As I have progressed as a fighter I have benefited greatly from the experience and knowledge of other great fighters. I’ve found that the truly good fighters are always willing to “talk shop”, provide advice and critiques, and even take time out of their schedules to spar and train with less experienced fighters. This has been a source of significant benefit to me.

At the same time, as a left-handed fighter, I’ve found very few people I can learn from directly. The mechanics of hand-matched fighting, which is to say lefty versus righty, differ significantly from those of the more common righty-on-righty fighting. While a person with different handedness can teach you the basics and help you hone fundamentals, their day-to-day experience and the top end of their game is generally focused on fighting righties.

There is also a dearth of top left-handed fighters. This is the curse of the lefty. A lefty tends to move to the top of his local pool simply by virtue of being left-handed. He is the exception, almost the “gimmick fighter”, so he derives significant advantage by fighting people outside their normal comfort zone. Simply put, he has more practice fighting right-handed people than right-handed people have fighting lefties. Unfortunately, this stunts his growth as a fighter. He is not being challenged sufficiently to advance and ends up a lower-skilled fighter who defeats more talented fighters simply because of unfamiliarity. When he encounters people with equal experience fighting hand-matched people, he tends to get murdered.

This results in an acute shortage of actual top-skill left-handed fighters. This lack makes it harder for lefty fighters to advance in skill to the very top levels. That is where this site comes in. It is my goal to provide some resources to other left-handed fighters to help them advance beyond the level of “good because he is left-handed” to the level of “just plain good.” At the same time, I am hoping righties will find the same lessons instructive so that they can more easily defeat left-handed fighters, forcing the lefties to adapt and improve.

Welcome to lefty combat.