Wushu Watch: The Noble Art of the Drop Kick

Once again a video clip of a street fight, with no context, has gone viral and proven the common consensus of modern martial artists to be wrong. In addition to the traditional martial artist putting hours into a seemingly pointless technique, this clip might satisfy the professional wrestling marks out there. If there are indeed any left for whom this is 'still real, dammit', this brief snippet of video evidence will warm the cockles of their hearts.

The scene: a busy street at night time, cars cruise through a green light on the intersection in the background, there's a chain link fence in shot: it's a rough neighbourhood. One man holds the head of another who has fallen to his knees, a third man puts his boot to the fallen fighter. Like a bolt from a crossbow, a flying kick sends all parties tumbling to the concrete.

The assaulting parties are both wearing sandals, perhaps explaining the ineffectiveness of the kicks. On closer inspection the kicks seem to be directed at the buttocks of the fallen man, there may be more to this story than it first appeared. But indecision is the greatest sin and justice has no time to ask questions. Though I must concede, it's a little awkward that the downed man, who was being booted in the bottom, immediately got up and started fighting the guys who dived in, and that the guy doing the flying kick hit his own buddy first as he strayed across the sights of justice… Perhaps this wasn't a street fight as advertised, but if Internet porn has taught us anything it is that you can project your own storyline onto the title of any video and people will still enjoy it.

The important point is that the kick was legitimate, stiff, and sent those guys went flying. That is the real world power of the drop kick. Those kung fu films you remember where one kick sent some schlub flying twenty feet back? They got one thing right: that will happen with this kick. "Drop kick" is of course the professional wrestling parlance. A drop kick to those familiar with rugby, American football or Aussie rules is something altogether different, where the object for kicking is held and then dropped onto the kick to send it some distance. It might be possible to send another human careening through the air in the same way as a ball, but it would have to be a very small person and its street practicality would only extend to targeting someone on the other side of a tall building

Actual illustration from Jack Dempsey's 'Championship Fighting'. This will be important later, I promise.

At any rate, there goes another one onto the pile of 'undebunked' martial arts techniques. The MMA crew had it so good, laughing at the flying side kicks and drop kicks but now they have to eat crow once again. This comes just months after a Chinese policewoman flung a knife wielding maniac to the ground via aikido's legendary kotegaeshi—winding wrist throw.

Well, knife holding at least—I might even go so far as 'brandishing'—and he wasn't especially manic, but you can be unpredictable and static in the same breath. Perhaps the lesson is that this stuff works when you approach someone from behind, but even then it is a step up: from worthless to having its own (extremely limited) time and place. Speaking on behalf of the traditional martial arts apologists, we'll take it. It is also another win we can chalk up for Kirk.

At last we can go back to repping out our yokotobigeris (side thrust kicks) and sosokugeris (simultaneous kicks) with a hearty kiai and not feel like we are completely wasting our time. The problem is that this still seems largely useless against anyone who is actually looking at you when you try it. One of the first men to test the drop kick in mixed martial arts was the remarkably unremarkable Alexander Otsuka. Otsuka drew the short straw of being Igor Vochanchyn's warm up match in the PRIDE 2000 Grand Prix when the Ice Cold Ukranian was at the peak of his powers. Unable to take the knockout artist down in the opening seconds, Otsuka went to his pro wrestling roots (with perhaps a little dirty football in there too) and dived for a two footed kick at Vovchanchyn's shin.

But even a failed technique can have its own tactical significance. Ikuhisa Minowa and Genki Sudo both used drop kicks against the aged boxer, Butterbean in the hopes that he would flop his three hundred pound, white belt carcass down on top of them. Both submitted him.

But the fact of the matter remains that to be hit with a flying kick that requires a run up a man must be exceptionally sluggish. One would have to hope that their opponent trained with an exceptionally out of touch coach who apparently didn't believe in kicks and even then he'd have to be on autopilot to fall for it. Even the karateka practicing jumping side kicks in the 1970s realized this, so they reasoned that one should step to the side of an attack ( obviously a stepping straight punch) and leap up next to the opponent, firing in the side kick to the temple from the new angle. It may seem a little hard to picture that working, but Raymond Daniels damn near achieved one of these 'drive-by' flying side kicks in GLORY.

