People used to ask who would win, a boxer or a wrestler. The question is really about fighting ranges. What do you do at different distances? The boxer is used to fighting from a couple of feet away, and if he gets into a clinch, the ref splits them up. The wrestler is used to being all over the opponent, close enough to fuck him if he wants. It's a different range.

I'm going to start with a range you don't expect. A block apart. A city block apart. You can still be in a fight, even without any weapons, if you are a block apart, and you need to know what to do if you want to win.

Put yourself in this situation. You are on a deserted street at night and there is a gang of guys in front of you, a block in front of you. They are making a lot of noise, they are making you uncomfortable, you think they are looking at you, talking about you. You think they may be out to attack you, rob you, rape you. And you are right. They are. You're in a fight already. It's on already. What are you going to do? The fight has begun, although your opponents are a block away. Now.

Maybe you will simply run away. Maybe you will just walk towards them and hope for the best. Maybe you will look for a store to go into, or a gas station. Choose wisely. Trust your instincts. Maybe you can make it back to your car. All of these options may work for you except the one about ignoring your instincts and hoping for the best. That is not going to work for you.

The next range is not very useful, but Bruce Lee had a lot to say about it, and his jeet kune do followers make a lot of it. It is called interception range. I'd place it at about 5 or 6 feet apart.

Your opponent is about 5 or 6 feet in front of you, and you expect him to launch an attack, maybe a punch to the face. The jeet kune do expert will start thinking about intercepting the attack, since there is so much room, so much time, to come up with something very special. So when the punch comes in, the jeet kune do fighter may raise his elbow, bending his arm so that the elbow is sticking forward, and position the elbow so that the guy's hand runs right into it. If he punches you with all his might in your elbow, he's going to break his hand. Elbows tend to be bony. I think it is too risky a maneuver, but I guess these guys practice it a lot and can make it work.

The next closest range is kicking range. It is where karate fighters stand in the ring, further away than boxers do. If you have some good kicks and your opponent doesn't, it is to your advantage to keep the fight at long distance, so you pick him apart with your kicks and he isn't close enough to fire back.

Some people are so flexible that they can throw high kicks to the chin or even to the temple or ear. Better yet, they can make contact not with their foot, but with their shin. Kicking someone in the head with your shin is even more devastating than kicking him in the head with your shoe. I've seen shin kicks break baseball bats. It can cause an instant knockout, complete and instant unconsciousness.

But if you're not that flexible, that doesn't mean you can't have a devastating attack from kicking range. Some of the most powerful kicks are easy to do. Try a kick to the outside of the thigh. Try a kick to the inside of the thigh. It's hard to miss. If he isn't a trained martial artist he won't know what to do about a thigh kick. He'll just keep getting kicked in the same spot, and that is a fight ender. Nobody can take too many shots to the same spot on the thigh. It's a target you can't miss. You can also slip it between his legs, and ring his bell. A bit higher, and you have yourself a liver kick or a solar plexus kick or a kick to the floating and very breakable ribs. You don't need to be a gymnast to score a KO with kicks.

The next closest range is punching range, where boxers stand. It's generally the range you first think of, when you think of a fight, because you have seen so many boxing matches. Your best bet is to punch to the body, to the stomach, because that way you won't break your hand on his hard head. Uppercut him in the nuts with your wrist. If you know some karate hand strikes, go with that. You have the bottom fist (hammer fist) which you can use to the nose or teeth or temple or collar bone without breaking your hand. You have the finger strikes which you can use to the eyes. You can punch to the throat either with the fist or the foreknuckles. You can knife hand the throat, using a forward or reverse approach (right hand coming from the right, or right hand coming from the left).

The next closest range is very important to familiarize yourself with. A lot of people don't know what the hell to do with "close quarter" but there's so much you can do to end a fight from this distance. It is the place where a boxing ref will split the fighters up. Kissing close.

Head, elbows, knees, teeth, fingers. There's so much you can do, and it is the most dangerous range. It's all filthy. It's all disgusting. It's all deadly. It's all illegal. No sport allows any of this stuff.

Head. Smash your forehead into the opponent's face, then watch the blood pour out of him, jump out of him. Elbows. Smash an elbow into his nose and watch it bleed like a stuck pig, the nose broken. Smash an elbow into his teeth and then watch him try to pick his teeth up from the floor as he spits blood. Knees. Lift your knee up into his balls a few times, then watch him sink and forget all about offense. As he sinks, knee him in the face. Knee him in the stomach, the lower ribs, crack! Grab the back of his neck with both your hands, pull his head down, and knee him in the face. That's a lullabye, nighty night. Bite his nose off if you can. If he has a knife, bite his hand til he releases it. Bite his anything. Use your fingers to gouge his eyes clean out. Practice your chiropractic technique and see if you can spin his head in a circle like the little girl in The Exorcist. Close quarter is the most vicious distance, so if you find yourself there, finish the fight in 4 seconds and you're done, go home. Get mean. It's you or him, and there are people who need you around. Who the fuck was he in the first place to mess with you! This earth doesn't require his presence anymore. See to it quickly and go home.

Finally, grappling range. That's an area for highly trained martial artists. Some bozo can try to extend his arms and choke you the way Frankenstein would, but that is easily defended in many ways. Rip his hand off your neck by ripping his pinky off the rest of his hand. I don't care if he weighs 300 and you weigh 95, your hand can out-muscle his pinky. Smash down on his extended arm with your elbow and break his choke hold that way, and then slip your elbow into his face because it's right there anyway with nothing to stop you.

If he gets you in a headlock, well, a trained martial artist likes to be in a headlock. It's a short step from you being in a headlock to you having him in an arm bar. His arm is extended where it doesn't belong, around the back of your neck, which means he doesn't know shit. It's easy to slip to the floor by just basically sitting down on the floor, and then with a little roll, you're on top of him and he finds that his arm is in a very awkward and vulnerable position. You split his arms apart by using a certain simple technique, and then you take the arm he has given you, and snap it. It's jiu jitsu 101. Get me in a headlock, shithead, it's your funeral, it's your arm.

There are lots of cool chokes to do from grappling range. These are not the kind of chokes that leave your pinky vulnerable to be ripped off. These are well thought out chokes that leave you safe and leave him choking.

There are lots of cool arm locks to do from grappling range. It doesn't matter if you are on top or on the bottom. There are things to do from either position. Check out the kimura, the X choke, the rear naked choke, the straight arm bar applied from a variety of positions, the America lock, and the guillotine. I bet you could even learn them online.

As James Joyce wrote in Ulysses, it's a good idea to have a little "Japanese wrestling" for any occasion.