Were you one of those guys who took Tae Kwon Do or Karate lessons as a kid? Did you learn to break little boards with your fist, and dream of becoming the baddest man on the planet?
Well, consider your dreams shattered like so many bones. There are martial arts taught around the world that are designed to break people, not boards, and you've still got some learning to do, kid.
Starting with...
Country of Origin: Russia
Russia is a country with a history of diverse, if not incredibly numerous, invaders, having been attacked by the Mongols, the Huns, the French, and the Germans at one time or another. This meant the Russians had many chances to learn new ass-beating techniques, often using the martial arts from the last invader to crush the nuts of the next one.
Over time the Russians developing a particularly brutal form of wrestling on the steppes. Then during the Communist Revolution of 1917, Russian martial artists decided that man-handling, joint tearing, and bone breaking just weren't good enough for the communist Soviet people, so they modified it into sambo, which, in Russian, is an acronym for "Self-Defense Without Weapons."
They originally taught it to the Red Army and government agents, but with crime on the rise, sambo has seen a lot of use by bodyguards, who added a few extra moves like "killing your attacker with his own knife, making him look like a giant douche in front of everybody."
Sambo in Action:
Here's a sambo training session with some old bald guy with balls bigger than our fists teaching students how to make anybody who assaults you with a knife feel outrageously stupid for a few seconds before they bleed out.
We're pretty sure that on the street, the next move involves going ahead and tearing the dude's arm off.
Country of Origin: Thailand
Like many countries in southeast Asia, Thailand has been violated more times than (tranny prostitute joke omitted for being too easy). So, like the Russians, they got lots of practice at punching people to death. Thus was born Muay Thai, a.k.a. The Art of Eight Limbs. Yeah, eight limbs. Muay Thai counts the knees and elbows as separate limbs and focuses on using those "limbs" as clubs, slamming the opponent with them as hard and often as possible.
No, they don't dick around. While other martial arts have techniques called "Shifting Sands" and "Transposing Shadows," Muay Thai has techniques called "Throwing Buffalo Punch," which can take down a Buffalo in one hit. Yes, they were apparently invaded by buffaloes at some point.
The art is still practiced in Thailand today both as an awesome way of killing people and as a sport, complete with boxing gloves. However, padded fists don't help much when your opponent is breaking your face with his knees and elbows. And, while the story of Muay Thai fighters gluing broken glass to their hands is false, the wrappings they used before boxing gloves were about as soft as concrete and left deep cuts on the fighters. When boxing gloves were introduced, deaths in the ring were cut from "common" to "not common enough to be considered a crime against humanity."
Muay Thai in Action:
The most awesome story from Muay Thai comes from 1774 Burma, after the Burmese had taken Thailand (then called Siam). Nai Khanom Tom, a practitioner of Muay Thai was brought into the fighting ring so the king could see how it stood up against Lethwei, the Burmese martial art. Ten seconds into the opening match, his opponent resembled a pile of lumpy mashed potatoes and was likely crying like a little girl, right up until he got knocked the hell out by a flying knee.
However, the judge ruled that his pre-fight dance had "distracted" his opponent and overturned the knockout. Being the gentleman he was, Tom fought another nine Lethwei masters in a row with no rest until everybody stupid enough to step into the ring with him was quivering in a pool of blood, urine, and shame.
In response to this, the king of Burma openly stated that Thai people had poisonous hands. Tom was given his freedom and offered a choice of a pile of cash or two hot wives. Tom basically said that money was easy to get, but hot pieces of tail didn't fall from the sky, and off he rode into the sunrise (not sunset, as Thailand is east of Burma), banging his hot wives the whole way.
Country of Origin: United States
No military in the world sees more action in more places than the United States Marine Corps. The average marine has been in at least two combat engagements per year since 1775. As a result, the Marine Corps' close combat program has been incorporating techniques from the various countries they've killed people in, culminating in the "Marine Corps Martial Arts Program," or "MCMAP."
Among the marines themselves, though, it is known as 'Semper Fu,' which is a name even Max Fightmaster could be proud of. The modern program also teaches the use of improvised weapons, bayonets, and parts of the gun other than the bullets.
MCMAP in Action:
Before MCMAP came along, the marines had something called the LINE System (Linear Infighting Neural Override Engagement) which was invented in the 1980s. MCMAP was formed in 2001 because marines were increasingly being used in situations that didn't require them to kill their opponents, and that was the only thing LINE was good for.
Now, when you use a MCMAP move on somebody, each move typically has the option to utterly destroy whatever body part you have in your hands or just put it in excruciating pain...or both, thus leading to a kinder, friendlier Marine Corps that only sometimes kills you.
Country of Origin: Malaysia
Malaysia has always been a brutalized country. Pirates, Portuguese, the British, and even the Japanese in WWII have long seen the country as the coolest hunk of land to own in the South Pacific. That really pissed the Malaysians off. So, instead of playing France and whining about it, they invented silat, then later added in stuff they learned from all the guys who invaded them.
