McClain in Die Hard gets beated pillar to post throughout the movie. He barely won his first fight when he managed to get the small footed bad guy to fall down the stairs and break his neck. imo, Bruce Willis did a good job in many of his movies palying the guy who gets beat up and just barely manages to come out on top. It was a nice changeup from the unstopable Rambos and Arnold movies that preceded it.
For anyone who’s interested, here’s the fight from Giant that I alluded to earlier.
Rock Hudson is clearly the good guy and the racist diner owner the bad guy… but the bad guy mops the floor with Rock.
They Live
They both got their ass kicked in the alley.
One of the things I like about this film is when Roddy Piper & Kieth David fight, it was the first film I saw in which they actually looked like they were in a fight.
Actually my recollection is he beats up the jock as well, just that he takes a fair bit of punishment in the process. Brendon is actually a good example of a realistic “tough guy.” He actually is pretty tough, but he’s not Superman. Against normal opponents you’d bet on Brendon, but The Pin’s enforcer is just a whole level of badass above him.
Indy gets his ass handed to him in at least 3 of the four films. In Temple he would have lost to the big Thugee had the guys uniform not got caught in the roller. In Crystal Skull he would have lost to the Russian had he not fallen on the pile of ants. I don’t remember what happens on the tank scene to say how badly he would have gotten his ass kicked had the tank not gone over the edge.
The only reason he bests the jock is because the jock is gloating and bragging, instead of paying attention to Brendon. Brendon walks away nearly doubled over in pain. Since Brendon is the Raymond Chandler-esque hero who takes a beating and keeps going, it is entirely appropriate.
Stranger
Dean Winchester gets his ass handed to him almost every episode of Supernatural Sure, many of these beatdowns were administered by various monsters and demigods, but he’s been whupped by humans, too (Gordon Walker and his own brother Sam come to mind) but I might argue that the fights were “fair” in the sense that in most cases Dean is seeking them out with the means to kill the bad guys.
Didn’t Philo Beddoe take a dive in the final brawl in “Every Which Way But Loose”? Does taking a dive count?
In comics, Batman gets the crap beaten out of him by the Mutant Leader in their first fight in The Dark Knight Returns. Then later, Batman uses some tricks when fighting Superman to turn it into a “fair fight” and beats Superman.
ETA: I realize these are TV and comic refs, not movies (except EWWBL). Didn’t read the thread title as carefully as I should have.
Think we are talking about different things. In the ring, Rocky and Creed were evenly matched. Neither man was able to dominate the other. The decision could have gone either way–that’s about as evenly matched as a boxing match gets, short of an actual draw.
In defense of Worf:
First, I’m not impressed by Guinan being a better shot than Worf on the practice range. Competent shooting under stressful, confusing combat conditions is a very different beast, and we don’t see Guinan doing that. Perhaps more important, good aim is only one part of combat effectiveness. We’ve no reason to doubt that Worf has all sorts of training and skills in the effective use of cover, how to conduct a fighting retreat, and so on, that Guinan just doesn’t have.
Also - most of the time that Worf loses a fight, it’s either against a robot, a Borg, or some other sort of super-alien. In a straight-up fight against a fairly normal humanoid (like the Jem Hadar, or other Klingons), Worf handles himself well.
Other posters have mentioned that it’s strange to give the same man responsibility for shipboard security and tactical systems, and I agree. But Worf doesn’t seem to be particularly bad at his job.
Fair point. Battlestar Galactica actually did a good job of taking a really reprehensible (but utterly hot) character and making her sympathetic and likeable - Tricia Helfer’s Six.
As I said upstream: ‘Fair Fight’ is ambiguous" and that’s okay for the purposes of this thread. (Thinking about old films. Making lists. Maybe generating side conversations like this one.)
That said, the point of Rocky is that it did not seem to be a fight between equals. Rocky (almost) overcomes the odds. That’s the story.
There’s nothing surprising about a short white 44-20 fighter losing to the the world champion, except in the world of Underdog Sports Films. Even there putting up a valiant fight while ultimately losing is a common variation.
