A reader asked for my general approach to violence; you don't have to be the best fighter in the world, you just have to be better than the guy you're fighting.
Good Looking Loser's guide to the martial arts: https://www.goodlookingloser.com/more/archive/entry/martial-arts-guide-1/
All Guns Should Be Glocks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZUL4ITG254
Yeager's video which inspired it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzmkGgQLCMA
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So the request which led to this video was rather specific.
It was a question of which martial art is best martial art, particularly given the individual's physical traits.
And my response was, like, honestly, I'm not the right person to ask.
I'm not a martial arts junkie any more than I'm a hardware junkie when it comes to firearms.
And so I linked him to some posts down below, which are an excellent, excellent analysis and comparison of the different martial arts, their strengths and weaknesses, which are best and which you should probably avoid.
However, the requester still wanted me to make a video about, about the whole concept of self-defense, martial arts, and keeping yourself safe in an increasingly chaotic world.
And so I've decided to boil this video down to three points.
Number one, never carry a gun unless if it's going to get you out of more trouble than it's going to get you into.
Number two, all guns should be Glocks.
And number three, the look of the Samurai.
So number one, never carry a gun unless if it's going to get you out of more trouble than it gets you into.
That's actually a quote from one of the Hans Solo novels way back before the expanded universe became a thing.
And, you know, it stuck with me.
Ever since I read it as a little kid, it stuck with me.
Back when I was in the States, I ran into somebody who knew me by reputation.
And they said, oh, I just know you have a sidearm with you.
And I said, well, no, no, I don't, because that would be illegal for me to carry.
And there aren't going to be any situations I find myself in where having a gun, or at least probability-wise.
You know, I can imagine many situations where carrying a gun will get me into a lot of problems, and I can imagine very few where it will get me out of them.
And even in those situations, I have other options.
This is to say that the best part of valor is, I forgot the saying, but the better part of valor is knowing when not to fight.
See, when you think of the, with rare exceptions, you know, Mike Tyson, and he did the prison time for it.
With rare exceptions, when you think of martial artists, boxers, MMA fighters, these are not the sort of people that go around picking a fight with everybody.
Because one of the things you quickly figure out when you're training in combatives is just how lethal it can be.
Any game worth playing.
You know, I've been playing, what's that?
Silent Storm, for instance, tactical RPG squad-based shooter.
Every single one of these games needs to completely nerf the lethality of all the weapons.
Because in the real world, the slash of a knife can permanently disfigure you.
You know, as the saying goes, you don't win a knife fight, you survive a knife fight.
And even if you take the top MMA guys, you know, if they went around picking a fight with absolutely everybody out there, they would win most of them.
They are very, very good.
But eventually, they'd meet somebody better, or the other guy would just get lucky, and their career would be over.
You know, all it takes is a thumb in the eye to permanently blind you.
And so, yes, sorry, discretion is the better part of valor.
Knowing when to walk away, knowing when not to start a fight.
The way to win fights is not to be a badass.
Being a badass is how you get yourself killed or put into prison.
The way to win fights is to make sure that you always, always, always have the strategic advantage.
Never fight if you don't have the strategic advantage, and retreat until you do.
And this brings us to the second point.
All guns should be Glocks.
Now, hopefully, you recognize the song that comes from.
I'll link it down below.
I absolutely love the song.
It's so wonderfully patriotic and soulful and so absolutely correct.
And the point of the song, to quote something else from my childhood, a line from the video game Dissent, I'm not a hardware junkie.
I don't get off on the hardware.
I mean, I do have an affinity to the AR-15 platform.
You know, I really like the C-7A1 variant personally.
I don't like the A2 because it's got the green stock, and that's faggy in my opinion.
But here's the thing: it's not about the hardware.
You want to ask me what the best gun in the world is?
It's like, I don't know.
You know what?
The guy at the shooting range, you know, the competition shooter, the real expert who he's probably made money.
He's probably won money doing this, but he's probably spent more money in the process.
He's the guy that'll have a very strong opinion on his favorite firearm.
And you know what?
His opinion doesn't fucking matter.
It doesn't matter because the guy that's at the firing range and he's got a very strong opinion on the revolvers versus semi-autos that guy's shooting on a range.
He can train you to be a better shot.
He can offer you some good advice.
Listen, if you don't know which gun to buy, buy the gun that he tells you to buy.
Don't disrespect that guy.
He knows his stuff.
But when you're in a firefight, the best gun is the gun that you have.
The best gun is the gun that'll break.
It's the one that doesn't run out of bullets before the firefight is over.
And so the best gun is a Glock.
And all guns should be Glocks.
