Bullshidoka (wrongly) believes I am trying to tell the reader how tough I think
I am, or how skilled I believe myself to be. The reality is that I know I’ll
never be the toughest, the fastest, or the strongest guy on the block. I’m not
arrogant enough to believe I’ll be able to take on and best any attacker. I’m
not insecure enough to need to prove myself to others. No, I’m an ordinary guy
who understands that self-defense is NOT a game, NOT a sport, and NOT something
at which to play. That is the essence of the “fight unfairly” philosophy of The
Martialist and it is why those who understand the reality of self-defense also
devote a great deal of time and effort to the study and use of weaponry, the
pursuit of reality-based training, and the sober recognition of the difference
between sports (however physically demanding) and real life.

A martialist understands the need for the tools of
self-defense.

The Bullshido.com FAQ incorrectly divides all parishioners into sportfighters and
traditionalists, falsely claiming that the latter discourage all forms of
full-speed, hard-contact training.

This is a fairly typical misconception on the
part of sportfighters, who believe that they and only they understand how to
train “alive” and how to do so against “resisting opponents.” No amount of
explaining one’s training to such people will convince them that you, too,
understand the need for such hard-contact training, or that you engage in it.
No, the typical Bullshidoka is convinced that you are a mewling sissy-boy who
refuses to “get in the ring” because you’re afraid to break a nail, or
something.

Certainly, there are plenty of martial arts schools and reality-based fighting
systems out there whose practitioners aren’t training realistically and aren’t
truly capable of defending themselves – but this can only be examined on a case
by case and individual by individual basis. Most of the people offering training
curricula I consider worthwhile aren’t interested in sports competitions and
don’t waste their time with them – because they have nothing to prove to anyone.
Realistic self-defense isn’t a match between two equals, either; it’s a
spontaneous (for the defender) exercise in the dangers of real life, which
include the presence of weapons, the potential for multiple assailants, and the
necessity of fighting on less-than-ideal terrain (rather than on forgiving
canvas).

The Bullshido.com FAQ walks over the tired ground of “deadly techniques” for a
few paragraphs, proclaiming that the fabled thousands of hours of video footage
that all sportfighters seem to catalog in at-home fighting libraries show no
proof of such techniques “working.” Reality-Based Self-Defense exponents and
others who train in realistic, pragmatic defensive systems (be they traditional
or non-traditional) quite rightly point out that you cannot train certain
techniques against live opponents because you will kill them. Chops to the neck
and throat, eyeball strikes, the WWII combatives chin-jab (a palm heel under the
chin) – these are examples of such maiming or fatal techniques that supposedly
“don’t work” because they haven’t been depicted in the Bullshidoka’s VHS tapes.
Point out to such people that sporting bouts aren’t fights to the death (and
therefore aren’t likely to involve a lot of maiming and killing) and you’ll be
met with a lot of mumbling about how there may be rules, but there are precious
few of them, and that the deadly fighting Kung Fu killer stuff just doesn’t
work, just doesn’t work, just doesn’t work – ad nauseam.

Can you find
a training partner who’ll let you hit them in the neck and
throat all day, or jab in the eyes for a few hours?  Let’s hope not.

The very argument used is a circular one. If you state that sports aren’t
self-defense training and that you prefer to train in more realistic, pragmatic
methodologies, you’ll be told that such “untested” techniques “don’t work” because
they aren’t used or aren’t successful in the very sports you just said aren’t
applicable to your goals.

What so many people (who want so desperately to see me as the head of some
bizarre fan club devoted to myself) don’t seem to see (because they don’t
wish to see it) is that the majority of the posters of Pax
Baculum can be counted on to disagree with me almost all the time, about a great
many things. Yes, we have some core beliefs in common, and yes, our basic
philosophies of self-defense are more similar than not – but I never get so much
grief as I do from the established members of my own discussion site. I wouldn’t
have it any other way.

When we ban someone or moderate their posts, it isn’t because
we’re trembling in fear at the incisive thoughts they offer.  We are not
hiding in the shadows cursing the blinding light of truth as reflected on us by
the shining armored Knights of Sport.  We’re not muttering to ourselves in
sibilant whispers that we simply can’t manage to refute the poster’s arguments
and so we’d better take steps to remove the heretic from our royal presence. 
No, if we ban someone or take disciplinary action, it’s because they couldn’t
manage to abide by our relatively simple rules.  Sportfighters capable of
rational, civil discussion are, in my experience, few and far between.  The
outlook of such people simply doesn’t lend itself to such an environment. 
Anyone who suffers from such insecurity invariably sees all disagreement as an
invitation to fight.

