I picked up the “howdy” (stepping over the head from scarf-hold) from Dennis Hallman back in the early 2000’s, but it was experimentation during my time coaching at New England Combat that lead to the Butcher version that crosses your opponents arms. It’s a crazy pressure position that takes it out of even the most resilient.
The reverse arm triangle is my favorite choke in all of grappling. I have found that not many people use it…and it’s a shame. The RAT is incredibly hard to defend when the person applying it has a good squeeze, the fact that your entire body weight is on top of their shoulder driving through their neck is icing on the cake. I’ve found that those who don’t have instant success with it tend to write it off….but it is usually the crucial detail of karate chopping the mat two times, thus changing the angle of the opponents neck, that is all that is missing.
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