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Bat versus Nunchaku
Deadliest Warrior 5: Mafia versus Yakusa
© 2016 James LaFond
NOV/19/16
Okay. My first thought, is how does one become an Italian mafia historian/weapons expert?
“Yo, Uncle Vino, did you use the ice pick or the corkscrew on that Irishman at the spaghetti dinner?”
Personally, I have a problem with either group being regarded as warriors. Both groups did have honor codes and hierarchies so they are—despite my tastes—warrior societies.
I do think that the Yakusa would enjoy a higher “unit cohesion” factor than the mafia, based on the ethnic psychology alone.
The bat is pretty much a shit weapon against someone that can fight who is not outnumbered. In actual combat it is rarely used with full swing until after the target is disabled. Short choppy strokes are used by trained and untrand fighters as they immediately realize that the weapon pulls them off balance. It is a big man’s weapon and the guy wielding it here looks like a likely goon.
The nunchuka is a classic bullshit weapon but is hard to fight against. I am one of the few people who have fought, full-contact, no holds barred against a set of chucks and it was really tough because I could not gauge his range and he did not move them but kept them tucked. Do note that this kick boxing stud is not any better with the chucks than I am, pretty lame actually. He holds the chuckls too cose to the chain. For maximum effect you must hold the chucks like it was a stick, away from the felixibale fulcrum. The rope octegaon chucks he uses on the jell torso is what I trained on. His strikes could have got it done with the first stroke if he held the base stick near the butt. That said, this guy is a badass—any weapon in his hand against whatever the big Italian picks up is going to get it done. His shin is basically a bat, which does not identify him as Japanese purist but someone who cross rained in Muay Thai.
With firearms, among meatheads, one does have to consider the point that a Tommy gun and a shot gun are Guido user-friendly. In a way, the superior Japanese intelligence over the meatball mind is a handicap as they look for precision.
In a combat between a squad of these thugs, I have to go with the Sushi over Meatball victory because we are basically looking at Grazziano versus Robinson, a meathead going after a master.
Firearm experienced readers please comment on the virtues of these four firearms. The Japanese affinity for British firearms [the Sten] makes sense in that the Japanese pre-WWII had much admiration for the British and actually felt dirty about beating their asses, like a fighter beating his coach.
I was intrigued by the ballistic test with the pistol and skull.
The ice pick demonstration is crucial for what is the normal tone in my weapon studies, the use of everyday, jerk weapons to do in your fellow man. The ice pick might have been a screw driver, an oyster shucker a shrimp deviener.
Speaking of this ice pick, the Yakuza counter weapon is the sai, which is really an underrated weapon. Also, I have seen men carrying sais in Baltimore City. Cops do not seem to recognize them as weapons. There is a pretty, blonde bicycle boy in Baltimore who wears a backpack which has two sais attached to it, where he can draw them simultaneously in an X grab. These will go through a skull from the front.
I do like the aspect of this show that permits the weapon handler to address tactical concerns, since the demo is so weighted toward abstract damage. Insidedntally the sai was originally a rice hoe, where the nunchka was a rice flail.
Overall, the real question with criminal orgabizations is who can hold up to the government the best. I do not know what happened with the yakuza in Japan, but the mafia has faired worse than knuckle-dragging black gangs in the U.S. Rabid Latinos hold up longer than the meathead, Italian mafia. The entire history of the mafia ended with betrayal. Did the yakusa sell out to the cops like the mafia did? I do not know, but I doubt it.
Note the respect shown the older Yakusa performer by the younger, versus the “buddy” relationship of the Italian-American meatballs. I see better cohesion among the yakusa, particular in resisting the State.
Okay, the scenario:
Could I please not be the guy checking his girlfriend’s coat in at the desk?
That is all I have to say!
More than the subjects of this comparison, Episode 5 is significant primarily as a marker in the evolution of their testing methods.
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guest     Nov 19, 2016

Off topic, renegade scholars Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson were again on the Joe Rogan podcast:

Joe Rogan Experience #872

Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H5LCLljJhoyoutube.com/watch?v=0H5LCLljJho
Bruno Dias     Nov 19, 2016

i'm pretty sure all of the specialists on this episodes were/are actual gang members. especially the Yakuza martial artist.
marko     Nov 19, 2016

