First Dallas, I would probably say he is. He’s at least knowledgeable about the facts and history – anything anyone could find in a book.
This however is NOT combatives. It’s FMA. To the best of my knowledge Ralph trained in Escrima under Professor V.
That being said, I have no idea why this video was posted and what it demonstrates. I know baton twirlers that could do this after a day or practice. From a self defense stand point you wouldn’t sustain anything more than a bruise if you walked straight into it.
Bear in mind, I don’t consider myself an “authority on WWII Combatives” even though I have more than enough knowledge regarding is AND the SDTS is rooted in that work.
I feel that later when Fairbairn and others started writing books, they too offered too many complicated techniques that rarely worked. This was because Japanese Jujutsu in the 1950’s was like MMA is today. So in order to sell books they padded it with a lot of other fancy moves.
Add to that there was no REAL ground fighting component in the WW2 stuff and that needed to be developed for the SDTS.
Does Ralph know a lot about the who, what, where and when, sure he does. Is what he doing here combatives – not by SDTS standards, but if you look in various cane fighting books at the time they probably had this in there as well.
The REAL question is – does this technique have any real value for self defense – NO.
