Ivan
Once upon a time, Jake would beat me in the first five minutes of a fight.
I fought Jake's men a handful of times when I was younger and always lost. Jake's lion, Hanut, was bigger than I was by several feet, and he had much more power. No matter how much I trained back then, I could do nothing to get past any of them. It frustrated me, and I hated that Jake wouldn't show me the techniques he'd learned to get so good. He just said it was something he'd learned over time.
It was even worse when we fought as humans.
I wasn't always the biggest guy in a fight. No one could say I was scrawny or short, but I didn't have the muscles the older males had. That was something that happened in the military after a different level of training I hadn't been willing to do as a teenager. That's where I discovered where Jake learned everything he had. That made us match in skill and training.
Now, I had the advantage.