I've had MMA-trained dickheads have a go at me. I was working as a roadie, driving a van and loading equipment after club closing. That's a job where you're constantly surrounded by coked-up drunks who've just left the club at 2 AM and now they're hanging around the backdoor. And being asked to please not sit in the open back doorway of the van while I'm trying to move a massive speaker cabinet into it seems to be interpreted by some knobheads as an invitation to fight. It's not that, I just want to haul the equipment back to the lockup so I can go home. I always ask nicely, but that's lost on people full of alcohol and Charlie Sheen.

Guess what? The ground game's different when you land on tarmac instead of a mat and someone then grinds your face into it.

And you're not going to be paying attention to getting your chokehold set up when someone's got a thumb in your eye and the other hand crushing your nutscack. And with street situations, you don't know how many opponents there are (I wasn't the only person in the crew), you're not matched by weight class or experience (I'm not a small guy and trained hard for a few decades), and (unlike any form of MMA) there really are no rules. Well, I have one rule: a fair fight is one in which I don't get hurt.

So hopefully this training will make these goons more inclined to do things that will get them into trouble, instead of just roughing up civilians.