For someone who seemed a little dopey and clumsy at times, he didn't appear to have much trouble reacting in time and moving just out of reach without sacrificing too much of his balance. Perhaps it was all just an act - just a thick layer of cotton wool wrapped around the barbed wire, just a little rubber stopper to blunt the pointed tip of the Spade, just a way to put people at ease around him - but whatever it was, it was harder to rein it all in when he was forced to face Julien within the confines of a relatively small sparring mat.

Openings were too few and far between to take advantage of only when Julien presented them, so he'd had to take a few calculated risks to create some when he wasn't busy fending Julien off. But there were no wild swings or big wind-ups involved, and for someone who usually wrote with his right hand, he seemed to prefer retaliating and did hit harder with his left.