Solid post!

And thanks very much for the linkage, I appreciate that.

This is a good set of points and entirely in line with my own experience. Our teacher is literally a hardass Israeli ex-paratrooper- he served in the Golani Brigade during the '82 war against Syria- and you can always see the difference in attitude between him and his civilian high-ranking instructors. All of the latter have been martial artists their entire lives, but there is no question that, as an actual veteran, his entire attitude toward war and fighting is very different from theirs.

His argument always is, "in a fight, YOU are the attacker, not the other guy- he just THINKS he's the attacker". Get the first hit in if at all possible, keep hitting, and get the hell out- that's the basic philosophy of self-defence, and it is strikingly effective.

Of course, all the martial arts skill in the world is a poor match for a man with a .38 aimed at your chest from 20 feet away…

I always figure 90% of a fight is knowing that there is a fight before the other fellow. Even a trained martial artist, a trained killer, can be taken out if it happens before he realizes he is in a fight, The difference is that those who are trained have a much smaller window in which they can be taken out before they are in fight mode and beating your ass.

I have, in the course of my life, taken down (and been taken down) by guys who are considerably bigger than me. I am a boxer, not a muy thai or KM or any other kind of guy, and I have found repeatedly that "He who contacts with the first hit, assuming they know how to hit effectively, is almost always the winner, regardless of level of training."

That's one of the reasons I support unemcumbered self defense. If someone makes you fear for your life, there are few 'hits' as likely to end the fight as three rounds in the center of mass.

Basically, yes. I know I'll never be a mixed martial artist or cage fighter. I know that my odds of successfully defending myself against a knife or a gun are slim. But the critical difference between us and most other soft, coddled Western men is that we know our weaknesses and have actively worked to take our egos out of the equation to make ourselves better. And I am, as you say, at peace with the fact that, even though I'll never be the very best at self-defence, I will still have at least some idea of what to do if something ever goes down.