How serious are you?

You can tell how high the level of committment to injure is in a person by where they place themselves to get the job done.

Angry or aggressive fighters will go toe-to-toe, literally stepping up to the man and then reaching out with their limbs to cover the intervening distance through their target.

A ‘true badass’ will put his foot between the other man’s feet.

The killer puts himself completely through the other man and ends up standing where his victim once stood, and then repeats the process into the ground.

Stepping up to the man and reaching out is the hallmark of monkey politics, the antisocial cuffing, shoving, punching to show primate displeasure. It’s usually followed by stepping back and away from the other man after making contact. It shows a lack of desire to cripple and kill, fear of the other man, and respect for his personal space.

As a result, injury is unlikely outside of a lucky traumatic brain injury (concussion by head hitting the ground), the most common fight-ending injury seen in both street fights and competitive matches.

The ‘badass’ steps in close enough to put his foot between the other man’s feet, into his personal space and underneath his center of gravity. I say ‘badass’ because that’s the usual assessment of bystanders — if toe-to-toe was aggressive, stepping into the man’s personal space is absolutely ‘badass.’

It also increases effectiveness: the proximity will give greater follow-through, dramatically increasing the chance of injury and knockdown. This amount of penetration is usually followed with another step in as the man falls back, as opposed to stepping away from the man.

The killer throws his entire body through the other man, not content with merely stepping under his center of gravity, he replaces it with his own. He breaks the plane of the man’s belt buckle with his. This maximizes injury and overrun, almost guaranteeing a knockdown. This is followed by continued injury (via stomping, etc) to the downed man .

Now imagine driving your forearm through a man’s throat or a knife through his rib cage — where would you want to be to get that job done? The place where it might work? The place where chances are good it’ll work?

Or do you want to position yourself to guarantee that it will work?