By John Wang from: http://www.emptyflower.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=Xing;action=display;num=1069243047;start=60

"It looks like the famous subject "Bitting vs Grappling" has been re-visit here again. I can tell that we have a lots of grappling experts here but not many bitting experts (with proper bitting training).

I did use bitting to defeat somebody much bigger than me when I was mounted on the ground in my 1st grade (5 years old). That was the first successful fighting in my life. Of course, that person was not any mounting expert but I wasn't any bitting expert either. Not every one has proper defense against bitting and that's the advantage.

Try to break a dog's leg before it bites you is not that easy. Why? Because dog uses bitting as it's first priority. Bitting is just like punching vs throwing, one may have a chance to throw but he punches instead. One can never develop any throwing skill if he treats punching as higher priority than throwing.

Can we all go to our school and do some survey on this. Get 10 pairs of grapplers in 10 rounds and see the result percentage whether the bitting has better succeeding ratio or the grappling? Of course we don't have to go all the way and draw blood, just examine the option here? If you have never tried bitting on the ground then it will not be fare to say that bitting is not effective.

Please treat bitting as your highest priority. When you go down to the ground, please use your teeth before you use your hands and legs. That is, treat the bitting as the "only" ground technique that you have. Can you sink your teeth into his flesh before he get a lock on you? or vise-verse?

Could we all share the survey result here instead of debating on this subject to death?"

What do you think?

Another quote:

"Punching on the chest is different from punching on the head. Bitting on the leg is different from bitting on the finger.

I have seen a fighting stop right at the moment that one's finger got bitten off and spitted off from the other person's mouth. The blood rushed out of that broken spot. That spot suppose to have a finger attached to it but it's not there any more. It's a wierd feeling when you see something is missing from your hand. It used to have 5 but it only has 4 now. I don't think it's the pain stop that fight. I think it's the shocking and also realize that he would have to live for the rest of his life without that finger (not pretty and that's for sure). Also, he may realize that if he stopped that fight and found his broken finger and went to hostiple on time then he might still have chance to put his broken finger back. He lost his desire to continue that fight.

I don't know about your guys. But if I have a broken elbow or shoulder, I may still have chance to fix it later. If I lost one of my finger then I just have to live the rest of my life without it. Have seen one UFC fight, one guy's arm was totally in a reverse position but the pain did not stop him. The referee stop that fight. Losting a limb could be different.

It's OK to be killed (you won't care after that any way). It will be terrible to have one of your arm been chopped off and live without it for the rest of your life.

How many of us would have the guts to say, "If you chop off my head, it's just a scar no bigger than the rice bawl and 30 years later I would be another tough guy some where on this planet". Losing any body part is unpleasant even a little finger.

May be we should change subject. This subject is getting into too violent and uncomfortable. There are other subjects that's more civilized and pleasant to discuss.

CMA is for "health" only! Amen!"

Another good post this time by Celebrus:

"Not to take either side in the whole "grappling vs. biting" issue, but the several times I've been taken to the ground in real life (against drunken Airborne Infantry soldiers) and in training (against a forrmer college wrestler and against a Judoka) I didn't use any ground grappling myself. In one case (the Judoka) I drove my fingertips up into his armpit, in the other cases I grabbed the testicles and squeezed. In all cases the guy was off me & I was back on my feet rather quickly (Judoka & wrestler complaining loudly about "dirty" fighting, the others just cursing me loudly). Such tactics may not always work, but they've kept me from getting messed up a few times (though I admittedly don't go around getting into brawls with Brazillian Jiu Jitsu champions either ). T."

I once bit a guy on the fist, right after I had pummeled his feet with my face and smashed his knee with my ribs. Boy, I would have hated to be in HIS shoes!

Seems like a pretty risky option, considering the type of blood pathogens we have these days, mainly HIV.

When I was a kid I bit an opponent in the chest during a fight, he was so surprised he stopped fighting. (though I was called 'dog' for months afterwards.

Anatomy of a Streetfight by Paul Vunak has an interesting chapter on biting, techniques and training.

What you miss by isolated quoting of Master Wang, (one of the best Shuai Chiao guys in the States, for those of you not in the know) is that he specifically TRAINED that technique. You can't expect to make biting work against a trained grappler on the ground without both grappling skill to avoid getting taken down badly (hence Master Wang's Shuai Chiao) and sheer bloody minded-ness and necessary jaw strength to do the act in the first place. After all, some half-assed love bites to a BJJ guy's chest is not going to do anything-- taking a finger off will.

Also what was missed by the selective quoting was the difficult training involved in getting the jaw strength to do this. Sure, Master Wang and the late Grandmaster Chang Dong Shen have done this sort of thing, but I doubt anyone outside of Master Wang and Chang Dong Shen's other living students can pull this off against a top-notch grappler. There's too many variables, there's not enough training, and let's face it-- most CMA guys only act tough on message boards. The fact of the matter remains that it's not a high-percentage technique for 9/10 of CMAs, regardless of what fantasies people like to tell themselves.

As was already mentioned before, I don't want to mess with communicable diseases either, so I think it's best to just learn some rudimentary ground work.

Then again, I'm just a lowly Shuai Chiao man, so what do I know, eh?

I once saw a martial arts documentary on tv in which some Vietnamese-American was demonstrating the throws in the art that he was a master of (can't remember the style -- not one of the mainstream hard-styles) and he was quite spectacular in his throws, as demonstrated on a willing student, anyway.

The technique that has stuck in my mind after all these years was when he stuck his hand in the student's mouth and threw him by using the lower jaw as the gripping point.

Now, the first thing that came to my mind at the time was "bite down" as the teacher hadn't bothered to do much in the way of distracting/softening-up his pretend victim. However, as throwing is hardly my area of expertise, I would like to ask for opinions on this throw -- is it as stupid as it looks/sounds .... or could it possibly work and, if so, why (element of surprise? weakness in the jaw structure?)?

One of the legal grips in a Shuai Chiao tournament is throwing off the throat, but I've never played with a mouth grip. That might have been the control hand and the real fulcrum of the throw might have been from the hip or elsewhere... If that was the case, then it might not matter how strong the jaw joint was for the the throw as you're just using that area to twist and guide the head down. But there always is the problem of biting, which is why a throat grip is a better one, depending on the throw.

Essentailly, I'd say it's not going to be a very strong grip unless you've got extraordinary strength, or the real balance of the throw is elsewhere and you're just guiding the throwee into a nastier fall. But, I'd actually have to see the throw to comment definitively.

Thanks for the comments.

I must say that I can't remember much of the technical nature of the throw itself as I was mesmerized by the way that the student had let his teacher literally put all of his fingers into his mouth so that "master's" grip was actually between the teeth as well as gripping the underside of the jaw.

We call that hold a "fish hook." Index finger in the mouth and thumb outside hooking the jaw. You can't bite down. Easy to get into if you use pressure points around the mouth.

The concept of grappling is simple: If you want control, you must take away the space. If you want to escape, you must first make space. One method of creating space it to use biting, gouging or pinching. You will not win with these techniques, but it can offer an opening.

"After you bite...then what do you do?"

Also, whoever is in control at the moment can also bite you. Even if he has never bitten before, all it takes is for you to bite him and he will not only have a dominating position...but he can bite you also.

Have biting in your arsenal, BUT LEARN HOW TO FIGHT ON THE GROUND FIRST!