Fighting a Jedi without a lightsaber should be suicide.
A Jedi can sense danger before it happens, react faster than a normal person, and cut through most weapons in a single strike. Even blasters are not safe, because a trained Jedi can send the shots right back.
So how could anyone fight one up close with nothing but their hands?
Teräs Käsi Was Created to Fight Jedi
Teräs Käsi means “steel hand” in Basic, and in Legends it came from Bunduki, a world in the Pacanth Reach.
The style was developed by the Followers of Palawa after their homeworld, Palawa, was devastated in a war involving the Jedi Council. They created Teräs Käsi specifically to fight Jedi, so its whole purpose came from surviving against Force-sensitive opponents.
The training was not only punching and kicking. Students learned history, literature, metaphysics, and the philosophies of the Pacanth Reach cultures. The Followers taught the style as something tied to discipline and self-control, not just violence.
That control became the center of the fighting style. Teräs Käsi practitioners trained their bodies to move with extreme speed, strength, and precision. Masters could strike so quickly that their movements seemed to blur, and the style used close-range attacks with hands, feet, elbows, blades, and sticks.
It also worked across different ranges of combat: kicking range, punching range, elbow range, and grappling range. That mattered against Jedi because the fighter had to survive long enough to get inside the reach of a lightsaber.
Some techniques were based on dangerous creatures from across the galaxy. Charging Wampa involved rushing the opponent, striking toward the jaw, then hitting both arms against the neck. Other moves included Rancor Rising, Dancing Dragonsnake, Gundark Slap, Leaping Veermok, Nerve Strike, and Sleeping Krayt.
Teräs Käsi also used meditative training. Practitioners could turn their focus inward, enter a trance-like state, stop bleeding, slow poisons and diseases, and in some cases even help heal their own wounds through mental control.
Maul Passed Teräs Käsi Into the Underworld
By the Imperial Era, Teräs Käsi was not a common fighting style.
In canon, it survived through people connected to crime syndicates, Sith power, and elite bodyguards. Maul knew the art while ruling Crimson Dawn, then passed it to Dryden Vos.
Dryden did not fight like a normal gangster. He was trained in Teräs Käsi and used a pair of custom Kyuzo petars, small bladed weapons designed for close combat and weighted to fit his fighting style.
Qi’ra learned the same art from Dryden. During the Kessel raid in Solo, she used Teräs Käsi to take down Quay Tolsite of the Pyke Syndicate while unarmed.
That detail shows what made the style dangerous. Teräs Käsi was not about blocking a lightsaber with bare hands. It was about closing distance, controlling the opponent’s body, and ending the fight before the other person could use their weapon properly.
The same idea explains why Emperor Palpatine’s Royal Guards and the First Order’s Elite Praetorian Guards were also trained in it. Their job was to survive close-range threats near some of the most powerful dark-side rulers in the galaxy.