Never underestimate your opponent. They may only need one chance in order to get the best of you. I’ve had to be reminded of this a few times. A major rule of Kajukenbo is, ‘Expect your opponent to be better skilled than you and to have a friend.’ If you go to the ground and your opponent has a friend then you just put yourself into a worse position. Allowing yourself to go to the ground in a street fight is very dangerous. I’ve looked at opponents and assumed that since I outweighed them by 40 lbs. and I had more experience than they did, they couldn’t possibly get the best of me.
These instances have been grappling matches and although I like to work on grappling, I’m not a grappler by any means. I have some wrestling and Judo background and have also had some training with a friend who is an expert in jiu-jitsu.
Starting out these matches, I figured I would just let my opponent do whatever they wanted but I wasn’t really taking them seriously at all since they were usually little sparring matches with my students after class was over. It turned out that in two instances, my opponents jumped at the chance and about made me tap out in the first 10 seconds. Luckily in both of these situations I was able to work myself out of the hold and eventually win the match. It was very close though. I was reminded of the rule each time.
On another occasion I was not so lucky. I had been working with a student after class on sparring and grappling. When working on grappling I would show him after each round points where he could have created opportunities or just hold on a little longer and not be fooled by me acting like I wasn’t feeling the lock or choke. He listened better than I expected him to, and after not too long used those lessons to beat me. I hadn’t expected him to learn quite so fast.
I made no excuses for myself in losing though. A win is a win. The experience gave me a wake-up call and gave both of us an opportunity to work together to develop each of our skills. I have grappled with them since and was able to win the match because I haven’t allowed myself to make the mistake again of underestimating them, regardless of their size or level of experience.
