PA has historically been common in mental health and youth services where people aren't cuffed and are restrained for long periods. Remember the bulk of us are civilians and won't be cuffing anyone and need to wait for assistance.
It's one of the phases of fighting and as such people aiming to acquire self defense stills should have working knowledge of its fundamentals. For some reason, many people default to bjj when talking about grappling. I'd take wrestling or judo over it personally. If bjj it is, people would be better off learning how to move, escape and sweep rather than reverse triangles or flash armbars.
Let me put it like this if you are in a street fight you DO NOT go in to the ground combat unless its one on one and in the private(that is if you are fighting with no one in vicinity), but even then there are factors that make ground combat a really bad idea(take downs have habit of hurting you just as easily as your opponent, throws are much harder to pool of than many believe they are(I should know got my ass handed to me when I tried to do so) and locks are virtually impossible due to fact that you actually need to either beat a snot out the guy or surprise him before using them, which in case number one means that using said technique just bullying your opponent while t in case number two means that you are the one that has started the fight) so that means that no amount of skill will make smart or hell even truly usable in street fight. Yes. Including dirty tricks changes entire different game, just for like any other MA. I believe I answered about multiple opponents and as for weapons..... Yeah that is one of things that make this type of combat on the street very dangerous, well sticks and pipes not so much because they are relatively harmless at extremely close range combat, but broken bottles and knives are different story as they mean that one trying to use ground combat pretty much is committing suicide. As for experience..... well lets just say that I had a bad habit of getting in the fights quite often.
Man, those ancient Greeks and Romans, medieval Europeans and Japanese and modern American and Eastern Europeans could have done with your advice. Their warriors' empty handed martial arts were all primarily grappling with striking playing a supporting role. Really though, if it's a serious fight, weapons take the place of striking. This means your options are to use a weapon, deny the opponent his weapon (much better accomplished via grips than hoping for an immediate knockout) or disengaging. None of these three options are well served by anything but grappling, as far as empty hand technique goes. If it's not a serious fight, grappling is the equivalent of taking your opponent into the deep dark of the woods, where you've been hunting for years and he has never visited. Doubly so if the ground is as dangerous a place as the RBSD guys claim.
When you find that wrestling exists in some form or another in nearly every culture for both civilian and soldier, it's amazing to me how many people are ignorant of it and it's place in combatives throughout millennia. I think every martial artist should have to spend some time training in grappling if only to learn how essentially helpless they are on the ground without training.
To the OP, Yes, things like eye gouges have an effect, but not enough to rely on them. What you should rely on is fundamentals. It's amazing what you can get done when you remember simple stuff like "keep one butt cheek off the ground" (i.e. shrimping) when on the bottom. More likely to be useful than eye gouging. Simple positional work will do a person a lot of good. It will make everything else that much more effective. Besides, you can't eye gouge well when someone has pinned your wrist under their knee, but you can still work and get to a better position with one hand pinned. If you're on the ground and there are multiple attackers and/or weapons, you're likely hosed. Fight on regardless, but if that doesn't work out, enjoy Valhalla.
Yes actually I have plenty of experience in all forms of grappling(I mean I have trained around 3 years a combat system that is centered specifically around those techniques,considering I`m from Serbia I highly doubt you heard about it EFS(eclectic fighting system, It`s divided in two areas, grappling and striking and both are trained separately to help students master them better)), plus few other forms of MA that include said techniques.
Regarding the whole "on the ground I'll just punch his family jewels or poke his eye" debate, this should be mandatory viewing: [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZKZsqWdFw"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZKZsqWdFw[/ame]
http://www.efs.rs/instruktori/ I see arnis mentioned a lot, which "all forms of grappling" do they teach?
Well basics are in Brazilian Jujitsu and Judo. I myself have also trained both Aikido and Wrestling as separate forms, also a bit of Pankration and Sambo(only a few months of training), but those and unfortunately all martial arts centered on grappling or at very least with strong focus on it that one can train in Serbia. Sorry if the part about "all forms of grappling" was a bit misleading it was supposed to mean all forms that available in country that I leave in.
