"Get tough, get down in the gutter, win at all costs... I teach what is called ‘Gutter Fighting.’ There’s no fair play, no rules except one: kill or be killed."
William Ewart Fairbairn is one of the most badass martial arts masters the world has ever seen. In addition to developing the basis for the martials arts systems used by cops and special forces across the globe, he also invented the SWAT Team, came up with the idea of riot police, invented the police officer's tactical bullet-proof vest, and created the knife that was used by the SAS, Army Rangers, and Marine Raiders in World War II. He also survived over 600 non-training street fights in his lifetime as a police officer and was allegedly covered from face to ankle in scars from knife wounds he received in life-or-death battles with dirtbag criminal scumbags on the streets of Shanghai.
Fairbarn was born in 1885 in Hertfordshire, England. As a young man he spent his spare time reading newspapers to his blind neighbor, at fifteen he took a job as a leather worker, and the day he turned sixteen he saw a recruitement poster for the Royal Marines and decided, fuck it, I'm going to enlist.
Unfortunately for Fairbairn, the enlistment age was eighteen in England at this time, but apparently his recruitment officer didn't give a shit – he forged the documents to allow Fairbairn to enlist, the young teenager went through one of the most brutal basic training courses offered by any military in the world in 1901, and was immediately shipped out to a British Marines station in Korea.
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