How many fights end up on the ground

Just like several decades ago, they used to take up boxing if they wanted to learn to fight. So more and more men grow up with MMA as their primary source of instruction for all their fighting. Like I said, this is in no way a scientific theory. This is me sharing my experiences with you, giving you my opinion based on what I saw, read and heard in the last ten years. But I believe there may be some validity to the theory, which is why I still train in sports grappling and ground techniques.

I firmly believe you should at least have a solid base in ground grappling as taught in modern MMA. Not to fight like them, but to understand how they fight and know what to do about it. Just like I believe you have to spend some time boxing and doing muay Thai:. Those arts excel at these techniques, just like BJJ excels at ground grappling.

Try training on a slippery surface with techniques from boxing, muay thai and BJJ. You can read more about how and why I did this in the second part of my training on a slippery surface post.

As you can see, changing one factor the surface changes everything. I very much recommend you give it a try too: go out and train on ice, in the snow, on wet grass, etc. It determines which tools you should use. Or like a good friend of mine would say: stay on mission. Know what your goal is and use the appropriate tool to achieve it. Determine your goal first and only then pick your tools. I believe the same is true for all fighting arts: determine first and foremost why you train and then pick the system s that helps you achieve that goal.

While you go through the selection process for that system, beware the marketing hype and unproven theories including all of mine. Think things through and do your own research so you can at the very least be comfortable with your choice.

Become a Patron and get access to unique content: my newsletter, instructional videos, violence analysis and much more! That said, they said and implied just the opposite for a very long time….

I train at Gracie Barra, and stand-up self defense is part of every class, however, it is true that striking does not get the full-speed live sparring treatment the ground techniques do. You can go full speed with only a cup and a mouth guard and no closed head injuries. I think this produces ground fighters at a higher level than some other systems produce stand-up at and this training bias produces changes that filter down to the street. Thanks for stopping by.

Could you elaborate on your last sentence in the paragraph? Sure Wim — my last sentence is a disclaimer, I meant to imply that, although BJJ has a uniquely effective method of training on the ground, that does not mean going to the ground is always a good move, even for a BJJ practitioner. Its an obvious point for people on this post, but perhaps not for other grapplers. But just go to YouTube. Search street fights. Of course not, but I never claimed such a thing to begin with.

Good call there Mr. This was common with folks who trained in just BJJ back in the day. But the MMA trained fighter on his feet whose first instinct in a clinch is to take you is very much a modern reality.

Thanks for the post. Just wanted to add to your observation about seeing fights on CCTV etc. I to have observed the MMA nature of what you see, regardless of training or lack of, across ages and genders. As you say, the pervasiveness of it in society has changed how people approach fights, or what they think a fight should be. Thanks for stopping by Jonathan.

MMA has been creeping into movies and TV shows too for the last decade or so. You can hardly see a fight scene or an action movie without some grappling and BJJ-like moves in it. It was a long read ….

But worthwile!!! First: I live in the Netherlands and over here Kick Boxing is still the most popular fighting system. Allthough MMA is gaining ground. The US had full contact karate as kickboxing, skipped kickboxing moistly and just as muay Thai started gaining ground, MMA came along.

Like a three-year old kid, I want all the tools! Hi Wim, Yes, you'[re right. I call it mental inertia. Do you need to be FB friends with him to see it? Has he posted it on his website, perhaps? Wim, This a great post and goes along with what I see as a Police Officer. We go to the ground as a result of effecting an arrest and placing the suspect in cuffs, to control the situation.

I am not sure if you have seen this article by Chris LeBlanc — Going to the Ground: Lessons from Law Enforcement — but it gives a few stats on this topic. This maxim is thousands of years old and is found in all systems designed for mortal combat, from the ancient Greeks to the United States Marine Corp Martial Arts program. While we can yet stand we remain viable human beings. When we can no longer stand we are wounded or dead.

And most of our guys would be out of their element not to mention to out of shape to be effective, sad to say. I did not see the comment from Marc on his FB page so I hope I have not restated what he may have shared. In any case thanks for you insights! Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I read the article by Chris LeBlanc a while ago when somebody pointed it out to me.

Good stuff. I agree with Mr. Rosenbaum: when your life is on the line which you should assume it is every time you have to defend yourself outside of a competitive event , going to the ground is the last thing you want to do. I believe this is just as relevant for LEOs like you say. Well, it depends on who you mean. For the other guy, it was just stupid. That said, fighting a police officer who arrests you is by definition a bad idea. Isegoria From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small.

Sunday, September 29th, What percent of fights end up on the ground? Ezra says:. September 30, at pm. Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Search Search for:. Sam J. McChuck : The proper argument is for Leonidas to shank Pericles, before Pericles has him declared outlaw for existing while opening the gates to invite the Persians in. Politics is war by other means. Common ground. Maybe China and the US could work on this jointly?

