Are there any examples of professional boxers getting into fights with regular people?

The Game Room
81

The UFC fighter was Roger Huerta, who beat the tar out of a guy twice his size for hitting the big guy’s GF. Roger is not especially known for punching prowess by MMA standards, a pro boxer would’ve laid him out a lot worse.

Its not even worth talking about if we are debating sneak attacks, etc. In any remotely fair fight, an elite pro boxer vs just some big guy, it would have to be an over 100lb weight disadvantage to even be worth considering the big guy. I doubt anyone who doesn’t train mma or wrestling at an elite levelis not going to be floored by the boxer.

Anecdotally, I have been in my share of fights at school and trained in boxing and taekwondo… I was in a fight with my roommate 2 years ago and used grappling techniques only, because if I punched or kicked him I knew I would likely break his jaw at minimum. I am not elite by any means, and I already fear hurting some drunk flailing snob…a boxer could easily kill someone on accident barehanded.

82

Oh,

Oh yeah, the boxer wins easily.

83

This is just wrong. Unless the big guy hits like he can’t punch through a wet paper bag, no one but genetic freaks can remain conscious after a blinside full punch to the jaw. It isn’t a matter of toughness or training at that point. When your brain sloshes arounnd like a pinball against your skull, you are knocked out, unless the hypothetical big dude is an utter sissy.

And a boxer doesn’t have a spider sense from someone punching him on the jaw from his blind spot.

84

Ok, other than the fact that some of you apparently hang out in some of the craziest Roadhouse style bars in the world, you’re moving the goalposts.

I thought the question was “professional boxer v average big guy”.

NOT

Professional boxer v average big guy and his six friends
Professional boxer v getting cracked in the back of the head with a bat for no reason
Professional boxer v getting sucker punched by some random psycho he has no idea is mad at him
And fuck “mean”, “angry” or “crazy”. To take my basketball metaphor a little further, do you think there is anyone who could beat Shaq or Kobe Bryant in basketball through shear mean, angry craziness?

85

I’m with your friend. The pro will have the fitness, the ability to take punches, and the ability to avoid punches, that the big guy will not have, and he will most likely not exactly be a stranger to bar fights.

Seriously, this is not a GQ question that requires cited answers, but are there many boxers who have only ever had fights inside the gym?

All the pro boxers I can think of came from backgrounds where they would have had to fight outside the gym regularly, and I suspect that being known as a pro boxer would make lots of idiots step up to you and to prove their alpha male-ness, so you’d get lots of bar fight experience even if you started out as a pampered Queensbury Rules fanatic who’d never had a hand raised to him outside the ring.

Other people have already said most of that, but I’d like to add: the big guy will probably be used to winning because he’s big. He’ll be used to throwing a couple of punches and the other guy’s gone. He’ll find it hard to cope with someone who dodges those punches and actually fights.

Those don’t sound to me like bar fights - they’re simple attacks, and you’re even including weapons. The answer to that is that yes, the big guy would most likely win, but so would a really tiny guy attacking someone with a beer bottle.

If the OP was asking ‘who would win if one guy was big and had a weapon and was attacking the other guy from behind,’ then that’d be a really dull question. I don’t think that’s what he was asking.

86

The OP laid out the criteria pretty well. He specified ‘bar fight’, and said “Assume the big guy is 6’2, strong, in good shape, regularly gets into bar fights, usually wins them.”

So… a small boxer, in a bar, against a fit, 6’2" guy who is skilled in bar fighting and usually wins. That’s the criteria I was using.

Having seen more than my share of bar fights, I gave the most correct answer, IMO: It depends on how the fight starts, and how mean the big guy is. If he’s an experienced, winning bar fighter, he’s going to sucker punch the boxer and use the obstacles and close-in quarters to eliminate any advantage the boxer might have. If he’s really good, the boxer will never know what hit him before the fight is over.

Let me tell you a true story: I watched a black belt in Karate get beaten up pretty good one night. He was a student from my school. A very good martial artist, and he’d been in a few scraps before. We were out one night having drinks, and he saw an altercation outside and decided to get involved because it looked too one-sided for his taste.

He went out and confronted the guy, and they pushed each other back and forth a bit. The other guy then raised his hands and said, “Hey man, I got no beef with you. C’mon, we don’t need to fight here. Let’s all just cool down.” My friend (being a decent guy at heart) agreed, let his guard down, and as he was turning away the guy sucker-punched him and immediately followed up by charging him and taking him down. My friend had the wind knocked out of him by the hit and collision with the pavement, and probably cracked his head on the sidewalk too. The other guy used the opportunity to box him about the face and head for three or four shots before his buddies hauled him off. Luckily, my friend was just dazed and bloodied up a bit - no permanent damage.

That’s what real streetfighters do. They don’t fight fair. They don’t square off against you and put up their dukes. Real street fights are not like the brawls you see on TV, and they’re not like the schoolyard fightfights you might have seen as a kid. They’re fast, they’re dirty, and they’re vicious. If you’re not the vicious type, you’re already at a huge disadvantage.

My friend learned a valuable lesson about the limits of training when you’re not really the street-fighting type. Or at least to never turn your back on someone who was ready to fight you moments before.

87

I think boxers will have retained more dirty bar-room fighting nous than the average martial artist. Karate has a particularly non-confrontational philosophy.

88

Um, not at the same time. When he fought heavier opponents, he put on weight himself. And he’s an all-time great precisely because he was one of the few who was able to fight at the championship level in several classes.

Again, I was talking about the general case, not the all-time greats. Someone else pointed out that the OP mentioned some all-time greats, so you can consider my post an expansion of the discussion.

Unlike yours, which is derailing the discussion. Why anyone would think it’s cool to try to score points on a newbie is beyond me, but have fun.