I doubt you'd see a mafioso in this situation

in real life. They're gangsters who use violence

to intimidate and/or punish someone weaker

than them. Someone with superior fighting

abilities would probably just be shot at an opportune

time probably in an ambush.
Jeremy Bentham     Nov 19, 2016

Yes, the "Deadliest Warrior" was an entertaining show. However, they did frequently make bizarre apples versus oranges comparisons between likewise dissimilar weapons. In this case, the ice pick versus the sai. The ice pick was strictly employed as an assassination weapon by the Mafia. The master of the ice pick for this purpose was Abe "Kid Twist" Reles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Reles)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Reles) of "Murder Inc." His method was to jam the ice pick through the victim's earhole into the brain. This was usually done from behind and frequently while the victim was seated in a car. It produced such a small wound that in a number of cases the medical examiner determined Reles' victims died of natural causes, namely cerebral hemorrhage. See the movie “Murder Inc.” (1960) with Peter Falk playing Abe Reles. 20th century Mafioso used the ice pick the same way their predecessors in Renaissance Italy used the triangular bladed stiletto. One was much were likely to find ice picks being sold at the local hardware store than stilettos mid-20th Century, so the ice pick was a natural substitution for the stiletto. Murder Inc. was notorious for its discreet assassinations at the behest of the Crime Syndicate leadership. By the late 1930's the Mob leadership had decided that street corner shootings just brought too much official heat on their organization and so came to prefer quiet hits. Like the stiletto the ice pick then excels at producing narrow and very deep stab wounds, but little else. This is superb for the purpose of quietly and neatly assassinating an unwary or restrained victim, ala Murder Inc., but I cannot see the ice pick as a first choice for a man to man fight. If one was a gangster heading out for a rumble with a rival gang I would have to imagine that an ice pick would NOT be the implement you'd grab from the kitchen drawer or off the tool bench. Now a sai, a planting tool, on the other hand makes perfect sense as an improvised weapon for a street fight. Much like grabbing a baling hook or a tire iron before rushing out to meet your rivals. Oh and yes James, the Yakusa are still around. Given the endemic oriental hive mind culture such secret Asian organizations are hard to break up or infiltrate. Members tend to remain intensely loyal to the organization and its leaders. Yakusa convicts have a very high recidivism rate. Of course once you've got the full body tattoo what else are you going to do with your life?
WellRead Ed     Nov 20, 2016

As someone who grew up in a city in which the Mafia played a prominent role, I must call BS. First, we must disregard the myth that has grown up around 'The Godfather' and the like. For a realistic portrayal of that ilk, look to 'The Sopranos'. Most Wise Guys were fat, crude, uneducated loudmouths that were extremely comfortable with violence. It wasn't that they were especially skilled, it's that they were willing to cross the line that polite society had drawn. Breaking bones, shooting people, stabbing people, and such, over the slightest provocation, is why they were feared. That and the fact that they had numbers on their side. A restaurant or shop owner faced with the prospect of his daughter being gang-raped, or his son being beaten to death (Forget all of that shit about not hurting families, they used whatever lever they could), regardless of what kind of badass he was individually, becomes very meek when the damage will be done to innocents. The Mafia has one, overriding philosophy; do ANYTHING to make money (except work). Their first, last, and only priority is to themselves. Loyalty is a commodity that can be bartered or sold.
Sam J.     Nov 21, 2016

Murder Inc. was Jewish.

I have a theory about the Japanese from reading about their culture. They seem to have a place for everyone. As long as you don't cause disruption then you can fit in your little niche in Japan. The Yakuza are not bothered much as long as they deal in a little gambling, prostitution and some drugs. If they were to start shooting each other they would be covered with police. Endless harassment. This has actually happened. There was some shootings by the Yakuza and huge police action followed. The bosses were hauled into the station and a massive stink was made. This is also the case with Men who like young girls and other weird fetishes. As long as your not hauling girls off the street then no goes out of their way to demonize you. To us it's seems strange but to them it is a way to harmonize relations and not cause a big stink. There's always going to be those antisocial. Why not find a way for them to live that causes the least harm to all involved? It's very strange. In some ways the Japanese are rigid in suppressing individualism but in other ways, tending towards the range of human behaviors, they are willing to look aside. It's very much like a close knit family where you know some of your kin are a little off but as long as they don't hurt anyone you just ignore it. In the US supposedly everyone is free an a individual but a lot of the little somewhat harmless faults of humans are either go or no go. This is hard to explain but it seems that non dangerous range of behavior in Japan tends to be more accepted where as in the US a large range of behavior is accepted but some non dangerous behavior is massively seen as unbearable and must be stopped. This is difficult to write about because it's so broad and it's hard to nail it down but I perceive a difference. I admire the Japanese a great deal. That being said even after I've just explained how they allow a greater range of behavior I couldn't live by the behaviors they do subscribe.

Maybe their morality is not based on Christianity but on general offensiveness to society and that's what makes the difference.
Jeremy Bentham     Nov 21, 2016

Good point Sam J. Yes, Murder Inc. had many Jewish hit men. Murder Inc. was the enforcement arm of the “National Crime Syndicate”, an alliance of major New York Sicilian Mafia and Jewish gangs. See the movies “Mobsters” (1991) and “The Valachi Papers” (1972) for dramatized “Cliff Notes” histories of how this came about. Lepke Buchalter, then Albert Anastasia were the commanders of Murder Inc. It is believed to have been responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings in the 1930’s and ‘40’s. Abe Reles was one of Murder Inc’s top hit men (master of the ice pick murder, as we have noted). He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Vienna Austria. A connection that might interest you Sam j. (and you too, B. LOL!) is the fact that at about the same time the families of these Jewish gangsters settled in New York, Adolph Hitler noticed that Jews controlled most of the crime and vice in Vienna. One of those things that makes you go “Hmmm…”

”Here again the streets provided an object lesson of a sort which was sometimes positively evil. The relation of the Jews to prostitution and, even more, to the white-slave traffic, could be studied in Vienna as perhaps in no other city of Western Europe, with the possible exception of the southern French ports. If you walked at night through the streets and alleys of Leopoldstadt, at every step you witnessed proceedings which remained concealed from the majority of the German people until War gave the soldiers on the eastern front occasion to see similar things, or, better expressed forced them to see them. When thus for the first time I recognized the Jew as the cold-hearted, shameless, and calculating director of this revolting vice traffic in the scum of the big city, a cold shudder ran down my back.” - Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Page.59.
Lynn     Nov 21, 2016

My Jewish great -grandmother was trafficked to South America as a prostitute by her fellow Jews. Truly august beginnings! (Don't put me on your list yet Sam J., I am only 1/8, 23&me confirmed!)
James     Nov 22, 2016

This would make a great story for Slave Nation if you were so inclined.
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