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[Trembula]

I have heard rumor of a sequel to "Cold Steel" but have no proof of it being anything more than that. Apparently Styers wrote some other stuff than just "Cold Steel" but other than this, archived thoughtfully on the infamous gutterfighting.org  website, is the only only glimpse of that. I have seen these photos published before although the name of the book is escaping me.

Nevertheless it is a good look into the "JKD concept"/Los Angeles era of the Biddle Method (for the newcomers, I compare the Biddle method to the different eras of JKD to help explain the changes in the system... Seattle would be the 1920s and the 1930s material up to the first edition of Do or Die, Oakland is the WW2 material, and everything post 1944/1945 is all "Biddle Method Concepts").

http://www.gutterfighting.org/StyersBowie.html

[Trembula]

For those who have taken the time to examine this article and the pictures at the end of the article here is a bit of "slash by slash" commentary...

In the first picture, note how Sgt. Prizzi's stance is somewhat reminiscient of the stance that Col. Applegate appears in the infamous picture of him that one finds everywhere. The Marines also teach a more upright version of a similar stance at the beginning level, although thankfully they use the strong side forward stance at the Black Belt level. Styers' stance is intentionally "out of the box" to help lure the opponent in. Were his blade actually large enough to parry with (9"+), his stance would make more sense... then again, the Biddle method was created using at 16" bayonet 

Also note how Steyrs holds his knife with the cutting edge oriented DOWN instead of OUT - he is NOT using the horizontal "flat blade" method that Biddle taught which is designed to allow the guards to have some ability to protect the hand regardless of which side of your blade the enemy attacks from. To my knowledge, Stephen Stavers used the flat blade method in his adaption of the Biddle Method to the Ka-Bar, but I guess Styers didn't think that was important. Also note the lack of any use of the "grab hand" in these pictures despite several opportunities for it.

An outstretched empty hand will get some fingers lopped off, as I showed one of the MCMAP black belts a while back questioning the utility of an empty hand lead in a knife vs. knife fight.

In the 4th picture Styers' is shown parrying Prizzi's attack with the 7" blade of his knife. Something the size of a Ka-Bar just isn't long enough to block or parry steel with...

In the 6th picture we can see the classically outstretched arm as Styers' executes his snap cut.

In the 8th picture note that the pivot is probably the footwork of the In Quartata sans the #6 thrust that normally comes with that technique. Don't ask me what Styers was thinking at this point by not executing another hand cut or a thrust...

The low feint in the 9th picture is really just a Pasatta Sotto with a cut instead of a thrust.