March 2012 edition of Black Belt named Tim Kennedy “The Most Dangerous Man in the World.” This continues to hold true today. His MMA record at that time was 14-3; today it is 16-3.
Tim Kennedy not only has had extensive training in karate, kickboxing, jiu jitsu, and wrestling, but also has extensive H2HC (hand-to-hand combat) training and experience. Tim has been through Army Basic Training, Airborne School, the Special Forces Qualification Course, served on a counterterrorism unit in Iraq, Army Rangers Training, completed the Modern Army Combatives Program (MACP) and the Special Operations Combative Program (SOCP). He now serves as a combatives instructor in the 7th special forces group, and he’s a staff sergeant in the Texas National Guard.
In this video, mixed martial arts expert Tim Kennedy demonstrates self-defense moves that work in both military and civilian life. His main goal is to provide space between himself and his attacker using head butts and hand moves.
“During the hundreds of combat missions I went on, I never saw a guy who didn’t have at least a long gun, a pistol and a knife,” Tim Kennedy explains regarding the role of H2HC in Special Forces missions. “[H2HC] gives guys the opportunity to make space so they can get to their tools: their gun, their knife, their cuffs and so on.”
In CQE or closed battle combat, you don’t always know where your enemy is going to be. It’s tough. Unlike a martial arts competition where you always know where your opponent is and you start off with space between each other so you can assess the opponent, in real life combat, your assailant is more likely to blind side you, come up from behind unexpectedly or from around a corner.
The idea is to quickly maneuver especially with serious damage to the assailant so you can create that space between you and he. Tim recommends using your helmet to head butt the assailant. You might just knock him out, it’s that thick and heavy. If not, between the head butts, palm shots, and knee kicks to the upper torso or elbow strikes, the main idea is to get back to a space, a certain distance between you and he, so you can get back to your tools, your weapons.
When he is able to get his opponent down on the ground, he strikes the opponent in order to give himself maximum mobility for any further H2HC combat or to subdue the opponent with his tools.
“You have to have a heads-up, prepared-for-anything martial art that’s fast, dynamic and dangerous,” Tim Kennedy says. “You have to be able to do damage and then get back to the important stuff. Recognizing that, Greg Thompson developed SOCP. Now every Special Forces member trains in it.”
Tim wants to go back to an Operational Detachment Alpha team as a shooter, but others (presumably his superiors) have told him he’s better off using his 20 years martial arts and military experience as a hand-to-hand combat instructor in the Special Forces because not very many people have that skill and knowledge.
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