Knuckles and Yuckmouth and Sepsis Oh My!

This week Renzo Gracie distinguished himself from the ten million other "R. Gracie"s by posting a bizarre series of tweets that seem to give a play by play of him beating up two muggers.

I'm not going to comment on the possibility that this was staged. Or the wisdom in posting videos of you preemptively thrashing two complete strangers. Perhaps the notoriety you get from such encounters outweighs the legal repercussions when you come from a world-famous fighting clan, but probably not for Joe Average.

What I WILL comment on is that he banged up his knuckles pretty well in the altercation. From his own tweets:

Sharing bodily fluids with a total stranger isn't the best idea, whether it's from casual sex, sharing needles, or from picking pieces of their dentition out of your hand. If you need a more visual example of why you should really avoid the saliva of random people on the street, please click here. But not if you've recently eaten.

(The link shows very graphic pictures of infection that set in several days after a "fight bite". Viewer discretion is advised. )

So a couple of lessons to take away here:

• Don't punch strangers in the head. Your hand is made of small bones, and their head is made up of large (and in places, pointy) bones. Bad things will come of it. Open hand techniques like slaps and palm strikes lessen the chance of you getting hurt. If you don't believe me, try punching the sidewalk compared to slapping the sidewalk. I promise to sign your cast.
•  If you do get cut, see a doctor sooner rather than later. I loathe doctors and I still stand by this statement. Modern medicine can do some pretty impressive things what with their broad-spectrum antibiotics and preventative treatments and black voodoo and whatnot.
• Don't film yourself assaulting people, unless you have a million-dollar or more PR team. Even if this played out the way Renzo says it did and the 2 guys were horrible Nazi dickheads who set orphanages on fire on Christmas morning, they are going to hire lawyers and have a field day with this. Chasing down unarmed people who are running away from you is hard to sell as "self-defense".

Train smart, people.