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Those type skills require a certain youth, and constant training, while the relaxed and reactive circular parrying and locking and throwing styles like Aikido are effective years after training, even when older. They become relexive, so that an unexpected attack (a sucker punch) is dealt with from deep instinctive memory without warming up, stretching, getting into a stance and so on.

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I'll offer a bot of advice from someone who has been places he wishs he never been and seen things he wishes he never seen. There have been times I've wondered if I'm fit to associate with decent people because of it.

The business of a 98 pound weakling defeating a 200 pound man by using his own strength against him with Asian arts is a myth that will get you killed in a serious situation. If you are going to get in a tussle with the big boys, particularly if the have knives, clubs, or whatever, you need to be able to move fast and deliver a single incapacitating blow. That takes STRENGTH and training. I know how to break a person's spine, neck, or arm if he grabs me. I know a few nerve holds. None of these are generally known to the average person. The moves are not particularly taxing. They require speed. They require more force than you might expect. Those two factors are the result of power training. There's no substitute for it.

Eyes, nose, throat, balls and then ears. You don't have to kill someone to incapacitate them, control them or escape.

You don't have to be Bruce Lee to poke someone in the eye or smash them in the nose.

Learn to handle a stick and then carry a cane.

The few people that can defend against a barrage of 3 to 5 verticle 'florettas' (flowers) delivered with a cane or rattan stick wouldn't be attacking you anyway.

Anyone can learn to swing a cane in a small back-handed, verticle, circular motion stopping their arm motion with the palm of their opposite hand at base of the biceps and elbow joint on the inside of the upper arm.

Anyone can learn to fire three rapid fire swings in a single second.

Anyone has the endurance to keep firing for 10 to 15 seconds while moving forward, backward or to either side. Any part of the body struck by the tip or any part of the last 3rd of the stick or cane, that's traveling the circumference of a circle 12 to 18 feet in diameter in a 3rd of a second, really hurts like hell.

With a little practice if you put a small strip of reflective tape on the tip of your stick, all your attacker will see is a blur of color.

Mix your strikes up with figure 8's and 'abanicos' (fan strikes) and you're bound to hit something that's going to take a long time to heal.

Your Grandma and Grandpa can learn to swing a stick like this.

The problem is that your forceful strength and speed training will not be with you when you have been away from your dojo a decade.

The reflexive moves of Aikido will, and I have used them in real life quite well. Not to the total and elaborate end moves on the ground, but sufficiently well to avoid punches and grabs and cast the attackers away from me onto their faces, and that has been enough. And that is without stretching, warming up, gettig focused, getting into a proper fighting stance etc.