5 Ways to Know Someone Isn't Actually a Badass

5

The Guy Who's Been in So, So Many Street Fights

A lot of times when people are talking about their badassery, they have to make a wild estimate at their fighting record. There are simply too many to count! There are several possible explanations for this. They might have something called critical incident amnesia that helps people forget awful events like getting fisted by aliens or which Tyler Perry movies they've seen. Or maybe their definition of a "fight" is being a dick to a stranger. Maybe they count it as a win when their girlfriends are too slow to dodge a plate? The thing is, most people who have been in a confrontation that escalated to physical combat know that it's like a thousand details taking a crap in your brain. You're more likely to forget someone you slept with than someone you fought. Which is only one of the reasons I like to end sex with an elbow drop.

If you're the kind of person who enters unlicensed street fights, you're either a middle schooler without a father or somewhere far away, not being that middle schooler's father. I can't verify these statistics, but it's a safe bet that if a grown man is punching people, he has a 20 percent chance of also carrying a secret knife for when he's worried he'll lose. Which means that anyone who has been in more than five street fights is lying, dead or known as the Night Stabber to baffled investigators.

4

The Guy Who Trains in a Martial Art That Requires Explanation

Not all badasses spring forth from a childhood of back alley knife fights. Some have transformed their hands and feet into killing machines using ancient Oriental magic. Or at least they're pretty sure they have.

But with all the mysticism and intrigue of martial arts, it's sometimes hard to tell if the Karate Master you're speaking with is a passionate hobbyist or a delusional douchebag. The easiest way to tell is how much he explains his fighting style before you've asked. If a guy tells you he takes krav maga and he's done talking about it, he's a normal person who enjoys krav maga. If he tells you he trains in krav maga and immediately describes the situations where he could use it like the Israeli commandos who invented it because they needed a fighting style that worked, you should feel safe using a punch to get him to shut up.

3

Guys Who Know Fight Secrets No One Else Knows

Do you know that it only takes half a pound of pressure to shatter a human kneecap and three pounds of pressure to break a human neck? Well, dumbshits do, which only makes sense because neither of those facts are real.

Guys that tell you how easy it is to kill someone with your bare hands think we are only drawing breath because of their mercy. I don't think they're right, but if they are-- thanks, generous murderers!

It's cute when people try to sound dangerous by spouting nerve cluster and ligament trivia known only to them and ninja assassins, but I never understood how people spend their whole lives bumbling around in their durable human bodies and still think they'll die if someone pulls their head really hard to the side or pokes them in the right pressure point. Was karate invented by attacking osteoporosal cadavers and no one got around to double checking the numbers? Or is it because we all watched the same action movies and know that Arnold Schwarzenegger could never lie to anyone?

2

The Guy Who Argues That This MMA Crap Is Just a "Sport"

In 1993, in about the first second of Ultimate Fighting Championship 1, I had the same thought I had during my first fistfight -- "Hold on a second, this martial arts stuff doesn't work at all like it's supposed to!" In one night of grappling, gi chokes and literally no backflip spin kicks, it became sadly clear that martial artists were sort of playing make-believe this whole time. Thousands and thousands of ninjitsu instructors suddenly had a very silly job and I realized that the elaborate karate dance I practiced to fend off a dozen attackers was only going to be useful for seducing girls.

For a long time, martial artists held out hope that word of this MMA stuff would reach a Shaolin monastery or a reclusive tai chi master and they would enter the cage and transform into a tiger. It never happened. These stupid real people fighting stupid real fights effectively killed the mystique of martial arts overnight. The UFC showed everyone that all the crap we were learning was the exact opposite of how to win a fight, and nothing bothers an insecure man like knowing that another guy can kick his ass. I don't know how it is for women, but it seems like the same feeling they get when they walk into a club and see a woman more naked than them.

So with the existence of the UFC, martial artists and douchebags suddenly had a lot of rationalizing to do. After all, how can they think of themselves as fighters if that is fighting and they don't know how to do that? Simple: The sports organization has all these rules like no biting or groin attacks, so none of those UFC apes would know what to do in a real fight! It's a desperate attempt to keep combat as this magical phenomenon that only you, the toughest guy ever, can understand. Still, is anyone honestly insane enough to like their chances against an athlete trained in punching, kicking and grappling armed only with their idea to bite him on the dick?

1

Guys Who Tell You About All the Fights They Won

Here are some karate chopping facts about me: I ended my childhood with two colored belts, I have a decade of Thai kickboxing and regular punch boxing training and I know enough wrestling and Brazilian jiujitsu that my cause of death probably won't be a headlock. Through the course of my lifetime, I have easily watched over 2,500 amateur or pro fights and posted several articles about MMA here on Cracked, and I personally wrote almost every word anyone says in the UFC Undisputed video games. I'm telling you all this about myself to establish that I'm an actual, professional expert on fighting, and yet every single time someone tells me about a fight they were in, something I've never seen happened.

Here's a true story about a fake story. I'm a typical nerd in that my fashion sense begins and ends with a T-shirt about a thing I'm enthusiastic about, and I have around 30 that say something about muay thai. Plus, I find that a Tapout shirt helps counterbalance my natural charm and magnetism. Three weeks ago, a bouncer saw the kickpunchery on my clothes and started talking about fights with me. Within minutes he told a story of how he once used ju-jitsu, which he explained was "more like grappling than fighting," to "tap out" two guys simultaneously outside a bar. And these guys were apparently huge.