Maybe he was trained in traditional Muay Thai. The traditional Muay Thai stance has fighters holding their arms up with palms facing the opponent. This is to facilitate getting into the clinch and throwing elbows. Traditional Muay Thai techniques didn't rely heavily on boxing skills, but instead went for kicks, knees and elbows a lot. In the U.S, and Europe however, western kickboxers tend to rely more on boxing skills for hand techniques so they modified the stance into a boxers's stance where both fists are held close to the jaws to protect them from punches.
I don't know the exact answer to this question, but putting one's hands up in that position and saying loudly that you don't want to fight is a great idea in the street when there are witnesses. Witnesses tend to have bad/foggy memories and if they see one guy with his hands up shouting that he doesn't want to fight it will probably make their witness statements. Your hands are still in a ready position and you are capable of delivering any counter assault tactic that you may wish to use.
It honestly sounds like
Taekwondo
http://www.google.com/search?q=taekwondo...
OR
Wing Chun
http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=...
We don't as martial arts friend we don't know what your talking about.
I saw on the ufc i think, a canadian fighter put his hands up with palms facing away and towards the opponent. Seemed like a very defensive fighting style