Are you seeing a pattern here? To get kick-ass martial arts, you just need a country that's been in lots and lots of wars.
Many martial arts gurus cite spiritual enlightenment and a quest of self-perfection as the goal of their study, but not silat. Early silat masters developed their martial art solely for the purpose of beating the piss out of invaders. The style is typically marked with a lightning quick attack style designed to close on your opponent as quickly as possible, beat the hell out of him within 10 seconds, then finish him with a hammer blow to the face, throat, or kidney.
The honor and fairness are thrown out the window in favor of fighting dirty and exploiting weakness. They even encourage nut shots. As a counter, all silat students are put through a training regimen that involves having people break bricks on your ribs and bend iron bars around your neck to build up pain tolerance.
Silat in Action:
Below is an example of one of the dirty moves commonly used in silat, as taught by The History Channel.
Yes, in one lightning-fast movement, the silat master breaks your nose and crunches your balls.
Wait, it gets worse. The most brutal version of silat is taught in the jungle by a guy who learned it by having the crap beaten out of him from the ages 7 to 10 by his master. Did we mention he spent all three years in a pitch black cave where he couldn't even see the inside of his eyelids? Unlike those Shaolin wussbags, his years of training did not teach him restraint and enlightenment, but rather how to tear the flesh off his enemies with his bare freaking hands.
There's also a weapon associated with silat, the kris. It's a wavy knife used with quick, stabbing motions aimed at soft spots on the body. Oh, also, one of the most deadly neurotoxins in the world is smelted directly into the metal and that just a scratch is enough to kill you within seconds. You pretty much have to hope the wielder accidentally stabs himself, though he could still kill you barehanded before the poison got him.
Country of Origin: The Philippines
Eskrima is the ancient Filipino art of beating the piss out of your opponents with embarrassingly small wooden sticks. For centuries, it was used by the Filipinos to beat each other senseless, but when Magellan arrived in 1521, some Filipinos decided to diversify by using it to beat foreigners senseless.
The style involves teaching a variety of lightning fast strikes, grapples, and disarming moves that are equally effective when using the traditional eskrima sticks, knives, or bare hands, the philosophy being that the lack of a weapon should never come between an eskrimador and the ability to murder people.
Also, check this chick out.
The sport of modern eskrima has two varieties. One takes place in gyms and the competitors wear full body armor with face masks and is usually decided by points. The other version takes place in cock fighting pits, where they use metal bars wrapped in a thin layer of foam rather than wooden sticks and can be decided by points, by knockout, by broken bone, or by triple disarm.
Eskrima in Action:
When peasants practiced their style of eskrima, the scrawny rice farmers would, and still do, take on a 1600 lb. water buffalo, meaning they could probably make any WWE star squeal like a little girl within seconds, an event worthy of Pay-Per-View.
One famous eskrima victim was famous explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
After he converted an entire village to Catholicism, a rival tribe attacked. After being stabbed in the face with a spear and then hamstrung, the tribe attacked with sticks and eskrima'ed him to death in a display so brutal, the Spaniards executed anybody they caught practicing eskrima for 450 years. It only survived because it was disguised as a dance. A disturbingly violent cockfight of a dance.
Country of Origin: Israel
Israel/Judea/Palestine is the most plundered, conquered, occupied, and all around screwed-with chunk of land on the face of this planet, and the Jews have been systematically brutalized by so many nations that in most parts of the world it's considered weird not to hate them. It should therefore come as no surprise to anybody that the most vicious martial art in the world originates from there.
It was originally invented in the 1930s by a Czechoslovakian Jew named Imrich Lichtenfeld to be used by Jews to defend themselves from Nazi militia, by beating the absolute piss out of them with their own weapons in a matter of seconds and then running before their screams of pain attracted any help.
In addition to a lineup of particularly brutal holds, strikes, and take downs, they teach the use of the M-16 as a melee weapon and multiple, lightning fast ways to take a gun away from an opponent and then kill him with it.
Krav Maga in Action:
The basic tenets of Krav Maga require you to assume that your opponent always has another weapon hidden somewhere on his body and both the intent and will to drag you off and torture you to death. It also encourages you to avoid dragging out a fight at all costs by breaking your opponent into multiple, small pieces and, if necessary, running away.
While basic Krav Maga requires you to take on multiple, knife wielding opponents in close quarters, as well as being able to kill anybody who tries to hijack your bus or take you hostage, there is a more advanced course, taught to the Mossad, Shin Bet, and the Israeli special forces. It teaches you how to clear a building full of terrorists with an M-16 and no bullets, as well as how to use pistols in ways that would make John Woo proud.
Without a doubt, Krav Maga is the single most compelling reason to keep your job at Blockbuster instead of taking up a life of crime in Israel. And if you still need convincing, let's just say that it's the only real martial art listed in the "see also" section of Wikipedia's entry on Gun Kata.
For more proof that foreign people are vortexes of barely controlled rage, check out The 9 Most Devastating Insults From Around the World. Or for some website names that might mean something in a foreign language, watch an ad that proves All Domain Names Are Not Created Equal.
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