89

Just a point: I’m not sure why you keep mentioning this basketball metaphor, it’s not at all equivalent. You seem to have missed the whole point. Kobe Bryant is a big guy himself. Shaq is even taller than your hypothetical “7 foot man”. The question is whether a very small, but highly skilled boxer could beat a decent but untrained fighter who is much, much bigger and stronger than him, in a very confined space. I’m not sure how comparable basketball is to boxing anyway. I think the original scenario is fairly clear, there’s no need to try and bring in analogies from other sports in here.

90

UFC and Pancrase fighter Bas Rutten worked as a bouncer and as such has been involved in barfights. He has also told some stories about other fights. (Such as fighting bouncers in Sweden or choking out a fake Navy SEAL). He made a video about barfighting and practical self-defense. It is both informative and entertaining.

Part 1 on Youtube

A hilarious edited version of hit (Bas Rutten Instructional Vid - the funniest) was a hit and launched his career as a commentator and TV personality.

91

to make your basketball metaphor fit the OP, you’re asking if an undersized, but very skilled basketball player (like say charles barkley) would be able to post up a taller, stronger, but untrained opponent (let’s say… Andre the Giant).

the answer would be… more likely than not, barkley (the boxer) would beat andre (the bar brawler).

92

Again, I don’t think this basketball analogy is helpful at all. No one plays one-on-one basketball in a tightly-confined space in a bar. That scenario doesn’t even make sense. I think the original boxing example is fairly clear, I don’t think there’s any need to bring in analogies from other sports.

93

OK: a fair start, no weapons, mano a mano, the big guy is only experienced at being big, and maybe being the big fish in a small pond of local bar-brawlers, and the pro boxer is in the class of Mayweather or Pacquiao.

The boxer will drop the big guy like a sack of dirt before he ever even sees a punch coming. There is no way he can approach the boxer to use his weight and strength against him without getting clocked. The boxer probably wouldn’t even need to put his drink down. The bar brawler might be able to dive on top of the boxer and knock him down as he gets his jaw broken, and if the boxer bumps his head on something then it could be considered a draw.

94

Let me phrase the question a different way.

I’m about 5’10", 190 lbs. I’m reasonably strong, in decent enough shape and for arguments sake possess about an average level of agressiveness and fighting ability.

What size Mike Tyson could I beat up?

95

I don’t even want to contemplate where a miniature Mike Tyson would connect with his KO right hook before you picked him up and threw him out of range if you could still walk.

96

Iron Mike? Id say the fight would be a tossup if he weighed 95lbs or so.

97

I would suspect that most pros go to some lengths to avoid this kind of confrontation. Back about 25 years ago I had an evenings-and-weekends job tending bar at a workingman’s dive in the South Boston 'burbs. Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the middleweight champion was a fairly regular customer there - he lived in the next town over and his best friend lived just a block down from the bar.

This was not a classy place, it was a down-and-dirty joint…a place of red necks, white faces and blue collars and I suspect this is what Hagler liked about it. He came there to get away from a lot of fuss & attention, and the regulars at the bar respected this. He was always a gentleman…polite, friendly but retiring, tipped well but not extravagantly. Usually chatted with the bartender, stayed about an hour, nursed a single drink.

Only once did a minor altercation arise. It wasn’t a fight, but rather a slobbering drunk hanging all over the boxer, maundering on about “the greatesht fighter that eevvver lived” and trying to buy him drinks that he didn’t want. The marvelous one was trying to maintain his polite demeanor but we could tell he was getting seriously annoyed. We were all hoping he would deck the a**hole, but Hagler knew better. Finally someone drew the drunk away and Hagler and his friend slipped quietly out. The drunk was told to leave and not come back.

The point is, the real pros, the good ones don’t have to prove anything to anyone and will usually try hard to sidestep trouble. This is probably why this kind of fight rarely happens.
SS

98

I read a bio of Heavyweight Champ Rocky Marciano in which there
was a short description of one barroom brawl involving The Rock.

It took place in the UK where Marciano was stationed during WW2,
years before his first professional fight. His opponent was described
as the local number one tough guy, and as “huge”. Since Maricano
later never actually fought a Title Bout at over 189lb, it is reasonable
to assume he was giving away a lot of weight.

It was a one-punch lights-out no contest.

Of course Marciano might have been the heaviest hitter in the history
of the sport up until the time throughout his career.

99

I’m not sure about this to be honest. I’m sure there are some boxers who are like Hagler. But it seems like most of them are the exact opposite: a lot of have pent-up, boiling aggression and short tempers. There’s a whole bunch of anecdotes, and video clips, of Floyd Mayweather mouthing off to people and losing his temper in public. Tyson obviously seems like the kind of guy who would flip a table if his soup wasn’t hot enough. Etc.

I imagine the big heavyweights genuinely don’t run into much trouble, for obvious reasons: even a drunken idiot will be scared of them. But with the smaller fighters, guys who are 5’6 and 140lbs, I imagine there’s a lot of bigger guys who might look at them and think, “I can take this guy” (and Ricky Hatton for one says that happens to him a lot). Combine that with the fact that a lot of these boxers have short tempers and love fighting, and that’s why I say I’m surprised these incidents don’t seem to happen more often.

100

You don’t hear about the vast majority of fights. The people fighting generally don’t want others to know what happened. They can be charged with crimes, sued, etc.

Well-known boxers and martial artists go out of their way to avoid trouble because trouble brings lawsuits. If a professional boxer or a well-known martial artist hurts someone in a fight, the courts are very likely to decide that excessive force was used because of the reputation/skill of the fighter. Plus, they’re often rich if they are well known, which makes them a target.