Multiple attackers are very difficult to deal with. Let me tell you a story that illustrates my point.
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, my Dad is a bouncer as well as being my Sensei. He has been bouncing now for almost twenty years and has been training in the martial arts for nearly thirty years. Despite the fact that he is a couple of years shy of being sixty, my Dad is in great shape. He’s physically fitter than most of the students he trains (including me) and he has a bullish physique that makes him very strong and imposing when he wants to be.
Over the course of his bouncing career my Dad has had many, many violent confrontations with people, as you can well imagine. Hardly a night goes by when he’s on the door that some kind of incident doesn’t crop up that he has to deal with by getting physical with someone. All in all he’s not really a man to be messed with (as many have found out to their cost) in any way, shape or form.
So two weekends ago my Dad is working the door as usual. It’s a Sunday night and there are only three bouncers working, including my Dad. Sunday nights at the club are slower than Saturdays (there is usually a dozen or more men working Saturday nights) so the owner cuts down on the staff.
Anyway, half way through the night a gang of fourteen guys enters the club. They were all well known to my Dad and the other two bouncers as being drug dealers and general thugs. These were bad people with not a conscious between them. Violence was their answer to everything.
My dad and the other two bouncers knew straight away that there was going to be trouble and as it turned out the motley crew was there because they wanted revenge on the head doorman because of an incident that happened a few weeks before.
The head doorman was working that night along with my dad. He spotted the gang eyeing him up from across the dance floor and his face drained of color because he knew what was coming.
The gang split into three groups and one of the groups began to mess around by the bar, standing on top of the bar and generally creating a scene. My Dad knew it was just a distraction but he had to go over and sort it out anyway. There were four big guys waiting for him to come over. As soon as he approached they surrounded him and pinned him to the bar. My Dad looked around for help and spotted the head doorman exiting the club, doing a runner before the rest of the group could get a hold of him. The other bouncer was at the far side of the club, trying to keep control of the other splinter group. My Dad knew he was on his own.
The first punch when it came hit him on the side of the head and another connected with his jaw. He went down and the surrounding thugs proceeded to lay into him, punching and kicking him while he lay on the floor. All he could do was cover up and hope that they stopped soon.
A few minutes passed and the thugs who were beating him showed no sign of abating their attack and my Dad was helpless to defend himself. It took a complete stranger- a big guy just out for a drink with his girlfriend- to step in and pull my dad away from the thugs that were beating him, giving my Dad the chance to gather himself again.
Eventually, realising that their target (the head doorman) had left the building in fear for his life, the group of thugs left themselves.
My dad and the other bouncer that was left were obviously not best pleased that the head doorman had left them in the shit. They just looked at each other, my Dad bruised and bleeding, his face rapidly swelling, the other guy not much better. “Fuck this,” they said and they left the club, got in their cars and drove home.
The head doorman got the sack over his display of cowardice. The thugs returned the following Saturday night to offer their insincere apologies (something that happens all the time and a thing that really used to annoy me when I worked the doors) but were told in no uncertain terms that they barred for life and not to come back.
My dad still works there. Just another night at the club for him.
How Do You Deal With Multiple Opponents?
Now, given all of my dad’s experience, if someone like him couldn’t adequately defend himself against multiple opponents, how is the average person supposed to do so?
The average person (martial artist or not) has limited fighting skills, probably little or no experience with violent confrontations and therefore no hold over their fear and adrenal response. A confrontation with one aggressor would be pants-wettingly scary enough for such a person, but what about a confrontation with two or three or four or even several aggressors at one time? How is the average person supposed to handle a situation like that?
You may be thinking that such situations don’t often arise in the life of most people, and this would probably be true, especially if a person practices awareness and manages to avoid trouble most of the time. But the fact of the matter
is, if you are confronted, especially these days, it will most likely be by more than one person. The days of one on one, gentleman’s rules are long gone. Thugs tend to hang out in gangs. They like to surround a person and scare the shit out of them before rushing in all at once to attack.Even if you do manage to get the better of some thug there is a better than average chance that his mates will step in during or after the fight to finish you off.
So what do you do if you are surrounded by more than one opponent?
Before I attempt to answer that question, let me just say that there are no hard and fast rules for dealing with multiple opponents, mainly because your options are so limited. There is only so much you can do in such situations.
Tactics For Dealing With Multiple Attackers
Probably your first option, if confronted by a group of thug’s intent on doing you harm, is to run if at all possible. Run like your life depended on it, as it probably will.
The downside to running though is that you will get chased. It becomes like a hunt to your pursuers, a bit of fun to try and catch their prey and try and catch you they will.
I remember years ago myself and a friend getting chased by about fifteen guys, all intent on catching us and doing us in. They chased my friend and I for about two miles and followed us right to the door of my friends parents house where we ducked in for safety. The police eventually had to be called and the gang dispersed on seeing the squad car pull up. We had a lucky escape that night, my friend and I.
Never underestimate the bloodlust that arises within a gang. Once the first dig is thrown every one of them will follow suit and they won’t stop hitting until you are either dead, unconscious or something happens to interrupt them. The herd mentality takes over and any fears of possible consequences (like jail or possibly killing you) go out the window, replaced by the aforementioned bloodlust.
This also why trying to talk your way out of things will usually not work. A group of determinedly aggressive thugs cannot be spoken too and they certainly will not give in to your pleas for sanity in front of their mates. Bravado rules the roost here. Violence is inevitable unfortunately.
So whether you run or stay and fight, you will always be taking a risk. In such a situation you are caught between a rock and a hard place.
If you choose to stay and fight (more power to you) then it is absolutely imperative that if you want to stand any chance of survival or escape, to take the initiative and hit as many of them as you can first. If you don’t do this and you wait for one of them to take the initiative then you won’t stand a chance. You’ll get rushed and you’ll go down and there you will stay until the paramedics scrape your bloody ass of the pavement and cart you of to hospital (hopefully not the morgue).
The only real advice I can give you here is to learn to hit hard. If you can knock a couple of them out before they get a chance to act (or at least put them down) you will at least create a gap for escape or, depending on how many opponents there are, finish them off.
You could also get lucky and scare the others into not attacking. Scream and shout, posture a lot, make yourself out to be a complete psycho who isn’t to be messed with. You will gain nothing from coming across as afraid. The more imposing you make yourself, the more your opponents will think twice about attacking you. At the very least your aggression will (hopefully) fill your opponent’s with trepidation, which will knock their confidence and their attacks won’t be as effective.
When you’re surrounded it all comes down to fear and how well you can not only handle it, but conceal it from your attackers (which is obviously hard to do, given the circumstances). You can give yourself the best chance at survival by being as aggressive as possible right back at them. Their going to attack you either way, so have them attack on your terms, not theirs.
I realise all of this is easier said than done and hopefully you may never be in a situation were you have to test yourself in this way, but it is my belief that it is always better to stand up for yourself than to bow down to your opponents’ attempts at intimidation. Like I say, you are going to be attacked either way, so give yourself the best chance of survival by being a survivor, not a victim.
See this kubotan for self defense.
Further Resources
Rat Packed: Defeating Multiple Attackers in a Street Fight
Kenpo Logic “Overcoming Multiple Attackers”