You know, even though I'm partial to the 1911 myself.
Similarly, martial arts.
Which one is the best martial art?
Anytime a martial art starts becoming systemized, it's already dead.
It's not organic anymore.
And I trained in Goju and Shotokan karate, which, yes, is the Dane cook of martial arts.
But I didn't just train in that.
I trained in grappling.
I trained in a lot of different things.
And yes, competition karate, most karate schools out there, it's nothing but very mechanical dancing.
All right, there's a lot of karatekas out there that, you know, I never bothered getting beyond yellow belt for crying out loud, and I could take out most of the brown belts I've seen and half of the black belts.
Yes, there's a lot of it out there that's just a joke because it's become systemized.
It's become standardized, and it's become not about winning fights, but about winning accolades.
And the exact same thing goes for the MMA.
MMA is more and more about the competition.
Again, not saying that that MMA guy, you want to go mess with him, because there are some scary, scary dudes in MMA.
But if you're picking up and you're training in it, and you're training for competitions, well, you don't hit below the belt in a competition.
You don't gouge your enemy's eyes out in a competition.
You don't pick up a bat and smack them across the head because it's a competition.
You don't want to worry over much about which martial art is the best martial art.
You want to find a good school in your area.
So if you go into an MMA school and it's a bunch of frat bros that are wearing Ed Hardy gear and they're not serious about training.
They just want to say they're MMA fighters.
And then you have a karate school, which is actually really serious and they do hardcore exercises and it actually is about sparring and training and getting better.
Pick the karate school.
Nine times out of ten is going to be the opposite scenario.
But if you get that rare instance, pick the karate school.
Pick the school that's going to teach you how to fight.
Pick the school where the people actually give a damn about the purposes, the ends behind it.
Not just the idea of winning accolades and egoism.
And quite frankly, if you ever have to rely upon these skills, keep in mind, if you've done any martial art and you've trained it to any serious degree, you're already in the top 15%, top 5% of the population out there.
So whichever martial art you choose, as long as you train in it, you will be able to defend yourself.
And furthermore, you'll know you'll be able to defend yourself, which leads to the third point, the look of the samurai.
Now, this is a pretentious little phrase that my old sensei came up with.
And part of it's just getting older as well, becoming more seasoned, becoming more confident in yourself.
You see, the look of the samurai is when you can look somebody in the eyes and they know you're not going to back down.
You are going to go 100%.
And even if they win, it's going to be one hell of an expensive win.
You are not going to be pushed around.
You have set your feet down.
You have stood your ground.
Let's dance, motherfucker.
You know, there was an incident back when I was in Vegas.
When I was in this really, by this really cheap hotel district, I had this idiot with me that was looking for money or something.
Anyway, this degenerate approached me.
And he happened to notice the knife in my pocket.
It had a little clip on my belt.
Or on my jeans.
And so he asked to see it.
And so I looked at the son of the bitch.
I said, sure thing.
And I handed it to him and looked him in the eyes the whole goddamn time.
He complimented me on my knife and handed it back and then got the fuck out of there.
Now, I'm not recommending you do that.
All right, look, first of all, look of the samurai means that you to have it, well, first of all, you need to be ready to go, no matter what the costs.
And again, this comes with time, with confidence.
And also, to go back to the first point, not starting fights for no reason.
That if you are going to fight somebody, you are 100% in the legal right and you are 100% going to win.
Okay, the best way to have the look of the samurai is knowing that you're going to win and not regretting anything that leads up to it.
You have that, people will back the fuck down from you.
Number two is situational awareness.
And this also relates to number one.
See, anytime these predators are going to come and lean on you, they're going to try and push you around.
You know, and they usually move in packs, is they'll try and surround you.
They'll try and sneak behind you.
Don't let them.
If somebody starts edging up outside of your peripheral vision, you know, call them out on it.
Look at them.
Say, hey, stay where I can see you.
What are you doing, buddy?
Can't talk to you if you're standing behind me.
Situational awareness.
Do not get ambushed.
Do not allow yourself to be ambushed.
Be aware of your environment.
Be aware of the people in your environment.
Being really good at martial arts is no good if somebody sucker punches you.
Speaking of which, be aware when you're open to being sucker punched.
Like, look at what happened to Richard Spencer a few months back.
He was doing a media interview.
And when you're doing a media interview, you know, like heck, right now when I'm even talking to the camera, when you're really focused on a task, if you're playing a game of pool and you're lining up your shot, you're so concentrated on that one spot, you get tunnel vision, you're open to being sucker punched.
That's part of situational awareness, is being aware of all of that.
