If you want to move this to the General Martial Arts section I don’t really have a problem with it. However, if you want to leave it in General Self Defence…
Self defence isn’t about waiting until someone throws a fist at your face and then doing something. People however do not have Tourette’s of the fist, they don’t generally go around randomly punching people for no reason and with no warning. There is a whole host of events which have to happen before you get to the stage where people start throwing punches. There are therefore several opportunities for you to avoid getting to the point where punches are thrown, that is what self-defence is about. You can’t just ignore them all (if you are claiming to teach self defence) and skip to the part where fists start flying.
Why is this guy throwing punches at you? What was the first sign that there was a problem; a) ok this is how you avoid the situation developing at point a) if you can’t or it doesn’t work the next thing that happens is b), here’s what you do at point b), if that fails point c) point d) etc until you arrive at the point where punches are thrown.
The problem with a lot of martial artists is they lack the skills to avoid situations developing to the point where violence starts, and so they have to pretend that self defence is fighting so that they can teach fighting skills as self defence.
Teaching people to do nothing until punches start getting thrown is like teaching children to cross the road by ignoring what we normally teach (avoid getting run over in the first place by; finding a safe place to cross, looking both ways, listen, walk don’t run etc) and instead teaching them to do nothing until they get hit by a car, and then doing a stuntmen roll over the bonnet.
That’s not to say of course that you don’t teach fighting skills as part of SD, of course you do, the point is, you don’t ONLY teach fighting skills. So “We’re going to do as little self defence”. No, you’re not, you going to teach a little martial arts, which isn’t the something.