You don't have to be a fighter to pull this off.

We're not going to cover any fighting techniques with the hands or with weapons or any type of kicking or levitation, transmigration, transmutation, or transmogrification. This is just how to get the hell out of the way. Imagine that he's either too big to fight or he's your match and he's armed with a knife. One thing that modern agonistics practitioners have discovered is when you take two evenly matched fighters and you give one of them a weapon, it's not a fight—it's an execution. The worse case scenario is the OJ Simpson scenario: he's bigger than you, he's faster than you, and he's got a knife. In such a case, this is your only hope. In other cases, for instance if he's a little twerp with a knife or a big goon with a brick, this is your best opportunity to either transition into a grappling situation or run for your life.

You will most likely be attacked when you are square to the attacker, when he has maximum target accessibility. This attack will be launched, 19 out of 20 times, from the right hand. This means that you want to move to your right, away from his right, behind his left shoulder. Even if he is King Kong, behind his left shoulder is the safest place to be, either to push off and run or take his back in a grapple.

There is considerable handwork that can complement the maneuver under discussion, but for now, you will be best served pretending you don't have any hand options and just moving your feet. Footwork retardation is usually the direct result of a fighter deciding to use his hands, putting his dick in charge of his feet, and the feet fail to move. Please, remember, when learning footwork, deploying your hands before you have drilled the footwork to the point where you know it by rote is basically analogous to putting an NFL rookie drafted out of Morgan State University in charge of a female revue—everybody's either going to be on their back or their knees.

How to get behind the left shoulder of the goon who is about to turn you into tomato paste:

You need two things: a weak pivot and a step-drag. If you do not have a step-drag, you will get knocked the fuck out immediately. On the other hand, if you have a step-drag, but lack a weak pivot, you won't get knocked the fuck out until you feel like you're home free. So what we have here is a marriage of technique, and just like the oft abandoned institution of marriage, if both parts aren't working, it's pretty much in the shitter.

The weak pivot is the second half of the maneuver but is best learned first. Stand toe to toe, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder with your training partner, or if he's still at home playing video games, with your little sister. Now, imagining that he or she is about to hit your right hand, you pivot on your right foot. This means you bring your weight to bear on your lead foot, and you grind the ball of your lead foot on the floor as if you are trying to crush a peanut shell on the sidewalk. Your energy is turned inward, focusing on the base of your first toe and your big toe. You turn the big toe inward with force, with torque. This is how boxers put knock out energy into a punch. That would be a strong pivot. This is a weak pivot, designed to get your eye, your throat, your heart, your solar plexus, and your balls out of the target area. So instead of grinding your weight into your opponent, you are going to unanchor your rear foot and let it drift behind you until your attacker's left foot and your lead foot are between your vitals and his right shoulder, hip and foot. So his left foot and your right foot are between your vitals and his right foot, hip, shoulder.

Those last two sentences were redundant, but redundancy is the foundation of proper coaching.

You have now achieved an angle. Once you have put your right foot in the lead against his left foot, the left side of his body now stands between his power source [foot, hip, shoulder] and your target area. He could rectify this by stepping around with his right foot and then hitting you. This is a full-beat motion. If he does this, that gives you the opportunity to do your own full-beat motion or two half beats. In other words, you could run past him or you could check his shoulder with your hand and begin to slide behind him. You could crack him with a power punch or you could check his motion with one hand and hit him with a half power punch with the other. In any case, by getting behind his lead shoulder, you have achieved your objective, which is really just a point of departure, not a win. The problem with using a weak pivot in a survival situation is you don't know whether it's a punch or an ice pick coming your way. That's why we need to combine this with a step-drag. A slick boxer could stand right in front of you and avoid damage by using the weak pivot, but if you had a knife, you'd still be able to stab him even though you couldn't hurt him with a punch for lack of leverage.

This is the basic boxing step. In boxing, we learn to move by stepping six inches with one foot and then dragging the following foot the same distance. If we step twelve inches, we drag twelve inches. If we step two inches, we drag two inches. If a boxer is about to be stabbed, rather than punched, he needs to be able to unhinge this and escape from this restriction, which is based on the doctrine of keeping both feet under both shoulders and the opponent between both hands to insure power punching potential. But if he has a knife, he's got the power, so the target of the stabbing, bricking or batting needs to abandon the power game and escape to the safe angle.

A boxer shadow boxing in the mirror will step right and drag right parallel to the imaginary opponent. If he does this while somebody is trying to stab him, since the knifer has no power requirement, they can reach around with the rear hand and do a late drag pivot and still put their knife in his guts. To counter this possibility, the boxer—who is a person who step drags—steps behind the left foot of the attacker with his right foot at a forty five degree angle and then does a weak pivot. This should place his center of mass in line with the ankle, hip and shoulder of the attacker's left side, effectively shielding him for the instant.

Stand eye to eye, toe to toe, shoulder to shoulder, with your training partner.

Your training partner will slap their right hip with their right hand.

The slapped him simulates a drawn knife or a sucker punch or a cocked bat.

When you receive this cue, you step past and slightly behind his left foot with your right foot.

You step onto the ball of your right foot, not the heel.

As soon as the ball of your right foot touches the floor, you pivot on that foot, with slightly bent knee, as you let your limp left leg drag around behind you, getting your balls, guts and gizzard off line.

This is how you avoid getting stabbed, dropped, bricked, or batted down.