We use the term "guided chaos" in our class as to mean that a typical fight will have no pre-determined set of moves being used against us and that we must at the same time use whatever we can that works, not necessairly something we are pre-planning.
One drill that amazed me was as follows:
The instructor gave a woman with little training a black marker to signify a knife. She was told to go crazy on the guy accross the room who she was told just raped her little girl. She was told just start swinging and go crazy.
The guy on the other side of the room was a 3rd degree black belt. He was not told what was really coming although he knew something was going to happen.
The woman simply walked up to the guy screamed and started swinging the marker. The black belt guy was covered in black . It was obvious that he would have been cut to ribbons.
The point of the drill was that preplanned defenses do not always work and an unskilled person can do a lot damage to even people with many years of training.
We were all in shock, as was the black belt guy!
That is true, that is why you must understand the concepts rather that just perform a set routine by rote. I've notice some fellows a lot more advanced than me get their butts kicked by a junior because something in the attack didn't fit in with their planned defense. Once you have a grip on the concepts then you can react more appropriately in situations like this.
Another factor is that this was done in a classroom setting (I believe), and there is a sense of safety in controlled setting like that. If it was done on the street unexpectedly, he probably would've reacted differently.