Warrior Flow Combatives stands alone among martial arts systems in multiple ways.  For present purposes, I focus upon its unabashed declaration of its raison d’etre.  As its founder, USMC Lieutenant-Colonel Al Ridenhour, informs his students:

“I’m teaching you how to kill the bad guys.”

Strictly speaking, Warrior Flow is not designed to train people how to fight.  It’s designed to make them truly dangerous by making them into, not “tough guys,” but warriors.  The late Bradley Steiner, founder of American Combato and a student of World War II Close Quarter Combatives, once shared a quotation from a Charlie Reese that speaks to this point:

“The truly dangerous man dresses inconspicuously and is soft-spoken.  He walks away from most confrontations. The only time you learn that the truly dangerous man is mad at you is a split second before you die, for he never fights.  He only kills. The truly dangerous man knows that fighting is what children do and killing is what men do” (emphases added).

No sport. No contests.  No squaring off, shit-talking, eye-fucking, chest thumping.  No “man dance.”

No hand-gear, head-gear, uniforms, rings, or mats.

Warrior Flow trains students to become predators—but predators who prey only upon HINOs (Humans-In-Name-Only), i.e. those who pose an imminent threat to innocents (especially oneself and/or one’s own).

It has only recently come to my attention that there exists now on YouTube a niche that, apparently, only ex-convicts and former career criminals of various sorts can fill.

All of these podcast hosts claim to have repented of their ways and assure their enamored audiences that their only reason for tirelessly regaling them with stories from “The Life,” as Michael Franzese and other ex-mobsters continue to refer to La Costra Nostra, is to warn them away from taking the dark path that they themselves had at one time taken.

Before proceeding, let me be clear that, as a disciple of Christ, I commend and encourage all who strive to transform themselves from agents of evil to agents of good.  It is always a cause for celebration whenever Satan loses one of his children to the Light.

The question, though, is this: Have these one-time malcontents really seen the Light?

From what I’ve been able to discern, many of these guys, at best, continue to convey mixed messages.  Yes, they do indeed persist in romanticizing the criminal life—all while criticizing Hollywood and other media for supplying the public imagination with images that they say aren’t realistic.

The truth of the matter—and this is particularly the case with these mob turncoats (who, incredibly, swear that they aren’t turncoats)—is that these guys are careful to capitalize on the popular conceptions of the Outlaw’s life.  They have much to gain, both economically and psychologically, from what they are doing:

The more popular their podcasts, the more they can monetize on it.  The more violent accounts of their past lives they can crank out, the “tougher” and more important they can make themselves appear in both their own eyes and those of their enraptured viewers.

If, though, any of these guys are genuinely serious about having redeemed themselves, then they should categorically reject both their former selves and all of their former associates as the scumbags, the Godless demons that they had been.

Even if, as is often the case with respect to Mafioso and the members of organized crime generally, these criminals had limited their violence to their interactions with one another, there is no denying that they did in fact hurt lots of “civilians.”   I’m not just referring to the billions of dollars that taxpayers had been made to cough up because of the mob’s infiltration of otherwise legitimate industries but, on a more intimate level, to those legions of family men who were coerced into relinquishing a portion of the blood, sweat, and tears that they invested into building their small businesses to mobsters who made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

No man, no real man, would ever think about taking a penny from another man who had earned that penny.

No man, no real man, would associate with, much less describe as good, anyone who would take a penny from another man who had earned that penny.

No man, no real man, would be willing to engage in violence just because he felt “disrespected” or otherwise ass hurt by what he perceived as some sort of snub.

No man, no real man, would ever pose danger to those who simply want to mind their business and live their lives in peace.

This needs to be the message communicated in no uncertain terms by each and every single one of these former criminals who purport to have had their Come-to-Jesus moment.  It is imperative that, in all humility, they confess that their conversion from a life of crime to the life that they now claim to lead was nothing less than a conversion from adolescence to manhood.

They were never tough because they were never strong.  They ran with gangs, so they were overwhelmingly followers.  Even gang leaders derive what power they possess from their followers: take away their followers and the gang leader, whether of a crime family or of a city street gang, isn’t shit: his power vaporizes, for he needs them as much, if not more, than they need him.  Simply put, these YouTubers had been, essentially, bullies.  The life they led was predicated upon the fear of those who they victimized—who, not coincidentally, were always those who were correctly perceived as being more vulnerable than their victimizers.

No honor. No manliness.  Godless. Evil.

All of this must be conceded.  Contrition demands this.  At any rate, it is a start.

While the typical consumers of this crime porn turn to it for the titillation that they receive from it, others can benefit from it if they approach it for the purpose of simply being reminded of the fact that there are dangerous people who live among us.  Violent criminals are dangerous.  They are snakes and wolves.  Because most people are sheep, their sheepishness renders them either oblivious, often willfully so, to the snakes and wolves or else in awe of them.  In either case, the sheep’s fear of the snakes and wolves leaves them ill-prepared in the event that the predators decide to prey upon them.

However, some people (admittedly, not many) will exploit the fear porn for their own purposes.  They can incorporate it into their own educational curriculum as they train, mentally and physically, to become, not a snake or a wolf, but a lion—a full-blooded carnivore that, despite its ravenous appetite for meat, will consume only other predators (like snakes and wolves).

The point, and one that to all martial, combat artists and others who train in self-defense should be unmistakable, is this: The presence of evil, dangerous people in the world is the ultimate reason why one trains. Or, more precisely, the ability to remove evil, dangerous people from the world is the supreme and sole aim of training in a genuine martial system.

Period.

This is Warrior Flow’s philosophy.

All other reasons that can and have been given come in a distant second place to the desire to be able to kill, with all of the ruthless efficiency that one can learn how to muster, any and all evil, dangerous people that threaten oneself, one’s family, or other innocents who happen to be in one’s presence.

Warrior Flow training begins with the presupposition that the enemy (whomever he or she may be) is stronger, faster, bigger, taller, more agile, younger, and more aggressive than the Warrior Flow student.  Potentially anyone, the student is taught to assume, can “kick his (or her) ass” in a “fight.”  This is the orientation that informs the entire training modality of Warrior Flow.  Why?

There is a method to the madness: As long as this is the fundamental operational assumption, then students train to neutralize all of those hypothetical advantages that the enemy possesses before those advantages can become a problem.  And students learn to do this by training, not for a “fight,” for the sake, that is, of giving someone an ass-kicking, but for “the fight of their lives,” as Lieutenant-Colonel Al puts it.

They learn how to neutralize the enemy’s advantages by learning how to think and move in ways that will enable them to kill the enemy (or, if there are multiple attackers, the enemies).

Victory or death: These are the only alternative outcomes of a violent confrontation that Warrior Flow students are trained to accept.

More on this in a future essay.