There are no such thing, as a dirty fight. The fact that another individual has forced you to have to engage in a physical confrontation, is a dirty thing, which gives you carte blanche, to deal with them in any way that ensures your survival – every target is game e.g. eyes, throat, groin, hair etc. and every tool or weapon is acceptable, whether it’s the bottle you’ve picked off the floor, or your teeth. The more destructive you are, the better; your job is to convince the person you are dealing with that they’re unable to do to you whatever it was they wanted to do e.g. rape, sexually assault you or punch you to unconsciousness. I was once questioned in class, as to whether when I put my thumbs in another person’s eyes, I push just “enough” to cause them to release their hold/grip of me. In a real-life confrontation, judging what is just enough isn’t feasible (many people get confused with the legal ins and outs of this – at the end of the day what happens in reality is very different to what gets debated at leisure in a court of law), you have to work to the limit/extreme – spitting, eye gouging and biting are all efficient and effective tools to use, and you need to have them in your arsenal.

I used to occasionally teach (on behalf of another instructor) a group of Polish doormen, who were a very tough set of guys, who had good solid martial arts backgrounds, and were also gym nuts who weighed in at around 250 lbs of solid muscle. In one session, one of them grabbed me in a bear hug, and just held me. His grip was so tight that I couldn’t even move my hands to strike his groin – if you are a practitioner who believes that is always possible to reach the groin, eyes or other vulnerable spot etc. whilst this is more often or not the case, it is not always (also if the crotch of the jeans is hanging low, striking the groin isn’t always effective). My only attacking option, was to bite him; as soon as my teeth closed on his chest, his grip released. Most people’s default response to being bitten is to try and pull away. In terms of creating space, biting is one of the fastest ways to achieve this end. It also sends a clear message to your attacker(s) of where your head is and what you are prepared to do – and if it is more low down and dirty, than what they were prepared to do, or what they thought the fight would look like, you’ve just scored a great psychological blow.

In the dojo or training environment, we often train not to be “that guy”; our goal is not to cause pain with every grab and touch we make – if we are training many repetitions of the technique we don’t want to injure our training partner (and this is a good thing – if every time we practice a technique our partner gets hurt, they will start altering the way they “attack”, in order to protect themselves, and their attack will soon be unrealistic). However in reality, every time we touch somebody we should be causing them pain; we should be that guy who drags the elbow across our face when we’re on the ground, we should be the person who throws in the liver shots when we’re in the clinch, we should be grabbing and ripping flesh, and raking the eyes at every opportunity. We should look at how we can make our studio techniques dirtier and rougher; in training when I bridge somebody from mount, I push there ribcage, on the street I garb their love handles, and try to rip their flesh from them as I bridge etc. My escape from this position, is not just an escape it’s an opportunity to cause pain.

You should also look to train when somebody is causing you pain and discomfort (not every session – but it should be part of your training). If you don’t practice gun disarming, when somebody is striking you with the gun as they make their threat, jabbing it into your forehead, you may find yourself being unable to perform your standard disarms if this occurs in a real-life situation. Just as you should think about, your “dirty” fighting options, you should be prepared to deal with an aggressor who’s handling the situation in the same way.

As you train such “dirty fighting” techniques, don’t become solely reliant on them – there will always be a pain resistant assailant who simply doesn’t care – you still need to develop solid fighting skills, abilities, and attributes that will enable you to deal with those attackers who don’t respond to your thumbs in their eyes etc. The Krav Maga and Reality Based Self Defense community is full of instructors and students who believe groin strikes are a silver bullet, they are generally effective, but there are times when they aren’t; if the only solution you have to escape a hold or control is based on pain, then recognize you might find yourself in a situation, where your technique/solution is not effective. If you already have an effective solution and add pain to it, then you have a much better chance of success.