Chapter 88: What is, "street fighting?"

“Street fighting is hand-to-hand combat in public places, between individuals or groups of people. Unlike sport fighting, a street fight might involve weapons, multiple opponents, and no rules. The venue is usually a public place (e.g. a street) and the fight sometimes results in serious injury or occasionally even death.”- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_fighting

This phrase or term is a lot like the use of self-defense, a legal term. Yes, when one defends themselves against violence they are performing a type of self-defense so the term is somewhat adequate. Where this falls down is the misunderstanding of the legal term used, "self-defense."Because there is a ton of crossover that is not given its due, i.e., demanding and understanding the distinctions, the legal term gets mixed up with the more social term.

Street fight is the same, as can be perceived by the above given definition it too tends to get muddled with what is understood of "types of violence, i.e., social vs. asocial, etc."Just because an altercation occurs out in society, i.e., on the street, does not mean that one is engaged in that type; see definition, of a "street" fight. There is just not enough and the misunderstandings tend to dominate in the self-protection martial art and karate communities. There isn't enough distinction because the community assumes and strives for a short, terse and comprehensive answer that can be labeled like it is, street-fighting. 

Just take a moment to do the research on the term/phrase and you, like defining self-defense or traditional or classical, etc., you get as many as there are practitioners. This is why many remove those distinctions and refer to it as, "defense-protection or better yet, self-protection." 

Now, add in all the dramatic media and entertainment renditions of the term and the confusion, like self-defense, mounts into a huge mountain of just plain, bullshit. 

Remember as well to label an encounter of aggression and violence into a single term is a mistake because one is taught how to defend while not delineating the social and asocial aspects that require vastly different strategies and tactics. 

Let me add, take off the "street"part and focus on"fighting." Here is the rub, fighting is illegal so trying to train to handle a street fight, fighting, would make the combatants participants of a willing nature therefore both parties would be unable to use the defense of self-defense. Simply, fighting is"Illegal!"That in and of itself makes the use of "street-fighting"inappropriate as to how one self-protects. 

Self-defense as a legal term means, you as the attacked, were an unwilling participant who was given no choice in the matter because, "you were ATTACKED unprovoked like, etc."