Protection from what? His plausible hands (that are not already ahead of me) are drawing to two or zero outs. Ace-anything would be a four outer but it's iffy that he would three-bet weaker than AK. King-anything has the most outs (seven), but I would say there's almost no way he would three-bet those hands pre-flop.

Basically, protection is not on my mind here.

I'd like to hear more on your first argument though. What do you mean by that?