As John McCarthy has said many times, "Curling up in the fetal position or just covering your head is not intelligently defending yourself."

For those who care, I recommend checking out "Fight! " magazine. McCarthy has a monthly column in there (I believe), where he explains why refs make the calls they do... in the December/January issue (used to be once every 2 months, now it's once a month), he had a great article on how standups work. And now that I've read it, and I watch a fight... and you hear the ref go "Come on, do something with it" when a fight is on the ground. You know he means that the person on top has to work to advance his position (full-guard to half to side control to mount to back), and that each step up in position means more leeway when it comes to giving them time to work with to set something up (back mount gets a LOT more time than half-guard). It's a neat series of articles, and the rest of the magazine is great too, good stories on the fighters and stuff and good stuff on up and coming guys. And I think they're offering a really cheap deal on subscriptions right now as they try to get off of the ground. Worth a look. They deliver to Canada now too.