biting

[Hitman]

Dear all,
I was reading a newspaper last week. It mentioned that a drunken man fighting with another man outside a chip shop after 1am in the morning. During the fight he got both of his legs bitten and they were covered with blood. He ended up in a hospital.

My question to you is how do you stop a determine opponent bite you and remove some part of your flesh when you are very close to each other, e.g. when you are wrestling with each other.

Biting is used in the horse fist kung fu, JKD and street fight. One of my colleagues saw some one bitten off a guy's nose several years ago on the street.
The wife of the founder of the Guardian Angle stated in one of her books that she was about to be rape by three people after recieving a serious beating. She escaped the rape by bitten one of the rapists' private part. She lost conscious afterward and ended up in a hospital.

Thank you

[Black Jack II]

Same tactic one uses with dogs, never automaticaly pull out as that creates a tearing, push into the mouth instead to get a opening and help relieve pressure.

[BruceSteveRoy]

if a person ever bites you you should never pull what ever he/she has bitten away. the teeth are angled inwards so they will anchor if you pull out and you will increase the chances of it removing somethign or doing serious damage. the best thing if you can is to push into the mouth putting pressure on the corners of the jaw with whatever is being bitten and hook the nose with your fingers and wrench it upward (in the direction of the forehead). this causes the top of the jaw to release and will allow you to more safely extract whatever is in his/her mouth. also if you are ever bitten be very careful to disinfect the area since the mouth is extremely dirty and full of bacteria.

[Ben Gash]

Yeah, fishook, eye gouge, or attack the presure point behind the mandible, all while pressing into them. Give them something to worry about other than hanging on.

[GeneChing]

I've been bit. It's very hard to resist the instinct to pull away. I had been teaching bite counters for years, but it took a critical moment for the rational mind to conquer the reactionary one. You got to push in to force the jaw open. As soon as you feel the release, get out. If you pull, they get that chunk of flesh and that's a major dirty avulsion. One of my buddies got a huge bite and contracted cellulitus. Very nasty. It took him over half a year to recover.

I should note that you really feel violated after being bitten. It's totally unlike being wrestled to the ground or punched in the face. There's just something primal about being bit that messes with your head for weeks after the incident.

[Kung Pao]

I'd be to affraid to bite someone. What with diseases and such. BUt who knows, if I were in a major jam, it might be a valid reaction.

Had a friend in security who got bit by a shoplifter. When the shoplifter was being interrogated by police, he said he was HIV positive. My friend was very unstable over the next six months, b/c he was undergoing treatment. He didn't contract anything. Scary, though. Very scary.

[Ben Gash]

Hepatitis B+C are your worst fears with bites. Fortunately you're unlikely to get HIV from a bite.

[5Animals1Path]

What if they've got a fleshy part that can't be pushed in to open the jaw?

When I first started training, I was overconfident in my grappling skills, and let a guy I'd gotten into it with get his face pointed at my chest while I had his arms pinned in what was basically a bear hug. Well, short story shorter, he bit down, hard. I've still got a scar on my right pec from it. The only reason he let his bite go was because I freaked out and started wailing on his head. This is the single event I've looked back on and not seen a better way of having gone about it.

[Lee Chiang Po]