With a slick juke move thrown in.

Let us not fixate on the negative though, you aren't going to start hitting kicks that require a run up in sparring sessions against anyone except the clinically brain dead but after researching real life instances of kamikaze flying kicks, this writer can safely declare his surprise at the situations in which these kicks could aid the modern martial artist.

Shotokan's Secret is a thoroughly entertaining tome which posits that the most famous Okinawan karateka were bodyguards to the king. Okinawa was a weaponless kingdom since feudal times and so Shotokan's Secret examines the classical forms ( kata) of the Shuri lineage karate styles with this in mind. A lot of it reads like fan fiction, but taking the famous Chinto form ( Gankaku as it became in Shotokan), Bruce Clayton suggests that the kata's techniques seem to be laid out as if fighting on uneven ground. The old story goes that Chinto was the name of a Chinese sailor who had been washed up on Okinawa and had been stealing from local people to eat, when Matsumura—the king's chief bodyguard—went to arrest Chinto he was surprised the latter's considerable kung fu chops. Matsumura compiled the form named Chinto from the techniques that the sailor showed him. Clayton suggests that their showdown on the beach might have been affected by the uneven ground. The techniques performed facing in one direction seem to be for fighting an opponent on lower ground, techniques performed in the other direction seem to be for attacking someone on higher ground. These same techniques would also apply well to fighting on a staircase such as one of the many in Shuri castle. It's an interesting theory but it leaves the jumping double kick at the beginning of this kata pointing downhill. In Clayton's battle plan, the Okinawan bodyguards and king are either being chased upstairs or obstructed on the way down. As Clayton sees it:

"If you are blocking the stairway against a mob of attackers, one tactic is to deliberately knock them back down the steps, mowing down the people below them like dominoes[…] You could hardly do better than leap down the stairs with a jump kick, bowling over the first rank and sending them rolling down the stairs into their companions. A jump kick at a downward angle builds up awesome momentum."

It might sound far-fetched but in Clayton's defence, THIS.

Clayton continues:

Does that sound too dangerous to you? Remember, to a keimochi bodyguard victory was more important than mere survival. Shuri-te is not self-defence; it is defence of someone else.

While few people are going to lay down their life, leaping feet first into a crowd of aggressors, Clayton might have just drop kicked the nail on the head. Let us return to that ridiculous illustration from Jack Dempey's Championship Fighting: the point was that if you have weight you have power. A new-born babe dropped from a third floor window onto a hardened heavyweight might well kill the fighter. Dempsey proceeded to lay out how to transfer weight into punches—perhaps the most difficult of any strike to throw the body's weight into. If you take a run up and turn your body into a torpedo, however, you can't help but hit hard.

One of the issues with this kick is that it will throw the opponent a good ten feet away from you. In a sporting context that is not really desirable—though Robert Whittaker's use of the right front kick to both attack Yoel Romero and push him away so that he could not return with counter strikes is a nice exception. But what if you desperately don't want to be within fighting range of the other guy, but you need to move him? And this is where one of our Wushu Watch topics answers another of our common themes. Yes, the drop kick is knife defence. Our friend Martin Wheeler was on the right track with his running around and body popping away from the blade, he just had to extrapolate the idea further. The secret is to run far enough away that you can circle around and dive in with the missile drop kick into the knifeman's back. This guy was a little late to actually prevent the stabbing, but he did send the attacker sprawling across the pavement in time for another man with a big plank to come in for a bashing. Any time you want to put a couple of dozen yards between you and an opponent the missile drop kick ranks even higher than the Sparta teep and the running shoulder barge.

But with techniques of tremendous power there is a responsibility not to abuse that knowledge. Sadly the vast majority of drop kicks you will encounter are not real world, life saving techniques, but rather people just being dicks for the sake of it. If the new found legitimacy of the drop kick has elevated your mood, perhaps it is best for you to leave this article on a note of disappointment. This is why we cannot have nice things in the martial arts: