And if not, why not?
Not in any country I’m aware of. As to why not, in the common law world there consent isn’t a defence to actual bodily harm (see R v Brown) and certainly wouldn’t be for murder either.
While I hesitate to say that such a thing would be legal anywhere, I can’t rule it out. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some “major” nations, like China, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. didn’t expressly forbid it. In fact, China might adopt gladiatoral games as a way to punish people who criticize the government via Twitter posts.
The U.S. government might also adopt them as a twofold benefit: punish those who don’t sign up for Obamacare and significantly reduce the federal deficit via pay-per-view revenues. Talk about win-win!
In Seattle you can engage in physical fights legally so long as both parties agree before hand.
The fight starts around 6min 30sec but you can clearly see and hear them talking to a cop leading up to the fight. I have no idea what happens if some one dies under these conditions though.
I think gladiators were trained professional fighters. I’m sure they were damned expensive to train, and equally expensive again to replace. You don’t want to be treating them like disposable droids.
And always remember The First Rule.
Do you have a better cite than a YouTube video?
Ultimate fighting? Boxing? There may be restrictions on when and where, but physical fights between consenting adults are certainly legal here.
Fights to the death, however, are not. I imagine the winner would be charged with murder, but since this GQ I don’t want to speculate. I don’t think a promoter would have a hard time finding two people willing to fight to the death for a big enough payout; I also don’t think there’d be any shortage of people willing to watch, despite our cultural opposition to such barbarism.
Moderator Note
tralfamidor, political jabs are not permitted in General Questions. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
And that seems to be the distinction- if you kill somebody, the state charges you.
If you hit somebody, *they *have to press charges, the state can’t do it for them.
(Domestic violence cases are an exception, and there are probably others)
I don’t think that’s true in general. It is true that if somebody hits you, and you ask the cops and DA not to do anything about it, they may listen to your request (after all, they’ve got a lot of other victims who do want them to do something..) or decide that making a case with an uncooperative witness is too tough, but there’s nothing legally keeping them from prosecuting.
After all, if someone beat you into a coma (and there was plenty of evidence who did it), the DA wouldn’t wait for you to wake up and ‘press charges’ (or die so it would be murder); they’d prosecute right away.
As a general rule, I don’t think you’ll find a country where that isn’t illegal. But you can probably find a number of countries that, for one reason or another, don’t particularly feel like prosecuting someone for it.
And I am not certain that every country has made it illegal. I recently read an article about Pitcairn Island and one of the things mentioned was that until a couple of decades ago, it was widely believed that only the laws of Pitcairn Island applied there, and not the laws of the British Empire. And that local laws covered only property crimes. Murder and the like had, simply, never been an issue, so they hadn’t bothered to outlaw them.
But your best bet, if you are looking to be an audience member or participant, is to find a country with bigger fish to fry. “We are far to busy worrying about the insurgants making war and/or terrorist attacks to give a DAMN about foreigners who want to politely kill each other.”
In places where mutual fights are legal, are there any rules? When does it end? There must be some limits, otherwise you could knock someone on the ground in a fight and stomp them to death and it would be legal.
Well, maybe it wasn’t an issue after most of the original colonists had finished killing one another off.
One German lad told me dueling was legal in Austria and hot-headed Germans often go there to settle things using real swords. SDMB has since debunked that but I’m curious as to whether or not (illegal) duels to the death happen in that country.
I’d be really interested in a clarification of the mutual combat thing in Washington state, as I am in WA and have seen the Phoenix Jones video where he engages in mutual combat right in front of the police, but I saw some lawyer online claim it is a myth…it’s very hard to Google without getting the Phoenix Jones fight, and I am too ignorant of the law to know how to search it.
There were no holds barred matches in Brazil for a while with minimal rules. The Gracie Brothers imported it into the US in the early 1990s, launching the Ultimate Fighting Championship on pay-per-view.
In the first match, the rule set was pretty small: it included no biting, no eye-gouging and no groin attacks. I think there was a bar on fish-hooking as well. Ear biting occurred however. I’m a little confused about why the guy who did it (Gerard Gordeau, IIRC in the final match with Gracie) wasn’t disqualified: perhaps wiki is wrong when it said no biting was allowed.
Anyway after a while the authorities started coming down hard on the UFC for running minimal rule fighting: the league collapsed after they could no longer get their fights on pay per view. A couple of years later, a team of entrepreneurs arranged to assemble a rulebook and get approval for it in Nevada I think. Political opponents were pacified and MMA then grew by leaps and bounds. But it was no longer no-rule fighting, a good thing IMHO.
There was a recent Vale Tudo (anything goes) promotion in Rio called “Rio Heroes” a few years ago, it was internet only and held in secret locales, I assume because it was unlicensed and illegal (I am not sure if Vale Tudo is legal in Brazil anymore or not). I think Japan Vale Tudo was pretty interesting but overall I prefer sport MMA to Vale Tudo, Vale Tudo fights tend to be pretty boring I think.
This was the primary defence position used in 2004 to justify the rape and sexual abuse of girls from the age of 12 by the older men of the island. Courts convened in NZ and the UK disagreed, and seven men were convicted and jailed.