David, a wrestle who I used to coach in boxing called me some time ago to let me know that he had been attacked by two innocent, unarmed, oppressed youth who towered over him in their high school team athletic wear. He found himself caught in the postmodern conundrum of being attacked by heavyweights, who would have been men in most natural societies, who have been declared harmless children by our unnatural society—damned if you do, damaged if you don’t.

Not wanting to harm the innocence martyrs of The Omniscient Goddess, David received their attack politely as they bounced a few power punches off his Arуan Helm and then threw back two or three right straights, stopping one and dropping one.

Our young hero confessed bewilderment about his not using the jab as I had trained him and was also surprised at his power.

“What gives,” he asked.

“Bitch chins,” I answered. “You sparred with boxers, even the mediocre ones being possessed of superhuman durability compared to the sissy spawn of The Goddess.”

What was more his bag work and shadowboxing conducted mostly solo over the intervening years had armed him with time and measure. You see, the jab is necessary for dealing with a boxer, who has one of his own or owns some pugilistic advantage over you. But, against the unskilled [this would include against people unskilled in shoot-fighting or wrestling] the jab is not necessary. Indeed, very few of the more than a dozen boxers I interviewed about their survival fights on the street, used a jab, but rather went right for power punches.

Why?

-1. Time windows for any street altercation are brief, and for a boxer briefer, as he stands to be shot or stabbed as soon as it is known he is dangerous with his hands. So the delaying aspect of jabbing is best abandoned unless being pressed by a formidable man looking to grapple.

-2. The jab is not needed as much when the foe is clumsy, telegraphic and off balance.

-3. The jab is there, just unshot. You see, those tens of thousands of punches thrown in the mirror, on the bag and in the ring have honed your time and measure or spatial sensitivity to the point where it is far superior to the jabbing novice or the unschooled fool. It’s there, you just don’t throw it and truncate to the power option.

This is why weapon sparring is so important to weapon survival and defense, because even though you do not duel in a survival situation, the duel, first symmetrical and then asymmetrical, develops your time and measure, your ability to know when and where you can be hit by who and what, without taking deadly time to make a calculation, as most combat calculations are rendered immediately obsolete by the dynamic passage of time and in those cases when calculations are effectively utilized in combat are generally based on the high level of time and measure possessed by the calculator. When your spatial sensitivity as a striker is at the level of the tactile sensitivity of the experienced grappler, you may, like him unconsciously dominate position by way of your training-encrypted instinct while calculating his demise.

But until you reach that level, just having automatic power counters to clinching and striking attacks in your toolkit should suffice.