Ron Saturno - The Secret to Surviving Fights

"Manong Angel, what is your secret to surviving fights?"

Angel Cabales took a slight pull on one of his endless cigarettes with its signature long, hanging ash and then answered, "I never hesitate."

I watched Angel Cabales smoke an endless chain of cigarettes. There was "always" a really long ash, at the end of his cigarettes. He could walk, talk. gesture and fight with this ash hanging off of the end of his cigarette and it would never break off and fall! Sitting here typing: I wonder if the ash, at the end of the cigarette, which was in his mouth, at the time I asked my question: Was attached to "the" cigarette, which gave him lung cancer.

No hesitation. This is the current military doctrine of the United States military. Should our country find the need to put our troops in harm's way: We go in country with overwhelming force and attempt to literally pound an enemy into submission, quickly and decisively. It works quite well for the U.S. military and obviously, worked quite well for Angel Cabales. Killing everything which moves in combat and letting God pick out the good ones from the bad ones, really does have a certain amount of survival value, but is this what I am teaching my students? I am not talking about indiscriminate killing, of course. But, what is the message I'm sending my students? Angel Cabales never taught this, but do I?

This all started while sitting down before an event with my girlfriend and we were eating a home made Mexican breakfast. She can't do the homemade tortilla thing, but does everything else very well. She may give me an honorary Mexican certificate. I love Mexican food so much. I don't know what we were talking about, but out of nowhere she said,

"No honey, all you talk about is killing when you teach. Kill this, kill that and exactly how to get it done, quickly and efficiently."

Wow! Me?,

"Yes you."

Really? Really.. I gave up! What the hell?

So? Am I a natural born killer, or did I acquire the taste? Are people with natural killing tendencies drawn to certain occupations? Navy Seals, Force Recon. Rangers, Green Beret, Para Rescue and even Martial Arts Instructors, as well? Are we constructed differently than other people? Is my life long fascination of "all" things martial, not a hobby at all: But a calling? Something had to keep me going for almost fifty years now. Was it because I was testing the envelope of killing efficiency? Until the conversation with my girlfriend over breakfast: I thought that I was just another Instructor. So a while back my girlfriend taped a training session in the living room, which my student and I were putting up on Youtube. Off camera: I was closely detailing to my student, a variety of ways to insure killing efficiency. Passing info to my student, which quite frankly, would have sounded lurid, to a casual listener. On the surface: I appear to be an average man. Not much of anything would give me away as anything other than quite normal. It appears that I was cut from the same cloth as my teacher. I do believe that there are men who are natural born killers. There are men who can be trained to fight efficiently. But, if we take a natural born killer and teach that man to kill efficiently: We can make a whole completely other type of animal. Most of the time these men may live a completely normal life. They are not Sociopaths. They are men who were born with a genetic propensity.

Which are you? It might be interesting to take a deep, hard and honest look into yourself.







Other articles by Master Saturno:

• Basic Movement Theory
• Basics in Defense
• Basics of Serrada
• Freight Training! (Body Alignment & Power Transfer)

Notes

My deepest gratitude to Master Ron Saturno for his kind permission in allowing me to repost his articles to my site. Photo Credit:  Source pic - Master Ron Saturno.

You can contact Master Ron Saturno via:

Email:  5masterserrada@gmailNOSPAM.com (take out the "NOSPAM")
Phone:  209-513-8027
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/ron.saturno