To believe this, you have to ignore everything I’ve ever written about the fact
that I’m a private citizen without impressive credentials who doesn’t claim to
be an expert and who thinks the truth or falsehood of an idea is found in the
substance of the idea – in how that idea is presented and defended, logically
and rationally. The only reason anyone knows anything about my credentials is
because I’ve taken the time to state what those credentials are and are not,
publicly and honestly.

I’ve never pretended to be anything I’m not (I sometimes
think it would have been easier simply to manufacture some sort of instructor
ranking in some fictitious ryu and gone from there) and this drives my critics
absolutely berserk. I’m an everyman – a doughy white guy of average intelligence
and above-average writing ability with about a decade and a half of
short-attention-span-theater martial arts cross-training to my credit. I’ve
stated this plainly and openly in more than one venue.

This is a favorite complaint of those who are so
intellectually weak that they
feel intimidated and offended by the forceful statement of any opinion with
which they do not agree. By definition, anything I write is my opinion and my
opinion alone. To persuade anyone of that opinion requires that I state my case
rationally and support that case reasonably. If the reader then finds my
argument compelling, he or she does so on the substance of that argument.

For me
to say, “You should believe that I am right because I’m Phil Elmore and you’re
not” is as intellectually bankrupt as someone else saying, “You’re not qualified
to have an opinion because your credentials don’t impress me.” Appeals to
authority are not substantive arguments unless the argument opposed is itself built on some
claim to authority. As I’ve never claimed to have any sort of impressive
credentials, I can’t make arguments on that basis. I can only use reason.

As part of the attack on my credentials, this infantile reasoning asserts that
I’m not qualified to say a given strike will kill you unless I’ve murdered a few
people and can point to the record of my murders to back up the assertion. The
FAQ also includes the earth-shattering revelation that “killing people with your
bare hands is a lot tougher than people realize.”

Well, thank the heavens for
that. If it was as easy to, say, snap someone’s neck as it is in the movies, crowds
of young men would fall over dead the second they turned their heads too quickly
to follow a pretty girl walking by. None of this changes the fact that certain
techniques are fatal (or at the very least will maim you) and that to practice
these on a human opponent would be sociopathic at best. Unless you’re
willing to stand there while someone hammers away at your unprotected throat or
shoves their fingers into your eyeballs, don’t tell me there’s no way to “prove”
that some techniques can maim or kill.

A basic understanding of anatomy tells you
what strikes
are likely to be fatal.  This isn’t terribly hard to understand.

I don’t have to shoot myself in the head to know that placing a
loaded gun to my temple is a potentially fatal act. Anyone with any grasp of
human anatomy knows that the eyes are fragile, that the neck and especially the
throat are vulnerable, and that certain actions taken to disrupt certain bodily
systems will kill that person under most normal conditions. I’m fairly
confident in saying that if I stab you in the neck, I’ll kill you more times
than I won’t if we get together each week for “alive” neck stabbing training.
What do you mean you’re busy? You’re not afraid to test your skills against a
resisting opponent, are you?

This is has got to the be the first time anyone has gotten upset that I refused
to call myself an expert and then claimed that it was all part of some sinister
conspiracy to make people think I am one. The Bullshidoka are terribly upset
that I, who do not meet their standards of what an “authority” should be, have a
popular martial arts publication and have achieved some small amount of success
as a writer in the field of self-defense.

If someone finds my opinions
compelling, they do so based on the substance of those opinions and on the
presentation of those ideas – not on the basis of credentials I’ve never claimed
to have. This, I think, is what bothers the Bullshidoka most – that I dare to
succeed while being honest about myself, that I write material by applying logic
and reason to my own research and my own martial arts experience, and that other
people find this material helpful, entertaining, and engaging.

The FAQ claims, quite falsely, that I’ve been interviewed on radio programs “as
a self-defense expert” (when in fact my interview on Kelly Worden’s radio show
includes a
direct quote directly to the contrary).

The FAQ also states that the
inclusion of my essay in Paladin Press’ popular
Warriors: On Living with
Courage, Discipline, and Honor, coupled with the marketing copy that proclaims
all the books contributors to be “experts,” means that “clearly… someone out
there thinks [Phil Elmore is] an authority on these subjects and is perpetuating this idea.”

The truth of the matter is that I was interviewed as nothing more or less than I
am – specifically, the publisher of The Martialist and a contributor to the
Warriors book. Anyone who reads my essay in that book will find it in a section
called “The Journey.” The essay is not pompous, self-important bloviating on how
tough or cool I think I am; it’s a self-deprecating and heartfelt piece on the
changes in my personality caused by my martial arts training and how these
changes relate to the aspiration towards warrior ideals.

What the Bullshidoka have such a hard time grasping is that I don’t base the
validity of my opinions on my resume. I base them on reason applied to the data
available to me – the process of critical thinking in which we’re all obligated
to engage. I do it well – I’ve been a professional writer for well over a decade
– and I do it honestly and earnestly. People find my words compelling because
they’re true and they’re supported with truth to which those readers can relate.

Does this make me an “authority?” Does this mean I’m encouraging you to infer
that I’m an “expert?” I don’t think so. To me, calling yourself an expert or an
authority means you’re encouraging people to abandon critical thinking and
simply accept you at your word because of who you claim to be. I have never
asked anyone to do this and have demanded quite the opposite.

The FAQ claims my martial arts experience is “murky” (despite the fact that I’ve
stated of what that experience consists more than once) and that, “Oddly,
considering he co-founded [the style of Shanliang Li], he was only given a
‘brown sash’ instead of a senior rank ‘black sash’ as would be found in other
traditional Kung Fu styles.”

The Bullshidoka’s confusion over this is
understandable, given that they are not capable of understanding earnest motives
or actions. More on that shortly.

I have always stated that I am unconcerned with rank and that I have earned no
impressive credentials. I hold, in fact, exactly three official rankings. The
first is a yellow belt in Chidokwan Karate earned in 1993. The second is a brown
sash in Shanliang Li, the martial system I co-founded with instructor David
Pearson.  The sash was earned in 2003. The third ranking is a blue sash in Wing Chun Kung Fu in the William
Cheung lineage, earned in 2004. The yellow belt represents a first-level rank in Chidokwan; the blue sash is level three of ten, and my ranking in Shanliang Li
is the result of starting in the system as a beginner with NO rank and working
my way up per my instructor David’s directions.

The first photo shoot we did for Shanliang Li was when I held only a gold
ranking; we did a second when I held a green sash. Much later, I earned my brown
sash – and when my skill level in the system meets or surpasses that of my
instructor David, I will have earned my black sash. I am not qualified to found
a martial art by myself, you see. Shanliang Li came about as a result of
informal training with a friend (the “garage martial arts” approach) whom I soon
realized was quite a gifted martial artist. “You should formally found your
system,” I told David one day – and so he did, stating at the outset that he
would only do it with my assistance and that therefore I was the system’s
co-founder. There is nothing secret about any of this; it is stated quite
clearly on the Shanliang Li webpage.

This is fundamentally dishonest. Very few of the members of Bullshido.com
actually know what they’re talking about; the rest are children pretending
to know what they’re talking about, masking their ignorance behind facades of
arrogance and hostility. The site is also far from unique in proclaiming that
its members will honestly tell others when they’re talking nonsense.

Pax Baculum
is dedicated to honesty in debate and to heated discussion; our members
frequently disagree and I go to great pains to make sure dissent and criticism are
tolerated. What we don’t allow is the pursuit of immature agendas. What we don’t
tolerate is obvious trolling – cruising for a reaction without any real
substance to one’s arguments. Bullshido.com is simply a hostile environment, period.
It substitutes for critical thinking the derision of almost everyone and
everything. If you actually read the barely literate ravings of most of the
site’s members, you’ll find the “intricate knowledge” of most of the members
consists of a willingness to use profanity and make racist and sexual jokes…
all while telling people they look funny, of course.

“Bullshido believes that good people and good ideas can stand on their own
without moderator protection,” the FAQ drones on.

Anyone who’s seen a good forum
drown in vulgar trolling, where all the members with anything interesting to say
get tired of slogging through reams of verbal chaff and homoerotic innuendo in
order to talk about anything of substance, has seen this philosophy of the unmoderated slugfest play out. It’s ruined several forums I once enjoyed and I
vowed that Pax Baculum would not fall prey to the same foolishness.

Intellectual honesty and rational discussion are very specific concepts with
very specific requirements. Most of the members of Bullshido.com couldn’t manage
even the simplest of substantive debates; they are fundamentally incapable of it.

The pen is mightier than the sword –
and my ability to debate an issue
substantively is mightier than the slings and arrows of my critics.

The FAQ goes on to rehash the same sportfighting arguments I refuted in my

point-counterpoint editorial at The Martialist. Any points that might be made
contrary to my own arguments are feeble rationalizations at best. For example,
when the danger of multiple opponents is brought up (such a scenario invalidates
the groundfighting methodology favored by many UFC-style sportfighters), the
response is simply, “Sportfighters have friends too! It ain’t hard to learn to
bite somebody!” This completely ignores the fact that in a real-life
self-defense scenario, the aggressor chooses the time, the place, and the
circumstances. Most don’t choose to attack roving groups of sportfighters who
are presumably moving from gym to gym drinking Gatorade and challenging
passers-by to cage matches.

In order to illustrate this, the FAQ lists a few quotes out of context and then
makes some blatantly false conclusions about them. For example, the
Circle of
Death training methodology is proclaimed to be unrealistic training because
“There is a pre-scripted winner and loser and it doesn’t offer full-resistance.”
This is simply untrue and the natural result of any group of people who want so
much to believe something that they see and hear nothing to the contrary (no
matter how many times it is stated).

The Circle of Death, for example, is an
endlessly adaptable drill that can be done with low power for beginners and then ramped up to greater levels of contact as students advance. There is no scripted winner and no predetermined loser. Acting as the “attacker” in such
a drill, I have personally taken down defending students and “won” the encounter
when, as the attacker, I am supposed to be defeated (according to the uninformed
Bullshidoka, at any rate).

The Bullshidoka point to photos of the drill and note that the participants are
not wearing protective gear. They must, therefore, be pulling punches. This is
an ignorant assumption. The school in question (where I took the photos and
about which I wrote the article) regularly engages in hard-contact training,
sometimes with protective gear and sometimes without. Beginning students rarely
practice at the hardest levels to start, but this is because they are beginners.
I have posted plenty of photos of students at the same school actively fighting
while wearing protective gear, but no doubt those photos would be met with
similar rationalizations.

You see, the Bullshidoka desperately need to believe that they are tougher than
everyone else and that anyone who does not train as they do must not be training
at the same levels of contact. This goes directly to their self-esteem issues,
their insecurity about their abilities to defend themselves, and – at some level
– to their very manhood, (as most of these people are male). To be confronted
with someone who doesn’t care what they think and who has nothing to prove to
them drives them berserk and confuses them greatly, which in turn becomes
hostility (as anything they do not grasp angers them).

This is true – but only when you define what “sparring” means. It is also untrue
– depending on to whom you speak. For example, I take a dim view of sparring as
a barometer of one’s ability to defend one’s self because I think most sparring
is an unrealistic one-on-one duel that bears little resemblance to a
self-defense scenario. While I’ll tell that to anyone who listens (and my Wing
Chun instructor felt the same way), I also spar at near- and full-contact in my
own training, most notably in Shanliang Li. Simply because I do not advocate
something as a preferred training methodology, or as the judge of whether you
can defend yourself successfully, does not mean that I do not do it (or that I
don’t enjoy it).

Simply because I don’t advocate sparring doesn’t mean I
don’t do it or that
I don’t train at schools where it or other hard-contact “alive” drills are done.

When I trained in Wing Chun Kung Fu, my instructor would tell anyone who asked
that his students “don’t spar.” We did, in fact, spar – for the “combat drills”
in which we engaged, particular the more “alive” drills, would have been
characterized as hard-contact “sparring” by anyone unfamiliar with the school.
The “Circle of Death” drill is itself a freeform sparring drill, though Sifu
called it a “combat drill” and would not have characterized it as sparring.

The FAQ goes on at mind-numbing length about the benefits and definition of
full-resistance “alive” training.

Given that so much of this has little to do
with Pax Baculum or me specifically, it seems more likely that the author of the
FAQ was simply seething to write a rebuttal to material I’d written on the topic
of sportfighting.

This is a fairly typical response from those who know very little, if anything,
about the development of touch reflexes in the traditional arts that use chi sao.
I’ve written extensively on the topic in
covering Wing Chun Kung Fu in general.

