I’ve barely skimmed through the archives at “Gutter Fighting,” a compendium of articles and history about the real-world fighting style “Defendu,” but I can already tell there’s a lot of good stuff here. Defendu is the name given to a practical style of fighting developed by Lt. Colonel William Ewart Fairbairn, formerly of the British Royal Marines, who saw much police action in Shanghai in the early parts of the last century. The idea behind Defendu is not to learn discipline or gain a general fitness like many martial arts, but instead to discover the most efficient ways to defeat an enemy in close-quarters combat.
Of course, I have no idea how effective Defendu actually is, but that doesn’t prevent me from enjoying reading about the development of the theory, easy as it is to imagine a stout man with rolled up sleeves socking pajama-clad Chinese Tong gangsters in the kisser.
I’m a mark for all things involving combat. So is Gutter Fighting basically disciplined street fighting or am I taking the “Gutter” moniker a bit too seriously?
How effective is it? Extremely! Defendu is just a set of deadly tricks the idea being your enemy won’t know them all. As a quick fight stopper defendu is excellent. Gutterfighting.org is excellent and if you like what you see I would suggest http://www.donrearic.com/ and http://www.selfdefenseforums.com/forums/ as supplemental reading.
Taking the “gutter” bit too seriously? The system is primarly designed for the battlefield. The idea is to kill / maim your enemy as quickly as possible.
Fairbairn’s WW2 American student, LT COL Applegate’s book on the system is called “Kill or get killed”.
Although as I understand it Fairbairn tailored “Defendu” as a civilian self defence system, and as such, it doesn’t strictly include the subjects like silent killing, prisioner come-alongs, the use of knives and all the other things he’s rather famous for.
This is still the CQB system taught in a number of western militaries.
Defendu, as I understand it was a system that Fairburn developed for the Shangai Police. It was mostly about restraining and complaince techniques. Not to be confused with his work when he had retired and was in Britian during WWII.