Rive said:
One of that is it won't defend really well against kicks...But boxing is what makes one novice when it is about kicks. And actually, useless or not nine from ten will try kicking. Movies and such just carved it into everybody (and takes effort to remove the urge). The more experienced ones will keep it short and fast, but even so. There will be kicks. Kicks should be expected.
Yes of course, I am in no way denying that there will be any kicks.
I have seen well over 30 fights in real life and I remember that around 90% start out with a punch. I only remember about 2 or 3 fights that started out with leg kicks. Maybe about 20 to 30% of the fights do include kicks in the entire fight. Kicks to the head tend to happen when the opponent is in a stance where intelligent defense is less likely (e.g. floored opponents trying to get up, which requires you to place at least one hand on the ground). Otherwise,
most tend to go for leg kicks. There are more specific breakdowns of these fights like when and how a kick is delivered in a fight, but I think I'll stop here about specific details.
Let me talk about a story. So I first started boxing when I entered college, and later joined a MMA club few months year later. There were two other new guys, one with some kickboxing background, and one with black belt in kata-centered karate. The trainer told us that we should "mass-spar" boxing (don't know the English translation) to see how well we can perform. Because in a "mass-spar" you usually pull the punches and strikes before it lands so that you will not damage the opponent, we only wore gloves. Given that I had no kickboxing experience, it was supposed to be a boxing match. I was first paired with the kickboxer and that went out okay. But when I was paired with the karate guy, he didn't quite understand the instructions and what "mass-spar" meant and went full out on his punches and kicks. At that moment, I thought I was the one who misunderstood the instructions. I am a pretty small guy 5'4" and 115 pounds and
this guy was 60 pounds heavier and around 5 inches taller. This guy tried kicking my legs, body, and head
without shin protectors. But guess what,
none (literally) of those kicks were effective on me. As a matter of fact, after three or four of the kicks I received, I was able to counter his leg kicks with my cross. At the time, trainer was called and distracted and was not watching. So the fight went on for about 1 or 2 minutes, and when the trainer realized that we were having a kickboxing match, he stopped us.
So what is the lesson here? An effective kicks are those that land perfectly. That guy is a karate blackbelt, physically much larger, no protections on the legs, and I was a complete novice in kickboxing at the time and wasn't even expecting a kickboxing all-out spar. You actually need to experience sparring a lot in order to perfect kicking techniques to make it effective.
Now, provided that most street fights do not include kicks, and much more punching and maybe grappling, what is the point of training for defending kicks? If you are a boxer who had enough time sparring, you are calm enough to expect any attacks and you automatically keep enough distance. Most street fights don't last more than 2 minutes unless it goes to the ground. Leg kicks are not going to be any effective at all in such short amount of time, especially if one is not well trained.
Since I have never taken videos of street fighting, I can only find youtube videos. I chose this video in particular
NOT to show how boxers in street fight will perform, but to
show you how kicks from untrained individuals in most street fights look like:
Does the kicks look, in anyway, effective or worth defending? Do you think the boxer is truly hurt because of that kick he just took? Let me break it down for you.
First, the kicker's clothing is far from suitable to throw a kick, which is true in many situation. Second, the opposite leg is not torqued to give enough room for the technique, reducing power. Third, the body remains straight against the opponent, further reducing the power. Fourth, the kicker is not defending his head with the opposite hand. Fifth, the boxer's punch land almost simultaneously as the kick lands, and the difference in the speed is apparent.
This is exactly what I have observed from the fights that I have seen in my life. The precision of kicks are significantly lower than the precision of punches. Defending against kicks can come later as a option, but you should knock on boxing gym's door first and train and spar well, and
then go to a kickboxing gym.
Dale said:
Then a push or a grab is also the start of a fight since either can cause harm. Bringing in legal issues is irrelevant since the definition says nothing about legal issues. Pushes and grabs can cause harm so they apply according to your definition.
Well, the entire back-and-forth conversation between you and me about this point is more like you just trying to nit-pick a loophole in a definition. I would like to hear your definition so that I can nit-pick that for you and tell me if you would like it. I can do it, but it's not constructive. At this point, it would be obvious that any definition I give is going to be nit-picked and blown out of proportion because you cannot actually get to the point.
As an analogy, this is what you are doing:
Me "Don't say anything that can hurt other people's feeling"
You "So you are saying that I should never talk to you?"
Me "Why would you say that?"
You "Because any word 'can' hurt other people, inadvertently or not. Even the words I have just said. Maybe some of the words I have said might trigger your traumatic past if you have one."
Me "That's not what I meant. And the likelihood that I do have that trauma is low."
You "Then your first statement is poorly stated."
Do you often do this kind of conversation? I think not because I think you are a fair and understanding person elsewhere. So that means for now you are just trying to nit-pick what other people say to your favor.
I do agree with your point about the importance of sparring. It is also important to spar against multiple opponents
I agree with this. I would add that you should master 1 vs 1 sparring before you try anything else, though. I'll show you why.
1 vs many fights can be approached in two different ways:
A) Make it a 1vs1 then 1vs1 then 1vs1 then..., or B) Deal with multiple at the same time.
Needless to say, A) is the smarter approach than B). If you have extensively sparred 1 vs 1 and mastered it to a certain degree, then what you learned here can almost directly be applied in 1 vs many. Even in Krav Maga, many of the techniques of 1 vs many is essentially two step technique of breaking free and dealing them one by one, ideally. This is A).
The question then becomes, whether you can deal 1vs1 effectively in a short amount of time. So it is better learning 1 vs 1 and mastering it first than trying anything else.
But in any case, dealing with multiple opponents is extremely difficult no matter what you practice. The degrees of freedom in such case is completely chaotic and unpredictable that what you learn and "spar" against multiple opponents probably takes literally years to be effective.
Here's a video of how chaotic 2 vs 6 street fight is. I am
not using this video to show that this is how boxer vs random people will play out. I am using this video because
it best explains the chaos of dealing of group fights. In particular, you should see how much movements of each of these guys makes throughout the video.
There are some throwing around and kneeing in several parts of this video, and you can ask yourself how effective it looks. The guy being attacked isn't even looking that way and yet they are still ineffective. It is that difficult to land knees and difficult to get a hold on someone that is moving. This is how chaotic a street fight is.
Now, tell me if you think you can perform well in this chaotic situation. The answer is almost no, and if you think sparring against multiple opponents for a year can help you, then you have not experienced sparring neither. Spar would take you much more than an year before you are ready for multiple opponents. Instead, use that time to focus and master 1 vs 1 first.
I would like you to elaborate on this. Do you mean escape as in running away?
If you had to fight in the first place, then the chance is you didn't have the option of running away, anyway. If you can run away during a fight, then the you probably had the chance to do so in the first place. So sparring to escape effectively means that certain threats have been neutralized to give you enough time and space to escape.
Not everything you learn in boxing is practical in self defense. You learn to not protect your lower body, to not seek escape, to not deal with multiple attackers, etc. Boxing is primarily a sport.
There are a lot of false premises you have not mentioned here to make this moot argument. As for protecting your lower body aggravated people tend to target upper body more than lower body, particularly the head (see my reply to Rive about this). Everything you have just mentioned here applies to any other martial arts and self-defense academy, and not just boxing. Just because one practice a rule based sport does not mean they will follow the rules in self-defense scenario. Once you even start talking about "spar", more or less, it is a sport. Some self-defense academy teaches you eye gouge and how to execute it, but do you think you can perform that in spar? No, they won't let you. There is a rule here already.
