Aspies For Freedom

I learned Savate and Tae Kwon Do. Tae Kwon Do was pretty fancy and Savate fairly simple and effective.
Yes I hate to admit it but it is everyone's responsibility to learn to defend themselves. (Yes I know I am agreeing with Yetti here. She has said something very true and pertinent to all of us)

I do not agree letting someone hit you first is best. Sure I have before and been worse off for it. I believe that in fighting or pre-fighting, you have to try to dominate your opponent. Scare *** out of them, psyche them out, knock them out, make them give up or make them submit.

Your opponent needs to feel completely overwhelmed and out-matched. If you achieve this you will not only win but you will promote an understanding in others that you are not an easy mark. Lose or have a hard win and people may see weakness. Though certainly at least fighting and losing is better than not retaliating at all.

A very strange thing that has happened a few times at pubs that I have never understood. There are times when you are insulted or affronted by a bloke with his mates. He is rude and you do ask him to "Step outside for a little talk" , the guy will then laugh and shake hands and defuse things and sometimes even get you over to yarn with his mates. It has occasionally happened to a few of my mates too. it may or may not be an Aussie thing I dunno.

The relevance here is that merely being willing to fight was enough to defuse the situation.

The end result should always be to be willing to defend yourself or retaliate without having to fight. If they apologise, submit, lose consciousness, have no means to defend themselves any more, or even like the knobs in the bar, laugh and shake hands don't pursue it. You don't want to be the bully and because you DON"T ACTUALLY want to fight. Swollen face, black eyes, cut and split knuckles, sore ribs, broken nose, teeth cuts on the inside of your gums are not fun. Fighting means there is a good chance you will get some of these on any given fight...especially if you let them hit you first.

I don't get into fights now and apart from the fact that I am too old, slow and out of shape, surpisingly the main reason is people presume I can handle myself. They sense I am relatively comfortable with myself pertaining to physical confrontation. I haven't been in a fight for at least a year and prior to that just a few a few years ago. I prefer that. When a work mate invited me out and informed people at work that I would have his back I was not chuffed nor insulted. As I say it is good to have people not start stuff with you from the outset.

I don’t think learning martial arts necessarily makes you a good fighter. I’ve known people who’ve studied for years to be affective fighters--but who are about as dangerous as a stick of celery.