Aside from the fact that you'll be getting hurt, there may be other problems with your method. Even if you have your actors beat you up, it might not look realistic. A lot of people would not feel comfortable hurting someone, even if the person wants to be hurt; therefore, your actors may hold back and it could look worse than if you coreographed it. Plus there's no chance of getting another shot if something goes wrong. If your character is in any other scenes, you could be unable to act, depending on whether or not you are hurt badly or at all.

I would suggest you have everyone involved in the fight meet up and come up with a few ideas and just practice it... a lot. Film your practice so that you can refer back to it. I would strongly sugggest you not have yourself beat up in a scene. I've heard of suffering for your art, but this is taking it to the Van Gough level.

"I think anyone who knows how to mod a Nerf gun is a
bad-ass." -Leaf-o, The Angry Aardvark (www.angryaardvark.netfreehost.com)

Depending upon the camera location a punch can miss by feet and look like it hit. Another technique is to use the Camera POV. Clint Eastwood's standard move was to punch the camera (or so it appeared). Another nice move is if your character is knocked o the ground have the bullies kick and step down at the camera. Both of these moves put the audience in the position of victim and thus make the fight a bit more emotionally connected than they would be otherwise.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I have some a few fight videos. My best one is here on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHtvEIWftR4

Letting yourself getting beat up for real to spare the actor is a terrible idea, for many reasons already listed.

Here's how I did my video for $0.0 dollars:
1. Since I do wushu (Chinese martial arts) and also the martial arts of choice for cinema, I got some of the best wushu
students in the US to participate. Wushu is specially tailored for exhibition and fight choreography, so it was a perfect fit.
2. I wrote up a story concept on how I'd like the fight to happen, and then used that as a guide for
the 2 wushu students on how to choreography the fight set.
3. I watched and went thru several variations and possibilities until we all came up with something I liked.
4. Time to rehearse. Rehearse until it's ingrained in their muscle memories. The more rehearsed, the faster
they can perform, more comfortable, and less fear of hurting each other.
5. I taped the rehearsal and went back home to storyboard it. Storyboards are esp important to fight sets,
since I wanted to get the best angle to maintain realisim. You can work out a lot of problems with
storyboard to see what fight moves work and what won't, and what u can pull off to make it look real.
6. On production, I had to improvise some angles because some of their moves were just to difficult to
do to close without hitting the other person.
7. The part when the red shirt guy jump kicks the blue shirt dude was actually faked. I filmed him far
away really doing the jump kick, but the blue shirt dude was like 2 feet away, so it obviously looked fake.
So I got in for a close up and had the red shirt dude do a slower version of the kick while standing, and
was able to bring the blue shirt guy a lot closer.
8. 2D is your friend. It is very hard to judge depth if cannot see the floor the actors are standing on.
Use that to your advantage. A punch a foot away from the person can look like a real hit if the reaction
is timed correctly.
9. Sound effects were all done in post, down to every sword swing, punch, kick, body hit, foot steps, etc..
Good sound effects can really sell a fake hit
10. Finally, the footage was graded for a more old style kungfu film look.

Hope that helps, and stay safe and outta the hospital

Great ideas are plenty, great stories, there are few.

I'm agreeing with rjschwarz. Camera location is quite important. Some really nasty looking hits can be achieved just where you put the camera. Also don't forget that sound will be your best friend. The better the sound effects the more people will think that the hits connected. In some of the stuff I've done (which i learned from watching tony scott movies) is to get a close up of your actors face. Have them a little out of frame and then throw their head back like they were hit. If you use it as a pretty fast cut and a good sound effect no one will notice that the punching hand is not there. Quick editing also really helps a lot. Getting watermelons and recording someone punching them makes for great face blows. breaking celery is great for neck breaks. Punching pillows works pretty well for body blow sounds. Hope this helps.