Fighting sound effects

Four hits in a row with cloth moving between them. This is the card most fight edits actually want, because a real exchange has rhythm and the gaps between the hits carry as much as the hits do.

A deep, soft-fronted thud that compresses before it decays. A kick has more mass behind it than a hand, and that longer squash is the only thing telling the audience which limb landed.

Continuous cloth and shoe leather under a struggle where nothing is being struck. It fills the stretches of a fight that have no impacts in them, which is most of any real one.

A tight, dry crack that stops instead of spreading. It is the sound that makes an exchange readable, since a defence with no sound of its own turns every parry into a missed hit.

A wide, heavy contact with a low boom in the boards underneath. It is the biggest sound in most fights and the one that decides whether the audience thinks somebody is getting up.

Three sharp exhales with no words in them, which is how a fight sounds like work rather than choreography. Because there is no language in it, it drops into any cut in any market.