I seriously doubt anyone is going to be breaking ribs with punches. Has anyone suffered a broken rib from a punch in the UFC?
Huh? It happens all the time.
Former super bantamweight Jeff Fenech is known to have easily knocked out Peter Tunks in bar fight, I can’t track down his weight however he played in the forwards for the Canterbury Bulldogs in the Australian Ruby League and is not a small guy.
Nine months.
Ricky Hatton broke 4 of Jose Luis Castillo’s ribs with this body shot. And that’s against another professional boxer, with gloves on. Hence why I’ve basically come around to agreeing with my friend on this - with their hand speed and movement no one is going to be able to stop a pro boxer getting in a body shot or two, and a bare-knuckle punch from a guy like Hatton is going to do serious damage.
I’m surprised there aren’t more examples though. These guys are built to fight, that’s all they do, and according to Hatton the smaller boxers in particular have wise guys trying to start with them all the time. And I can’t imagine it takes much to provoke a punch from these people - guys like Mayweather and Tyson seem to have tempers on hair triggers. How come there aren’t stories of pro boxers laying out regular people week after week? Or is it that they are, but most boxers just aren’t really famous enough for most of us to hear about it?
Tunksy wasn’t huge but triple figures I’d say.
Why don’t we ask young Melosh here.
I’ve been in enough fights and trained in enough martial arts that I would place my money on the guy with the skill, speed, training and raw athleticism every time. By “technique” I’m not talking about some gay-ass taekwondo kata. I mean that the fight won’t “go to ground” because the skilled boxer can just dance around landing blow after blow with impunity while the hapless goon just flails about.
Fighting is like any other athletic activity. You wouldn’t ask if some 7 foot untrained guy in a bar could whoop Kobe Bryant in basketball, would you?
Because any boxer who is famous enough for us to have heard of had enough of an entourage of bodyguards and handlers to keep the rifraff away.
It could not be any drier, or more cut up.
The fight ain’t never gonna go to ground because the pro boxer will knock the big tough guy out with one punch. That’s if he’s feeling charitable.
If he’s really mad at the amateur tough-guy, he might toy with him as a cat does a mouse–inflicting large amounts of pain, humiliation, damage, and blood-letting until the boxer either gets bored, shot, or the cops pull him away.
If the boxer is genuinely pissed off/insane/feels his life is in danger, he may choose to kill the big lug with his fist (the plural “fists” is unnecessary as the boxer more often than not could easily accomplish this with a single punch ).
I think many people greatly underestimate the differences in hand-speed, technique, quickness, instinct, and power between even a moderately-skilled pro boxer on the one hand, and a much-larger, perfectly-conditioned, vicious, motivated, but untrained brawler who has never lost a bar-fight (but none of those ass-kickings was against trained boxers, either).
My google-fu failed me, but didn’t Jack Dempsey beat the shit out of two muggers when he was in his 70s?
You start off by inferring that most big guys aren’t big from genetics but because they hit the gym and then you say it’s a myth that weights make you musclebound. It’s not a myth, btw. Along with getting in more protein and total calories, weight training is how one becomes musclebound.
So most big guys go the the gym and hit a heavy bag? Most big guys don’t do that.
Don’t know anyone that learned those sort of fighting techniques in gym class and what the average dad spends a few minutes of his life teaching his kid about fighting is going to be next to useless against a professional fighter.
I doubt that also. Bar fights start standing and the boxer is going to first have to be taken to the ground. I’ve yet to see a bar fight turn into a wrestling match and I’ve seen a lot of bar fights.
I’ve sparred for fun with low-level amateur boxers.
Not great, not anywhere near pro, but well-trained by their coaches.
One thing that most people don’t seem to realize about boxers is their phenomenal ability to avoid punches.
When you watch boxing on TV, you see guys getting hit a whole lot. They’re getting hit by trained boxers who are very good at landing blows in that context.
The other thing that most people don’t realize is that you can avoid most punches with a very small motion; even in a fairly crowded bar, many of those motions would still work.
Just because somebody looks like his job is easy on TV doesn’t mean you can do it…
Okay. The quoted part of this post is EXACTLY what I was trying to get across in my post. When I sparred with a trained amateur boxer, I spend a solid minute punching at the air, and I don’t think he moved two feet from where he started. Just for kicks, he landed several pulled punches on my temple, chin and ears. It didn’t hurt at all, but I concluded that this guy who was literally half my size could have killed me with only minor difficulty.
I’ve trained boxing, kickboxing and have now gone over to MMA, and from my experience boxing in itself does little when it comes to defense.
The fight will end in one of two ways, either by a punch severe enough to end the fight, or on the ground.
Should the fight remain standing, I doubt that the brawl will last more than one or two hits. I know that my own right hook will easily break somebody’s jaw (as well as my fist), so whoever lands the first punch will have the fight. What you’re pitting here is the boxer’s experience (a boxer reads body language to anticipate a blow) and speed against the brawler’s reach. The boxer’s dilemma is that he has to get well within the brawler’s range in order to land a punch, but he probably has some practice of this from sparring with bigger opponents.
Should the fight go to the ground, I’m guessing that each fighter will be using mostly raw strength and a minimum of technique. As mentioned, knowing some catch-wrestling technique is helpful, because landing blows at short range is difficult. The brawler may know how to use his elbows, which we’ll presume that the boxer doesn’t. Knees probably won’t come in to action, unless either man is wearing shorts or a kilt.
The bigger man will have a very clear advantage once on the ground, tiring out his opponent. First man to reach full mount (and thus be able to land blows with any amount of force) will walk away.
This is of course presuming that they both brawl in a gentlemanly fashion, not using bottles, pool sticks, chairs, trickery, biting, fish hooking, testicle bashing, etc. Which in itself is rather unlikely.
In my experience most real bar fights, as opposed to some kids pushing each other around in a parking lot until someone takes a swing at the other, start with a sucker punch and end pretty quickly, usually with one guy on the ground getting kicked and punched by the other. It’s not typically like those Youtube videos.
Would a featherweight professional boxer beat a random larger person in an open street, where there’s lots of room to dance around and the other guy isn’t a real fighter but maybe someone who lost his temper or something? Sure.
Would the same guy beat a real streetfighter who weighed 80 lbs more than him, in an enclosed bar? Not unless he got in a lucky first shot.
I have a friend who was a street fighter when he was young. One of the toughest around. He was a bouncer in every seedy bar in our city. I saw him in action more than once. He was basically like an exploding wolverine. If it got to the point where he was going to fight you, there wouldn’t be any warning. You’d get a shot in the head and then he’d be all over you, then you’d be on the ground. Fight over.
That’s not what boxers train for.
Years ago Australian boxer Shannan Taylor, at the time fighting at 10-7, was at a classy hotel having lunch with a friend. As they were leaving a member of the public stopped Taylor to shake hands and say hello. By the time he caught up with the friend he was outside being assaulted by 3 men.
Taylor tried to break up the fight and the men turned on him. He hit each of them once and the whole thing was over. Each of the men ended up in hospital and because he was a professional boxer Taylor was charged. The judge ruled that, since he only hit each guy once, Taylor had shown admirable restraint. He dismissed the charges.
While I believe that broken ribs can happen, it seems to me that the OP assumes that a broken rib, administered by Paquin, is a sure thing. I believe that is a little over optimistic.
My vote goes for too tough to call. Just because a boxer has training, that doesn’t make him invincible.
I also believe that the Liston thing is no help, since he was a huge guy and we don’t know about the cop. At least, I don’t.
Best wishes,
hh
Nonsense. He may be an “exploding wolverine” to the untrained mook in a bar, but to a professional boxer, his attack would be like the flailings of a clumsy child.
WTF is a “real street fighter” anyway? Did your friend use Ryu’s Hadouken blast to defeat his opponents or something? Street fighter just means a big tough possibly somewhat trained guy whose been in a lot of fights with other big tough possibly somewhat trained guys. He would be fighting a guy who does nothing but train to fight and is in the top of his profession.
With most things… Nothing guarantees anything, but some things do change the odds.
A trained boxer has better odds in a street fight (for a number of reasons), but given the incredible number of variables, only a general consensus can be reached about whether the odds improve for a boxer, because of a staggering number of anecdotes, wildcards/variables and other factors.
So, being a boxer can certainly improve one’s chances, but it’s not a guarantee of any sort. We will forever be locked into the “NBA argument”, wherein we try to say that being tall is an advantage, only to have someone chime in with the Allen Iverson counterpoint.
Yes… we get it: Short people can play basketball, but being taller is – GENERALLY – better.
Being a trained boxer is – GENERALLY – better. This accepts that some 350 lb drunk slob might take down a 135 lb boxer.
Wrt boxer vs wrestler, when Muhammad Ali was banned from boxing (during his prime) he fought an exhibition (hazy on the details, but I think it was ten rounds) with some Japanese wrestler I had never heard of (I seem to remember they called him ‘the Pelican’ because of his enormous chin). In those days events like that were shown in arenas by closed circuit TV, and I paid 10 bucks or so to see it.
It was very disappointing. The wrestler immediately went to the ground and kept his legs pointed toward Ali, so he never got hit, but he did kick the crap out of Ali’s legs. IIRC there was some concern about blood clots from the beating Ali’s legs took.
I think most people will agree that Ali had decent hand speed, so it’s not a given that a boxer can end a fight at will with someone who doesn’t box.