Vunak's Top 50 Combat Secrets Ch. 13

Chapter 13 : The Secret to De-Fanging The Snake


When two street fighters are engaged in a edged weapons match, 99 out of a 100 times, the victor will be the person who understands “De-Fanging the Snake”. When we use this expression, the snake refers to the opponent and the fang refers to the weapon. So de-fanging the snake simply means, cutting the opponents weapon hand(once the tendons and ligaments are severed in the hand, the snake is defanged, at this point one can kill it or let it go).


Approximately 1 in 100 weapons fighters actually know and apply this principle. And if you are lucky enough to be one of those people, who know to attack the opponent’s weapon hand you will be in the 1% of people that are victorious in combat.


Lets say out of 10,000 legitimate weapons fighters, the top 1 % of these folks, all know the principle of de-fanging the snake. So that would be 100 people. Now lets say you take 1 person out of this 100, and teach this person our “flash-light” principle. He would beat the other 99 people, 99 out of 100 times.


De-fanging the snake and then applying the “flash-light” principle together will make a world class knife fighter. So by now, you must be asking your self, what in the heck is the “flash-light” principle.


Most individuals that pick up a weapon, usually hold it incorrectly(As if they were boxing). This incorrect method of holding a knife not only points your weapon directly at your own face, it simultaneously leaves your hand wide open for an attack. In order to prevent this, we point the tip of our knife directly at the opponent’s hand. Now when the opponent tries to cut your hand, he gets his own hand cut. The tip of the knife serves to protect your hand. When the opponent sees this strategy, they will cease coming in directly, and start tacking in at different angles. So in order to prevent this, we simply imagine our knife as a flash-light and we attempt to illuminate the opponents attacking hand. Where ever this opponent moves their hand, the tip of our knife follows. It is important to note, that this action need only take place at the wrist. The rest of the arm should be snuggled up and actually touching the body.


When one’s knife hand is about a foot from the body and one’s arm is touching the body, and only ones wrist is moving, continually following the opponents weapon hand, in conjunction with Mohammed Ali type of footwork, this is as close to an air tight defense that one can posses. Now out of this continual movement, combined with our flash-light principle, if we want to apply offense we simply lash-out and cut the opponent’s hand. Most of the time this is an angle 2 trajectory. That is an extremely quick snapping motion, however it is imperative that the knife returns back to the flash-light instantly. If you can picture the scene, one is way out in long-range, dancing around with foot-work like Mohammed Ali, the knife is close to the body, and moving independent of our footwork, and there is an occasional lash out at the opponent’s hand, de-fanging the snake, and return back to flash-light.


So we have footwork, faking, flash-light, and the occasional defang.


Training Drill:


After 30 years of various evolutionary training methods, I can give you the single best. Yes the bulls-eye of all training methods with a knife. Buy a laser pointer, duct tape it to your knife, spar with whomever, and log several hours keeping their hand illuminated. After several hours of this type of sparring, you will notice that your wrist appears to have a brain of its own, moving in one direction and your feet independent of the wrist will have a brain of they’re own moving in yet another direction. When two of my very top knife fighters, say Cruse and Singh, are engaged in sparring, it usually takes between 5 and 10 minutes for somebody to score 1 point. And if you think about it, putting so much emphasis on defense, is a logical paradigm when you are fighting with a razor. Welcome to the world of world class.

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Vunak's Top 50 Combat Secrets Ch. 9

Chapter 9: The Art of Defanging (the only weapons technique you will ever need)


Defanging the snake is the most underutilized and affective technique for all weapons. When a person grabs any weapon, there is one immutable constant, whether he is Chinese, Japanese, young or old, big or small, karate or kung-fu, etc... The flexor muscles must contract to grip the weapon (this movement also involves tendons and ligaments).


Once this weapon is in the hand of the assailant (say perhaps a pipe or a stick), the very tip of the weapon can be moving as fast as a 120mph. It is difficult to grab, difficult to block, even difficult to see and this is why weapons can be so dangerous.


The more we incrementally creep towards the hand, the slower the weapon is moving. As you get to the actual hand, you will find that it is a relatively slow and easy target to hit. It is important to remember here that we are talking about a real street fight. Therefore the weapons that would be applied, are heavy, hard and brutally affective, and make pain tolerance a moot point. A human being can take a punch in a fight or a kick. But from a physiological point of view, when 10, 20 or 30 bones in the hand are instantly smashed by a steel pipe. It is no longer a physical possibility to hold and retain the weapon. This same principle applies for all edged weapons. Once the tendons and ligaments are cut in the hands and wrist, it is a physical impossibility to grasp the weapon with the hand.


Therefore when two individuals are weapons sparring the $64,000 question becomes, what are the best moves, techniques, or angles to hit the opponents hand. The answer that I am about to give you, has been field tested, for 100s and 100s of years, and has been passed down from the Filipino masters that have lived through real warfare and subsequently passing down to the next generation. This technique has also been field tested through Bruce Lee, Dan Inosanto, and myself for the past 30 years. And though what I am about to tell you is extremely profound, the actual answer might be a little anti-climactic. Are you ready, here goes, the angle #2. Whatever one has in their hand, stick, knife, etc… When you smash your opponents hand using an angle 2, the odds of your success are increased exponentially (think of being blind folded and breaking a piñata, if you come straight down, you could miss vertically. If you swing at your piñata horizontally, you could miss it that direction also. However with a diagonal angle two, it is easy to see how ones odds are greatly increased).


I have personally studied the reason for this for over 20 years, and a volume of books could be written on this very subject. However suffice it to say, due to principles of geometry, morphology, and proclivity of movement, all of the aforementioned masters throughout history were right.


Once the opponents hand is smashed using our aforementioned angle 2, now other blows are meant to be delivered. These blows are geared to have more power as we call them “finishing blows”. These blows include, abenico, bacalau, upward figure 8, rodandos, and soonketees. It is very important to know that none of these strikes were meant to fight with, they are all follow-up blows, after we have defanged our opponent, using our angle 2.


In conclusion think of the angle 2, like an eye jab and a straight blast, and then think of all of the follow-up blows, like our headbutts, knees, and elbows. A smile should come to your face, as you see the formula is the same. Until next week.

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