Kata Only?

The idea that repeating Kata over and over, as is, will entrain the skills one might need to ‘defend themselves’ is a complete farce.
Some will say that this will work if one removes all doubt and is going against an ‘untrained fighter’ in a ‘civilian setting.’
Whoever says even THAT has never truly been assaulted in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no truth to that statement and no use for that type of training, even if one were to go back a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years, regardless, it does not make the statement true and does not make that sort of training effective in the least.

If someone assaults you on the street without a second thought, chances are likely they have done it before, which gives them experience... It also means they likely pegged you as an easy target after observation.
Remove all doubt on this... If you do endless Kata with zero context and zero application of principles then you will have little to no chance against even an ‘untrained’ person (as of training trumped experience - sometimes the two do converge).
The notion that it is a ‘fight’ is also a flawed notion, if someone assaults you it is an ASSAULT, not a FIGHT, the two things are VERY different.
One is not mutual, the other is the mutual result of letting one’s ego get the better of them when they could have just walked away and avoided the whole thing.

There is also the notion that going against a trained fighter is far worse than going up against a Process or Resource Predator.
Is it really? Why would you be going against a trained fighter to begin with? What went wrong on your end to land you in that mess that could, quite possibly, have messy ramifications, legally, for the both of you?
Maybe when people refer to ‘trained fighters’ they mean people trained via the Military of Law Enforcement? Why? The same question above applies here.
If the meaning is ‘Military’ then one is NOT facing a trained fighter, but a trained Soldier or Operator and, like Predators, they are not trained to fight, they are trained to kill by whatever means necessary. Again, not the same thing as fighting.

I feel like people who promote a certain mentality and use specific verbiage have simply watched too many Martial Arts Action movies and people who say that memorizing and performing Kata again and again will work in specific situations if one ‘removes all doubt’ have no idea what they are talking about and could potentially cause harm even by mentioning such notions in the same breath as ‘this sort of thing works in certain situations, but not against a trained fighter.’
Even making such a statement to brush it off is pure bullshit because this is not, nor was it EVER how things were done to produce effective skills.
The ‘skills’ produced by this sort of training have always been crap, plain and simple.