Harry Jones : Success provokes malignant narcissists. When the powerful feel threatened, the Mandate of Heaven is in play. Harry Jones : Existential Comics tries to do this, but not always this well. The failure to see eye to eye is a mere symptom, not the core problem. Politics is what you get when dialogue fails.

War is what you get when politics fails. This is simply competing by alliances and wars when you cannot beat them commercially. This should, of course, be considered alongside broader questions about the goals of one's training.

One's training time might be allocated differently depending on whether you are training for basic self-defense , or for comprehensive self-defense , or for self-improvement, military training, or another purpose.

Reason itself is structured with forms of experience and categories that give a phenomenal and logical structure to any possible object of empirical experience. A lot of the sources from which people draw that "most fights go to the ground" are fatally flawed in one way or another. UFC fights are not like real world engagements.

Your priorities in a UFC fight are to win the mutual engagement, your priority in a real world engagement is frequently to not be there as expeditiously as possible at least if you are practicing self defense.

The LAPD data involved law enforcement officers in a state with a three strikes law where the "end of the fight" parameters, goals, and priorities are very, very different from self defense situations.

In a self defense situation, your goal is to get away. In an encounter with a law enforcement officer the officer's goal is generally not to escape the scene, but to subdue to the individual in question, which may very well involve going to the ground as a matter of training. It's also important to reflect that what happens to get to the ground in a real world situation is not necessarily equivalent to what people think of when they talk about this in the context of ground fighting.

As I saw pointed out once: "just because someone—especially the loser—ended up on the ground, doesn't mean that the fight ended up there. I don't know that there is good data on this out there that I would trust for evaluating self defense scenarios.

More subjectively, however, the US Marines have this to say on the topic :. Marines should avoid being on the ground during a close combat situation because the battlefield may be covered with debris and there is an increased risk of injury. However, many close combat situations involve fighting on the ground. The priority in a ground fight is for Marines to get back on their feet as quickly as possible.

Its less biased to study CCTV than MMA for scientific results, because MMA involves many moments where wrestling is stopped at the end of rounds and players are even stood up from wrestling to encourage a knock out, especially in endurance wrestling when they are tired. MMA is also semi nude with lower hand agility due to gloves, when clothes facilitate wrestling and takedowns. The fighters are trained in knock outs and kicks which also makes a standing knock out more likely than in ordinary humans.

Most submission involve breathing and neck strain, the other percent are arm and leg submissions. In my experience, 90 percent of MMA fights involve one player attempting to overpower and surmount the other by wrestling, and less than 5 percent of fights have two strikers, neither of whom attempt to wrestle.

That is why 50 percent of fighting time is on the ground, actually 75 percent of them involve considerable incidents wrestling contests with both players grounded, and 95 percent of bouts have serious attempts of manhandling to topple over the other contestant. You could also look at a collection of fight videos on video sites that make light of people's misfortune I'd rather not even name them, and certainly won't link. How likely depends on the skills and the goals of the people involved in the fight - outside of competition I prefer not to have my fights escalate, and prefer to negotiate an end to it in the clinch.

In competition certain fighters have had significant success keeping their fights standing most of the time - which required deliberate effort and training to be able to do it. It gets a bit murky when you look at how much time of a fight is spent on the ground, as some fights have some brief moments of ground fighting while mostly standing back up, or the ground component is the tail end of the fight.

As for the reason for asking this question, I would presume that it would inform someone on what they might want to focus on training. For that, ground fighting is most definitely prevalent enough that if you're concerned about getting into a fight at all, you should be concerned about that fight going to the ground, and should learn how to fight on the ground.

In that context, it has been my experience that, yes, most fights do end up on the ground. Most people aren't trained fighters and its just not likely that two people are going to stand at range firing off strikes.

What tends to happen is that either someone lands a hard blow sending the other person to the ground, or they close the distance and end up doing some rudimentary form of take-down usually closely resembling an American football tackle , or clinching and wrestling each other to the ground. Obviously this is highly anecdotal and doesn't take into account regional differences, the backgrounds of the people fighting, etc etc etc but that has been my experience.

The issue you could encounter with police data is that LEO's will often take the person to the ground as a control measure depending on the situation. Could a fight go to the ground? Yup, this is why as part of self-defense training everyone should know tactics to try to keep the fight standing going to the ground against multiple opponents is generally not a good choice , how to perform a tactical standup from the ground, and what are the common attacks from the ground and what are the counters.

I'm one that prefers the striking arts but still do some practicing from the ground. Most people are surprised as to how much power you can still deliver with a strike from the ground. The bottom line is that people are only barely suited for upright bipedal locomotion, are generally top-heavy, and clumsy.

This means we fall over. Falling over rates will increase when being beaten or trying to avoid being beaten. People also tend to hold, out of instinct, which makes staying upright a pain. You should really never ever be taken down. Train well and hell if it still don't work you should keep your martial art but adopt better grab defence. Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Is it true that most fights end on the ground? What is the evidence? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 3 months ago. Active 2 years ago. Viewed 11k times. Improve this question. Great question.