A lot of people perceived fighting as a brutal sport; many still do. I can see where they are coming from, but I don't see that as a sufficient reason to dislike it. Life itself can be brutal, more so than any fight I have seen. Combat is in our nature; our history is steeped in it. Fighting really is a way of life - perhaps not always hand-to-hand combat, but the struggles that we all experience are our individual fights; some you win, some you continue to fight.
Let me get back to what I want to tell you, before I get lost in my metaphorical self. I was a fighter, many years ago. I trained hard to condition my body, increase my strength and stamina, and learn to fight using different styles. I devoted my life to it; everything I did was to better my fighting - training, diet, observing other fighters - and that left no personal time at all. My only friends were my trainers and sparring partners. I was a warrior.
Things started to change in the sport when a young fighter call Tony Valcari made his debut. He was a talented and devoted fighter, having spent most of his teenage years learning various styles and increasing his strength and stamina, as we all were. His devotion to his craft had another effect: he started creating his own styles. He was very technical, his movements measured, his throws tested and weighted to the smallest margin. His first technique set, simply name 'Valcari', focussed heavily on striking. Each punch had a specific design - from the placement on the opponent to the way the fist was clenched or the structure of the open palm. It also incorporated defensive striking, whereby certain strikes where employed purely to parry an incoming strike, such as the open-palm strike to inner forearm to parry a jab. He first used this to great effect when knocking out World Heavyweight Boxing champion Drew O'Thenion - known for his ability to knock his opponents unconscious with a single strike - taking almost no hits directly due to striking parries. It wasn't a title fight, but Valcari wasn't interested in glory, only his own betterment.
It was quickly afterwards that the world witnessed Foresight. It was during what was believed to be Valcari's toughest opponent ever - the undefeated Shaun Stigheim. There was a reason that Stigheim had not lost a fight, and that was primarily that he dwarfed even the largest fighters. The fight, although sanctioned and overseen by the Universal Fighting Committee, had no weight class. In fact, Stigheim outweighed Valcari by almost 200 pounds! It was David and Goliath, in a cage fight, and nobody thought Valcari would be able to walk out unassisted, much less defeat the giant. But defeat the giant, he did, and not only did he walk out of the cage without any help, he also walked out without so much of a bruise on his body. Shaun Stigheim, known throughout the world for his supreme strength and speed, didn't land a single punch on Valcari.
There was uproar. It was called a fix - and the bookmakers made a killing. A few extreme gamblers had taken the long odds on offer for the underdog, but nobody could see any way that the relatively unknown, lean looking fighter could have any effect on the mountainous slayer of humans. Most people had tuned in to the pay-per-view event in the hope of seeing Valcari brutally destroyed in what would have been sanctioned murder. The fact was that the fight looked like it was staged, as if they were carrying out a well-practiced and perfectly choreographed dance. Worse still, there were so many clichés, and what appeared to be some terrible acting, that nobody believed it was a real fight. There are a few that still hold on to that belief today, regardless of the information that came to light shortly afterwards.
Now this is the part of my tale that you wanted to hear: how Foresight works. After Valcari had perfected the art of aggressive defence, he began to develop an interest in technical psychology. Knowing an enemy's actions based on their temperament was a useful tool to have; Valcari was able to evade attacks that he knew you were going to make, even before you did. This study of man helped for many months as he continued with this direction of his training, but it was only the start of Foresight.
More than 2 years of dedication to the improvement of Foresight forged Valcari into an unbeatable machine. But it wasn't his supreme conditioning or speed that prevented his opponents from defeating him. His strength came from Foresight, his polished methodology that had taken him across the globe, learning from Tibetan monks and South American warrior tribes. It was his ability to see the future.
There has always been a great deal of stories about people who can see their future, or other people's. And that is always what they are - fictional tales. Valcari's ability was different, believable. There was an education behind it; Valcari had structured the method based on what he had learned from his travels and the ancient civilisations that he encountered. In truth, he had spent a lot of time learning to condition his mental awareness in order to capitalise on what he had learned, which is what had taken so long. It was when he started to teach this to others that fighting changed forever.
Foresight was a mixture of knowledge, skill and perception. First, you had to train to notice everything around you; your environment, your opponent, and yourself. Once you can do that, time seems to slow down - in order for your mind to process all of this information, you become aware of more which stretches the seconds out. You aren't slowing time down at all, but instead you are alert during each passing moment - most people simply go through their lives only aware of the smallest fraction of their lives, which makes time pass a lot faster for them. Valcari first came across this when he noticed that children always complained about long trips or having to wait until their birthday, and realised that for them everything was new and exciting. They would see things that adults took for granted, and even use their imagination to make it even more fun. Clouds would take on shapes, the hole at the side of the road would be the home for some sewer-dwelling troll, people they would see instantly had an effect on their thoughts. They would notice everything, and time would slow down. Valcari worked this into his training, and soon was able to react faster because of it.
While meditating with the monks across Asia, Valcari learned about the most important part of Foresight: reading your opponent. The human body is a very complex organism, and much of the actions we take are born long before they are delivered. The time it takes for you to decide on a movement to your body obeying can be quick, but when you have trained your senses it becomes an eternity. This in itself is only slightly useful, as we all have limits to the speed that we can move. However, knowledge is a very powerful tool, and Valcari had learnt about the signals of movement. Certain slight indications can tell you when someone is about to strike, and how they will deliver the blow. Raised hairs, increased colour of the skin in certain areas - these are just a few of the methods used in Foresight. Valcari had developed a system that allowed him to know what you were going to do before you had even started to move, so when your punch, kick or lunge was employed, he had already moved to block, parry or counter - and he already knew exactly how to do that to maximum effect. As he perfected the art, he added subtle differences such as surroundings, temperature and weather. Knowing how people react in different conditions would lend itself to Foresight, and make each decision even more accurate and effective. Valcari was considered a genius.
Over the years, many have learnt to use Foresight in their fighting. It wasn't long before the top fighters had no choice but to learn it, as no matter how good they were in their chosen disciplines, they just couldn't overcome the advantage of seeing what is about to happen. All title fights were between Foresight warriors, so it wasn't long before the world of fighting returned to a battle of strength and speed. Fighters had to train to become so powerful that even knowing what was coming was not enough to deflect the strike. They increased their speed and stamina to make it harder to evade the strikes. Valcari had rewritten the way we fought, and changed the world of fighting forever, but eventually fighting looked the same as it always had.