In 1974 I was working as a social director in a night club. That is nice for bouncer. I was having to deal with a small man that was extremely agitated. I put my hand on his shoulder and sort of moved him away from a person he was trying to aggress and he turned and bit into my left arm. For a second I was taken by total surprise by his action and when I tried to push him away he just bit on down harder. I pushed him backward into a table and pushed backward over it and slammed my right hand into his throat repeatedly until he dropped. He was in real serious condition in the hospital for several days. I was slamming him on the left side of the wind pipe, and had I stuck him in the wind pipe he would have died. On another occasion a gentleman bit my right hand. I could not get him off so I got a grip on his lower lip with my left hand and tore it off. He let go real quick like.
It has been my experience that when you end up in some sort of fight your opponent will not be some sort of martial arts expert. He is not likely to have any fighting skills to speak of. And in my case most were drunk and fairly easy to handle without having to hurt them. But, there are times when you might have to get serious. In such cases you have to be commited to extreme violence.
An example was when I was leaving work early one night and a fairly large man attacked me. He had been extracted earlier during an altercation and didn't want to drop it. By the time this took place he had sobered up some. He was not skilled except that he was strong and in very good condition compared to myself. When he jumped me it was from behind and he got in a couple of good licks before I was able to turn. I took a few more licks from him but managed to get hold of his right hand and arm. I then rushed and crowded him as I forced him backward against the wall of the building. I had his right arm pulled across his body and my left hand on his face. I was locating his eyes. Suddenly my hand stiffened into a weapon and I slammed my fingers up to the large knuckles into his eye. As I did this I then slid my hand across his face and cupped my palm heel under his nose and quickly stiffened my hand and arm into his nose. Blood was everywhere then. This took it all out of him, but I went to work on him good then. He had really large lips, and I rolled them into my right hand and gave them a hard squeeze and a hard pull until he went down.
If you go to a lot of trouble learning to defend yourself properly, you need also to harden your weapons. Your hands can be deadly if you use them right. To start with, it is not difficult to harden them into weapons. I used and still do use a 5 gallon bucket of clean sand. Just lay your hands flat on the sand and instantly stiffen them and drive them as deep into the sand as you can get them. Do it left, right, left, right, until you have them so stiff that you can drove them to the wrist and you have a dangerous weapon. I also use little smurf balls to strengthen my grip. I concentrate only on the last three fingers of the hands when using the smurf balls. The beauty of this system is that you can fight 3 people in a phone booth. You don't have to be able to jump and kick 6 feet into the air or do all those fancy movements you see on tv. You have to be a perfect physical specimen to be able to do all that stuff and it is not realistic. It is all coriographed like a dance.

Po

[Meat Shake]

Last time my dog bit me I bit her back.
I got fur in my mouth.
*****.

[Hitman]

Dear all,
Thank for all your replies.

In the late Sifu Kwan Tak-hing's 10 animal styles - horse fist. He taught his students to bite their opponents' throat during the fight. He was the actor who played the role of Wong Fei Hung from 60-80s.

[Valhalla54]

While biting is one hell of a good defense technique, I think it would only be appropriate in a life or death situation. With all of the diseases out there, the risk is just too high unless your attacker puts you in a life threatening situation.

[BraveMonkey]

I would agree that you don't want to bite anyone unless you absolutely have to, because of disease and because it often leaves you somewhat "blind" to have your face pressed against your opponent. When I do self-defense seminars for women I encourage bitting if:

1. You are being choked from behind and can get manage to turn your head enough to get some flesh.

2. The attacker is forcing part of his body into your mouth (tongue, lips, genitals).

3. Any situation where you have no other freedom of movement and further harm is eminent.

I do warn them of the dangers of biting, but I also encourage them to use all the tools at their disposal. The average woman who is attacked is not in a "brawl" but has been overpowered by a sexual agressor. Strong fingers go a long way against the softer parts of the human face/body, but biting is not out of the question. The most important thing is that anything you do to fight off your attacker is sincere and done with complete conviction. Biting isn't going to help if you don't do it as hard as you can (tearing away tissue if possible) and getting the hell out of there as soon as the opening presents itself.

[Jaima]

I would say that biting is a last ditch effort to win a losing fight if the aggressor is trying to bite, but depending on the position of the fight I would definitely be ripping the eyeballs out of their sockets.

[Samurai Jack]

Biting an opponent isn't going to win you the fight unless you do enough dmagae to get the guy to submit, such as taking a nose or an ear. This can backfire just as easily as succeed though, because human jaws are not particularly well suited to the task of cutting and tearing flesh.

I was restraining an out of control client once (by myself, a big no-no that almost got me fired), when homeboy bit my right ear. I calmly told him to release his grip, I wasn't going to let him go anyway, and he'd be in more trouble than he already was... etc. etc. My partner rounded the corner at that moment, saw what he was doing to me, and went completly berserk. She started slamming dude's head into the concrete over and over until he let go (actually I think she gave him a few extra ones for good measure). Unfortunately he didn't let go very quickly so we both got a bit of a head banging! My partner was usually the sweetest lady too, so good at talking people down, building rapport, and she'd usually be the last one to jump in if a restraint became necessary. She took one look at that though, and later told me she felt like she wanted to kill him.

The point of this war story? Biting A) isn't a great way to win a fight, and B) is a great way to escalate an encounter to the point that even a gentle bystander will want to kick your head off.