Tom DeBlass is well-known for his outspoken approach to both martial arts and social media, so it makes perfect sense that the recent explosion of interest in Detroit Urban Survival Training will have caught his attention. Of course, not all press is good press and the main reason that Detroit Urban Survival Training (DUST) has received so much attention on social media over the past few months is because of an overwhelming amount of doubt surrounding the techniques that the owner Dale Brown is teaching.
Understandably so really considering that almost everything you will see shown on the official Instagram account for DUST looks as though it would be impossible to pull off even against untrained opponents. As Dale Brown and the rest of the crew at DUST have attracted criticism from almost all sides, the business has actually decided to turn off all comments on their Instagram accounts. There are many people who decide to show self-defense techniques on social media and the concern is that it gives people a false sense of security that they might now “know” what to do if they ever get into a similar situation.
Even more concerning is the fact that Brown repeatedly shows techniques that he claims will not only overcome attackers, but will actually enable you to disarm attackers with bladed weapons and even firearms. It’s not entirely unheard of for an unarmed and highly trained person to be able to disarm someone, but it’s certainly not something you should be relying on. Generally speaking, the most successful attempts at defending oneself comes from someone who has extensive training in one or more full contact martial arts like Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, boxing, or muay thai.
DeBlass seems to have taken a little issue with these practices at Detroit Urban Survival Training as he has not only invited Brown to his gym with the offer of paying him $5,000 just to appear, but he’s also offered him $50,000 under the condition that he’s able to subdue one of two female brown belts that DeBlass trains. DeBlass issued the challenge to Brown in a reply to one of his comments on Instagram and has since highlighted and explained the challenge in a post to his official Instagram account:
