Marc MacYoung - Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons: A down and dirty book on streetfighting and survival

Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons

Marc Animal MacYoung

Copyright 1989, 2019 by Marc MacYoung

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

For Permission to use this book contact:

Carry On Publishing

590 W Hwy 105, Suite 284

Monument, CO 80132

Cover design by Dan LoGrasso, Silent Partner Productions

Interior design by Jenna Meek, Carry On Publishing

Carry On Publishing/No Nonsense Self-Defense

Second Edition

Also available in print

Disclaimer: The contents of this book contain the personal experiences and observations of the author. The information presented here should not be misconstrued as legal advice. Please take great care in your self-protection and education and if you should decide to employ strategies that the author has laid out in these pages, use common sense and above all else, keep it safe!

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Tracy David, who, aside from just putting up with me back then, helped me leave the place where this information is necessary.

Marc "Animal" MacYoung

Contents

Foreword

Experience is what you get when you didnt get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.

Randy Pausch

1989.

It was a different world back then. Back then I proudly wore the name Animal. (If you think its difficult to get rid of tattoos of lifestyles past, try losing a nickname sometime.)

In Los Angeles, the gang wars for control of the crack cocaine trade were still raging. (Like the LA Riots, the gang peace accords were over the horizon.) Drive bys, an old problem in poorer neighborhoods, had just come to the attention of the electronic media. Instead of this type of murder decreasing because of public out- rage and disgust, the numbers of these shootings exploded. With increased news coverage, gang members were doing drive bys and then rushing home to see how many newscasts theyd show up on. Forget the war on drugs, drug wars were a bigger problem to those of us in the streets. Also, because medical triage hadnt advanced enough (like it has today) the murder rate in the U.S. was the highest it had ever been. And until the accords, it would keep climbing.

I was 29 years old at the time and was a hardened veteran of the streets.

Having grown up in the (then) poorer sections of Los Angeles, the first time Id ever been shot at was 15 years earlier. Id buried entirely too many friends for a person my age. Id already lost count of how many fights Id been in; never mind all the other kinds of violent encounters Id had. Id reached the point where violence was like sex, it was so common I only remembered it if it was really good or really bad. Past that, violence and force were more of a blur of endless events that required force.

You should also know, five years earlier Id taken a major hit in my personal life. A hit that nearly destroyed me. Booze, drugs and poor life choices had always been a part of my life, but it wasnt those that nearly killed me, it was love. Id lost my first true love and that damned-near destroyed me. It sent me into tailspin of pain, fury, booze, drugs, homelessness and violence, where if Im honest with my- self, I was trying to kill myself. I was so crazed with pain that life really wasnt worth living. It wasnt depression, it was loss mixed with fury. I wasnt going to commit suicide, but I wasnt against dying in battle. As such, I purposely put myself into extremely dangerous situations.

On several occasions I survived only in spite of myself. Yet, with oblivion yawning under my feet, something from deep inside of me would come roaring out. Something dark, filled with fury and commitment; something that wasnt going to let me die. Now I joke about these times by saying I knocked bullets out of the air with my dick. But, to this day, I dont know how I survived. It wasnt just the years of training and fighting experience I already had. I had a cold fury and a madness within me that turned me intonot a berserkbut a calculating, cold blooded dragon bent on destruction of those who dared to cross me. When that part of me rose up, I wasnt driving, it was.

Now if you think this is in anyway cool, let me assure you, its not. Nor was it powerful. At least as I understand power now. It couldnt create or maintain, but it was big on destruction. I was trapped in my own personal hell and I couldnt see beyond my own pain, selfishness and anger. Thats the monster I had to share my head with.

Again, not the best of times. Yet the universe had thrown me a life-line. Id met a Lady and although she had her own personal demons by being with her I

started crawling out of this hell Id created for myself. It was during this time I started doing personal work on breaking the control my past had over me.

It was also during this time that someone tried to steal the company belonging to friends of our roommate. Id already started the switch to a violence professional (getting paid to get hit instead of doing it for free, as I like to explain it). But since I was the closest thing to being a goon, they knew they came to me regarding two things. One was property recovery. After I got their equipment back, we moved onto part two. That was teaching them how to take care of themselves when it came to crime and violence.

As these were academic/scientific types, I figured Id sit down and write a ten-page booklet about some of the things they needed to know. Things that they wouldnt get in a martial arts class (or even in the time we spent training in the physical). Just ten pages really. honestly

It was as if a giants hand smashed my head into the computer and wouldnt let me stop writing until I did a brain dump of all the stuff that had kept me alive all those years. All useful information that nobody in the martial arts was teaching. I wasnt trying to be a writer. (Hell, I consistently gotten Ds and Fs in English.) But this information just erupted out of me and onto the pages. I literally couldnt do anything else. My girlfriend would come home and ask me questions like Did you eat today? The conversation went like this. Huh? Go take a shower and Ill make food. By the end of the meal, I had to get back to writing. Ive learned how to control this since, but by the end of this episode I had written the very book you now hold in your hands.

Great, now that I have this book, what do I do with it?

After getting rejected by multiple publishing houses, I sent a copy to a guy who I had worked with who knew this other guy. His comment was I enjoyed the shit out of it, and he made a phone call to this publisher he knew (Peder Lund) and told him to publish my book. And thats how Paladin Press picked up my first and it would turn out next several books and videos.

In the meantime, I continued to work in professions where I gained more and more experience dealing with violence, criminals and the like. Even when that wasnt my job. In the workplace I was the guy who would be elected to handle certain issues when they arose. Eventually I was able to leave that kind of work, but thats another story. What I can say is that the last time I was shot at is now old enough to drink. Ive never gone this long without someone trying to kill me. (Im not planning on breaking that record.)

Changing tracks here. Someone once asked me if I regretted anything that Id ever written in my earlier books andif I had a chancewould I do anything differently? I thought about it before I gave a qualified answer. Id be less hard on the martial arts. Specifically, Id be less hard on karate. (Which at the time pretty much controlled the martial arts market.)