Encounters can be broken down several different ways. In this case we are going to be emphasizing how a fight actually starts and what to do in the very first minute.
In order to facilitate this we are going to divide a street fight into two areas. One is a mugging type energy, in this sort of fight you go from 0-100 in a nano-second. In this sort of fight one is walking down the street and they are literally mugged. This type of encounter dictates that we circumvent the preliminary analysis and pot shotting and go directly into the rally. This kind of encounter happens so quickly, in many occasions, one doesn’t even get the chance to feel that typical adrenaline dump. Like a knee jerk, if I started and you ended it, using just the rally. This particular type of fight happens less than two percent of the time. In far more cases physical altercations are preceded with a minor vehicular collision, name calling, verbal abuse, pushing, and eventually escalating to a full blown street fight.
So now let us address this type of scenario, once again which in deed will happen 95% of the time. Using Bruce Lee’s lexicon, the first twenty seconds of the match is called preliminary analysis. One’s goal during this stage is two fold.
#1. Take several deep breaths and calm yourself down. While you are doing so, from the very safe distance, analyze your opponent. Get a feel for how this fella is moving. If he is squared off with his knees bent, and an obvious look on his face that, “I’m going to come at you with a double leg takedown”, you will smell wrestler.
If his hands are down, with know sense of distance or form, and swinging wild elliptical blows, you will sniff out that this guy is a street fighter. And finally if he is in some low convoluted stance with his hands on his hips, then the answer to your analysis is Karate Man.
Once these first 10-30 seconds have gone by, and we have taken several deep breaths, calmed ourselves down, and have a sense for who we are fighting, our next goal is to dictate the range and cadence of this match.
And the two best tools to do this are, a jab and a shuffle kick. We use these two tools because, the Jab can equate to the eyeballs, the shuffle kick can equate to the groin, both tools can be flicked out with an excellent risk to reward ratio.
Again this stage of the match is called pot shooting. Picture that you have figured your opponent out and you stick him in the face with a couple of jabs, then you fake a jab, and come to the groin. Then Fake the groin, come back with a jab. This continual attack enables us to go high-low-high, engaging progressive indirect energy. And at the same time, if either of these blows land, it could end the match. Now that we have our opponent, flinching, scared, nervous, and biting on our fakes. It is time to close this deal and go home to our family. Enter Rally…
The termination of this fight that we call a rally, is best executed by a straight blast, with a succession of head butts, knees, and elbows, from a Thai clinch(sound familiar). In conclusion, the first 20 seconds of this fight we stay at a safe distance, take several deep breaths and check out this fella. Next we go to pot shotting, where we stick him with jabs and shuffle groin shots. And finally, after one of said shots connects, we follow up with the rally. And during this final stage of rally, should be our greatest explosion of punches, knees, headbutts, elbows, and face bites. And just like a math problem, if we ever want to test Bruce’s theories, just multiply your division by watching a world class MMA match. These same principles are now being applied some 40 years later(see St Pierre vs Koschek 2, Dec 11, 2010).