Sucker Punch

The street fighter lives and dies by the surprise attack – the sucker punch, the unexpected hay-maker, the wild rush. This element of surprise makes all the difference between your street fight and your full-contact, no holds barred sparring matches. There really is no defense against a surprise attack – our nervous system cannot react fast enough (processing the threat, determining an action plan and following through). For most of us, the only defense against a surprise attack is a thick skull – something that can absorb that first attack and hopefully you can orient yourself and engage the opponent.

So, then what’s the point of training? Especially if one wanted to train for the purpose of fending off attackers.

Well, a few things to note – not all street fights start off with a surprise rush. Some are just instant face-offs or scraps between two people. Sometimes, the training we go thought does sharpen our reflexes enough to react in time, especially against one who is not skilled in delivering a good punch.

But, back to the idea of the surprise attack. There are things we can do to minimize the effect of a sucker punch.

1) Keep your eyes on the attacker at all times and be ready for an attack either to the groin or, more commonly a right or left swing..especially during the conversational engagement (when a guy is up in your face swearing at you or egging you on, for example).

2) React as to how you prefer to remain “ready”. Some like to turn up the aggressiveness back to the attacker right before attacking (eg. calling the attacker names or yelling back). Some, like myself, just shut the hell up and get into “ready” mode, trying to process as much info as possible (where are his hands, feet? Is this a safe distance? Does he have friends? how much space do I have). I do this while he’s yapping away. Who cares about whether you have a witty response or not?

3) Start thinking of potential targets – throat, solar plexus, groin, knee? It creates an offensive mindset, rather than thinking of how to block, you think of where to hit.

4) Doing steps 1-3 means keeping your head up and aware at all times. The sucker punch is best served when your attention is off-site for a mere fraction of a second.

5) FINALLY, remember the reaction loop? Process the threat, determine action plan, follow through – well, luckily for those of us who have trained enough, we can limit this loop to simply “process the threat”. Because we are taught in WT to simply go forward, we only have to process the threat and shoot our arms/hands out. Assuming our sensitivity training is ok, we can figure out the action plan and follow through during the encounter rather than before it. This is not something I would encourage one to rely on because, well, the whole ordeal is a bad one and incredibly stressful and will most likely fail for the majority of us.


But of course, after all this, the guy’s friends bash you on the side of the head with a bottle – there’s really no defense against that. And anyone who tells you different is either lying, stupid or trying to scam you.

Until then.