Also related, and this is part of the question as well, because the video requester has a bad jaw, injured it.
And so doing a martial art that involves a lot of chill colds, that sort of stuff, not going to be good for that guy.
Or maybe you've got a bad back.
Maybe you've got a limp, etc.
Know your enemy, know yourself, and you will always be victorious.
Know what your limitations are.
Again, if you're shooting pool, you're not going to be very aware of your environment.
If you've got a limp, then you can't run.
So don't walk down a very long, dark alley.
If you've got a bad jaw, know that.
Or just a glass jaw for crying out loud.
You know, if you know yourself.
Know what your limitations are so you can compensate for them.
I'm not exactly sure what this guy's bad jaw entails, but I'll tell you what, if you have a glass jaw, okay, as in you get punched in the jaw and it just bonk, knocks you out.
Well, get good at blocking.
And, you know, despite the Dane Cook of martial arts, I'll tell you, my karate training, it's really, really hard to hit me.
And the guy that taught me, I couldn't hit him to win a bet.
Train at blocking, train it not being there.
Train, if you've got a major vulnerability, train defensively.
Fight defensively.
Alternatively, if you're small and wiry, it might be good to train more offensively because you're going to be harder to hit anyway.
You know, when you're a young man and you first start thinking about all of this, it's perfectly natural to get nervous.
Same thing, it's perfectly natural to get nervous approaching girls when you're a young man.
But there's something that Chuck over at SF Debris.
He was talking about the guy that plays Lister on Red Dwarf.
And he described him as not so much aging as leveling up over the past decade.
And that's what you want to aim for.
And that comes from constantly training, constantly challenging yourself, constantly putting yourself in more difficult situations.
You know, picking the best martial art and training until you're a black belt.
It won't do you any good if you're a coward.
There's a huge difference between sparring and an actual street fight.
It won't do you any good if you get drunk all the time and leave yourself vulnerable.
It won't do you any good if you use it to pick fights all the time that you shouldn't be picking for no reason whatsoever.
You know, the martial art will just wind you up in prison.
If you want to get good, you got to train constantly.
You need to have a life-oriented and not just the martial arts.
Okay, that's one aspect of it.
I mean, maybe if you're going military or something like that, you can do it exclusively.
But you need to challenge yourself.
You need to put yourself in different difficult situations.
You need to develop mental toughness.
You know, as the saying goes, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight and the dog.
That's the look of the samurai.
Being willing to go, but also being willing to not start stuff if you don't need to.
You know, and keep in mind, the people you're worried about, the people who are going to cause you trouble, with rare exceptions, one once in a million, it's Mike Tyson.
You know, one time I was going door to door for the gas company, and I ran into this roided-out psycho who was on the verge of having an apoplectic fit and killing me.
His jaw was twitching, and you know, he was the size of two Volvos.
You know, that guy, you know, you don't need to fight that guy.
You just need to be polite to him so he doesn't kill you.
Generally speaking, that guy's not the problem.
He's not the guy you're worried about.
You know, usually, people that know how to box, how to fight, how to whatever, are not Mike Tysons.
They're actually very controlled individuals.
The people you're worrying about are the degenerates, the drug addicts, the people whose dad left their mother and their mother hated them and they're just lashing out at the world at large.
And if they actually got involved in a boxing league or an MMA tournament, they'd find some meaning in life and they wouldn't be a problem anymore.
But because they haven't, they are your problem.
And those guys, to a large extent, you can avoid them by not being a soft target.
By locking your doors, by standing by.
by walking in a way that they know you're going to stand your ground, by being aware of your environment.
Okay, just looking at the guy and saying, hey, why are you trying to sneak behind me?
They'll run.
They're cowards.
Not putting yourself into positions where you're weak.
That's how you avoid them.
But if you do have to deal with them, crush them fully within the extent of the law.
Make them bleed a little bit from the forehead so they think twice about doing it to somebody else.
But first and foremost, make sure you survive.
Fighting in a damn video game, fighting is 90% psychological, another 9% strategic, and it's about 1% actual training.
So if you do all those, stay out of fights that you don't need to be in.
Get over yourself, okay?
Number two, pick any one or pick any three martial arts and genuinely train in it.
It doesn't need to be the best one.
You just need to be better than the guy you're fighting.
Okay, the best gun to have is the one that you have in your hand.
That's the one you're going to rely upon.
And three, build up that psychological toughness.
Get yourself used to adversity.
Whether it's fighting or picking up girls or just showing up at a new job site or a new city and surviving.
Get used to mental toughness and learn to command your environment.
That's how you win every fight that you ever get into.
And you don't get into the fights that you're going to lose.