Training in chi sao to develop touch
reflexes.  “Trapping” is one aspect of this, but not
the primary purpose of the drill (concerning what most people consider
“trapping”).

The FAQ rattles off the standard list of criticisms (most of them spurious) of
Reality Based Self Defense instructors and curricula. (“Everyone knows the
scenario is a scenario so it’s not real world training!”

I’ll pause while you
roll your eyes.) We simply don’t know that [place RBSD personality here] “can
fight” because he or she won’t climb into a ring and prove it. This is a big
point of contention among sportfighters who, because they have so much to prove
to themselves and to the rest of the world, are completely stymied when someone
has no desire (and, more importantly, no need) to prove anything to them.
Interestingly, very few of these people burning to know if various RBSD
instructors “can fight” are willing to attack one of them in real life in order
to find out.

The FAQ wrongly confuses scenario training with rote technique training.

“Sportfighters
know that it’s the attributes of a fighter that work in a fight, not the 1000’s
of scenarios you’ve drilled,” the author states. “A good punch or takedown will
work in any situation you come across whereas a scenario that is practiced only
a few times won’t.”

Most sportfighters, because their training does not incorporate weaponry (for
obvious reasons – the average MMA or UFC bout would be fairly brief if the
fighters were swinging motorcycle chains or knifing each other), dismiss the
dangers of (and the utility of training with) knives, firearms, and other
weaponry. The idea that a fat white guy with a knife or a gun can maim or kill a
chiseled MMA hero bothers most sportfighters. No one likes to think their hard
hours of sweat and blood can be negated by the pull of a trigger or the snap of
a blade. Realistic self-defense exponents, however, recognize the need to use
force multipliers in order to stack the odds in their favor – for those
exponents are not arrogant enough to think they can overpower everyone they
encounter with brute force or a competition record.

Dismissing the utility of (and the
dangers presented by) weapons
does not invalidate the need to be conversant in them as a martialist.

The FAQ quotes Scott Lockhart as saying you can avoid random violence by
steering clear of “bad” people, places, and situations.

The author of the FAQ displays a disturbingly ignorant attitude towards what the
combative mindset actually is. Being ready to use force when you confront it and
being prepared for emergencies (both utilitarian and combative) is not the same
thing as basing your outlook on fear of the unknown or obsession over what might
happen. It is
the recognition that it is better to be prepared than not to be prepared. It is a
realistic outlook, as opposed to the arrogant (and, at times, na

Contrary to what the FAQ claims, sportfighting is not a “reliable platform for
testing and analyzing the theories of combat.” Combat and sports are different
things. Proper training for self-defense – for combat – requires reality-based
scenario training and a recognition of environmental conditions that sportfighters ignore or too easily dismiss. While such sport training does have
benefits, it is not the primary means of developing the attributes necessary to
achieve success in self-defense – no matter how much angry screaming to the
contrary is done by those whose senses of self are inextricably wrapped up in
sportfighting dogma.

The Internet contains a lot of information. Some of it is useful and much of it
is nonsense. If you seek reliable, pragmatic self-defense training, you need a
system and a school whose instructors recognize the realities of violence and
embrace the full spectrum of training methodologies. Competitions and sports can
be used to augment your training, but falsely believing your sport to be a
self-defense curriculum does you a disservice.

The Bullshido.com FAQ incorrectly describes Pax Baculum (and, I suppose, The Martialist and me) as somehow other than “up front about the evidence that
exists today.” What these incredibly ignorant, hostile, and childish individuals
fail to realize is that a failure to agree with them is not a failure of honesty
or integrity. An emphasis on factors other than those they choose to emphasize
is not a scam or a fraud; it is a difference of opinion and a correspondingly
different approach. It is the over-reliance on sport and arrogant machismo that
does would-be students of self-defense a terrible disservice; it is those who
practice this approach who are not “being very objective or honest despite their
pleadings.”

No amount of “demanding proof” will help someone who lacks the mental ability to
discuss something rationally. No amount of arguing will convince someone who is
so entrenched in his sport and in his feelings of inadequacy that he believes
all arguments must be settled by “throw-downs,” “smack-downs,” or brawls. No
amount of posturing, no pretensions, and no insistence on the UFC worldview will
change the fact that these represent willing evasions of reality that will help
few earnest citizens achieve success in realistic self-defense. It is the
sportfighters, the Bullshidoka, the angry children trapped in the bodies of cage
fighters, who have something to prove – to you, and to themselves.