John Wick excels at hand to hand combat, and especially hand to hand combat with the use of guns and other weapons. John’s signature method is to use Judo or Jiu-Jitsu to leverage an opponent into a compromised position, and then headshot them from point blank range. This kind of fighting is hard to defend against, as letting John get one move in on you can lead to a headshot. John favors using joint locks and throws. While John has fought numerous opponents without any weapons at all, he is a hitman and almost always prefers using weapons in close quarters and hand to hand fights.

Here, John kills a man while handcuffed

Without using weapons and without killing for plot reasons, John beats a group of Russian mafia members after having been in a car that was rammed multiple times, which explains why he looks so tired and hurt at the start. If you want to see the car accidents he was in before this fight it can be seen here.

At this point in the movie, John Wick has a $7 Million bounty on his head and every assassin in the area is after him. As he tries to escape through the subway, he encounters multiple professional assassins along the way at different points, and defeats them all, fighting through injuries that he receives along the way, such as being shot in the stomach twice and being stabbed. One of the assassins is even a sumo wrestler. This is kind of a long video but the fight scenes in this movie are some of the very best I have ever seen, and I think you will enjoy all of the fight choreography and how the multiple fights are spliced together in this scene. It’s important to watch to get an idea of what John can fight through and how skilled he is, as he stomps professional assassins one after the other.

While unarmed, John defeats Ares, a professional hitman armed with a knife

John stomps assassins sent to kill him in his house in close quarters combat, with the use of weapons and hand to hand combat

John shows off martial arts skill and gun skills in close quarters

John again uses guns and hand to hand combat skills

John Wick is a consistent aim-dodger, meaning he is fast enough to move out of someone’s line of fire before they can pull the trigger. This allows him to consistently fight multiple armed opponents, not get shot, and defeat them whether he himself is armed or not. And when guns are used in close range fights, he is consistently quick enough to physically redirect the shooter’s aiming hand before he can be shot.

John aim dodges while injured

Aim dodges again

Aim dodges from close range

Aim dodges from almost point-blank range

Aim dodges from point-blank range

John jumps right at a shooter, aim dodging as he goes

John rolls through line of fire without getting shot

John redirects two guys’ shooting arms before they can shoot him in close range

John redirects a woman’s shooting arm from point blank range before she shoots to avoid being shot

John is also quick enough to shoot 7 assassins before any of them can get a shot off at him.

John dodges all of Ares’ knife strikes. Ares is a professional assassin, and the head bodyguard for the main villain of the movie.

Takes on and kills about 10 armed opponents in a gunfight in a church parking lot

Defeats about 30 bodyguards in a gunfight. Watch until 2:14

Kills (by my count) 45 bodyguards/assassins in a shootout in some Italian catacombs.

John snipes three guys at his enemy’s compound

Stomps a bunch of hitmen/assassins attacking him in his house with great accuracy and headshots

John Wick is only human, but with these feats he demonstrates what would be considered peak human strength. Snapping a human’s neck with only your arms is impossible in real life. It takes at least 1,000 foot-pounds of torque, force that cannot be generated with the arms alone.

John snaps man’s neck with a strike

Wick snaps another man’s neck from behind

Wick snaps a woman’s neck

Here John throws another assassin through a window

Fights through pain of being shot through bulletproof suit. The suit is the same thickness as a normal one, just with thin bulletproof fabric inside. So while it stops bullets, it is very painful to be shot and John shows bruises when he takes off his shirt later in the movie. In real life, being shot with a bulletproof vest can break ribs, so John taking this kind of damage with a much thinner suit on is very impressive.

Does not even react to being shot twice in the stomach from point blank range, and continues on to win the fight

John Wick is fine after being thrown through glass by a sumo wrestler

Wick is thrown over a 15 foot balcony without receiving any damage

Wins fight against another hitman, Cassian, despite being stabbed in the leg at the start of the fight

While recuperating from his injuries, including a stab wound and a broken arm, he defeats Perkins, another professional hitman. John was actually about to fall asleep right before this, but in the video you see his friend wake him up when he sees Perkins by shooting John’s pillow.

Gets hit by a car, then immediately takes on a hitman in a fight with no damage

John is again hit by a car in the middle of a fight with multiple mafia members, takes no damage and wins the fight.

After taking an enemy’s weapon when his is out, John shoots a guy through a wall after shooting at his feet from behind cover

John Wick kills 2 men with a pencil.

When trying to shoot an enemy, he finds that his shotgun is out of ammo. Thinking quicky, John rams the gun into the man’s chest and holds it there until he is finished reloading.

John is not afraid to fight dirty, he has no problem stepping on someone’s toes, using multiple nut shots, or outright stabbing a man in the crotch

When he finds himself out of ammo, John throws his gun at an enemy’s face

Uses a bulletproof suit in his second film, explained here

John carries multiple guns and knives, as seen here. He doesn’t have the bulletproof suit at this time, but still has a bulletproof vest.

John uses some type of wire to wrap around an opponent’s throat and choke them out.