If Flash Gordon enters an arena to fight a five-ton, five-headed carnivore and manages to (barely) defeat it does not make it a fair fight or a fight between equals. Outside of the world of movies the expectation is that Flash would get destroyed 99% of the time. Same thing with Rocky vs Apollo.
44-20 sounds about right, especially since Rocky Balboa was based on Chuck Wepner, a club fighter who never did anything noteworthy before his fight with Muhammad Ali and never did anything noteworthy afterward, but managed to last 14 rounds against the champ and acquitted himself well.
Hence, the ending of the first Rocky picture was realistic and just as it should be. Chuck Wepner COULDN’T have beaten Muhammad Ali under any circumstances. Ali was just too much better than Wepner. An out-of-shape, overconfident Ali was still more than a match for Chuck Wepner at his best, and in the same way, Apollo Creed on his worst night was still way better than Rocky Balboa on his best night.
The first half of*** Rocky 2 ***was ALSO realistic, as it shows what would really have happened to a guy like Rocky Balboa in the aftermath of his big moment against Creed. He’d have tried to cash in with a commercial or two, and a high profile fight or two, but would quickly have faded back into obscurity.
Seriously, the high point of Chuck Wepner’s post-Ali career was a match against Andre the Giant.
Fezzik: We face each other as God intended. Sportsmanlike. No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone.
Man in Black: Frankly, I think the odds are slightly in your favor at hand fighting.
Fezzik: It’s not my fault being the biggest and the strongest.
Coincidentally, the same actor who got his ass kicked in Dazed and Confused. That guy can’t catch a break! 
I think I remember Robin getting his ass handed to him by Kato.
I think they fought to a draw, as did Batman and the Green Hornet. The story I heard (but couldn’t vouch for as to accuracy) was that the script originally had Batman and Robin getting the better of the Green Hornet and Kato, but Bruce Lee wasn’t about to have his character losing to a “Boy Wonder.” Bruce hinted (probably jokingly) that he was going to kick Burt Ward’s ass for realios, or at least rough him up. The fights were changed to draws as a compromise.
Buffy TVS got her ass kicked by Glory and by the First Vampire before she regrouped and defeated them. I’m sure there were a few others. Based on the OP, I would count those as fair fights, her opponents were just stronger than her.
Malcolm Reynolds got his ass handed to him by The Operative in the Monastery fight scene in Serenity. He wasn’t showing too good in the climatic battle either, until the very end.
Come to think of it, Mal doesn’t do to well throughtout Firefly in plain old fisticuffs.
In Raising Arizona, H.I. lost spectacularly to the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. I don’t think he even meant to pull the pin on the grenade; I think he was just holding on for dear life when he got knocked away, and accidentally pulled the pin out when he went flying.
I’ve heard Burt Ward say that, all through their “fake” fight, Bruce Lee kept doing real-looking kicks and throwing real-looking blows that always landed just an inch from Ward’s face. Ward was terrified, but Lee just laughed.
Ward was just an actor, and never pretended to be a genuine tough guy. If the script had called for HIM to lose the fight, Ward would have figured, “Hey, this is all just make-believe, right?”
But Bruce Lee took his fighting VERY seriously. And he was, apparently, offended by the idea that his character could lose even a fictional, make-believe fight.
IF this account is true, I think Lee was being an oversensitive jerk, frankly.
Maybe, but my understanding is that his initial offense was quickly replaced by amusement mostly, although he still didn’t want his character to lose. From his perspective it was sort of understandable - sometimes an actor has to fight to keep his character from getting punked and to protect their own career. He was already playing the sidekick/limo driver of a non-martial artist white guy, he was trying to establish himself both as a serious action star and as a serious martial artist, and now they wanted to portay him losing a fight to yet another non-martial artist white guy (it hadn’t happened yet, but he would shortly thereafter lose the lead role in a TV series he created to another non-martial artist white guy). No doubt at least a little ego was involved, but there were some real reasons for not wanting his character getting owned in to the boy sidekick in a camp series as well.