Question is about an average healthy guy - just some random guy walking down the street with no particular boxing skill, experience, or training but with no known medical issues, pitted against the top champion boxer in his weight class. But the question is not whether he would have any chance of winning such a bout. The question is rather about whether he’s likely to incur more serious and permanent injuries than any other loser who gets KO’d in the ring.
Because while my first thought would be that such a guy is likely to escape with his life, on second thought I think the fight would be over as soon as he gets knocked down and can’t get up, just like any other guy who gets KO’d. Or when the ref thinks he’s no longer in a position to fight, same as another guy who gets TKO’d. The only difference would be that this would happen fairly quickly in the case of the random guy while the professional might absorb a huge beating before getting to that point, such that the random guy would escape with much less injury.
While it’s true that professional boxers are trained and skilled at avoiding or blocking punches etc., the point is that by the time they get knocked out they’ve obviously failed at this enough times for them to be unable to get off the canvass. So while they would drag out the fight longer, they would ultimately be in the same position or worse.
The only counter-argument I can think of is that perhaps some people are very susceptible to being seriously injured from getting punched, and that these people are weeded out at the very early stages of boxing careers. Such that the random guy off the street might be such a type of guy, and thus get seriously injured when hit by the champion, while the professional would be more likely to be of the less injury-prone variety.
But on the whole, I’m leaning to the first argument. (Conventional wisdom seems to be otherwise, however, as evidenced by the arguments that boxing mismatches not be sanctioned altogether for safety reasons.)
Boxers train and gain experience in how to take a punch and keep moving forward. People off the street would be most likely unable to recover from a single hard hit. I suspect that would mean one bad hit is all they would need to absorb, as opposed to repeated hits in a short time which are worse as I understand it.
Not sure you can predict how much permanent damage the average guy would incur from however many blows to the head it took to knock him out. Would also depend on the weight class and punching power of the boxer, and the weight of the gloves.
In addition to evading punches, boxers also work on their neck/shoulder/trunk muscles which help them absorb shots. I could imagine the average guy would incur greater damage from a particular punch than a trained boxer.
I remember when folk used to talk about being willing to accept millions of $ to be KOed by Tyson in less than a minute. Me, I would expect the chances of permanent brain damage to be pretty high.
I used to do a bit of boxing, and considerably more MMA. I’m confident that the average guy has no idea what it is like to take a serious shot from a boxer to the head or midsection. Can be extremely disorienting. And once that first shot lands, the average guy drops his guard, and 2-3-4 more shots follow in combination.
Does the pro boxer know he’s facing a tomato can? I mean, in half a second he’s going to see that the average guy doesn’t have the strength, endurance, training, and so on. So what’s he going to do? Pound him on his unprotected head 20 times before he has a chance to fall to the canvas? What’s the point of that? It’s not like the champ gets more money if he kills you before the ref stops the fight. Mike Tyson is going to put you on the canvas. He doesn’t need to pound you 20 times in the head to do that, he just needs one solid punch to put you on the ground.
So my theory is that your average guy off the street is less likely to be injured against the champ than a real boxer who is capable of putting up a real fight, because that real boxer is going to take a lot more work to knock out.
If I’m in a fight with Mayweather I hold my gloves in front of my face, take one body shot, and go down for a 10 count. I doubt that’d leave me permanently injured.
Not sure - as said, Mr average is not going to be accumulating damage over multiple rounds, so getting pummelled to the canvas in 30 secs has that going for it. Vaguely analogous to the weak swimmer never drowns.
OTOH, the worst pole-axing knockouts you see are from punches the victim doesn’t see coming. A pro fighter could easily set up an average guy for a disguised overhand right and absolutely level him. The pros can get up from these sort of KOs, even if they’re counted out of the fight, but the average punter would be in a lot of trouble.
There’s no way to answer this kind of question. A person who dies as a result of a fight usually dies from blunt force trauma to the brain. A barrage of punches increases the statistical likelihood of death from blunt force trauma as a result of the simple actuarial math involved. More hits to the head equals more risk of dying. But a single identifiable blow can, and has, killed more than one boxer. One that immediately comes to mind is a female boxer who died in an amateur boxing contest - this is with head gear which is supposed to absorb the force of the blow. She was killed nearly instantly with a single blow to the forehead in the mid-2000s.
The more motivated Joe Average is, the more of a beating he is going to take. Likewise for conditioning.
Joe is going to run out of gas in about two minutes - fighting is hard work, whether you get hit or not. And the more exhausted you get, the more you get hit. All the pro boxer needs to do is stay behind the jab, wait for Joe Average to start to run down, then work the body.
A couple of rounds, tops. That’s not long enough to deliver a life-threatening beating, probably, although any concussion is significant and permanent brain damage.
Yes. So unless he has some specific incentive to injure Joe Average, all he’ll need do is deliver one good punch to the body - which Joe will be powerless to defend against.
This will put Joe on the canvas, and with the best will in the world he won’t within 10 seconds be able to get up and appear to the Referee as if he’s fit to continue. He will thus have survived the fight, probably without any long-term injury.
Does the pro know in advance what’s going on, and what’s he trying to do about it? If he assumes you’re another pro, or otherwise decides he’s going to treat you like one, then he’s going to attack you as hard as he can, and get in as many hits as he can. In which case, you die. On the other hand, if he knows that you’re an average Joe that just wants the loser’s share of the prize money and want to get this over with as quickly as possible without injury, then he can throw a punch just shy of hitting you, and let you pretend it hit and fall to the mat with no actual contact at all. Or anything in between, of course.
I can imagine you take some fit construction worker with real muscle mass, put him in trunks with a pair of gloves, and the pro won’t know he’s facing a nobody if that guy was told how to stand and where to put his hands. Not until that first swing puts him in a quivering fetal position.
If the pro knows he’s facing a schmuck, I gotta believe most of them wouldn’t even attempt a punch to the head for fear of seriously injuring the guy. They’d just land a handful of solid body blows and laugh as the poor fellow crumbles to canvas.
It depends on the situation. If it’s just a street fight the boxer will want it over with quickly. A shot to the head could cause a serious concussion, broken facial bones, lost teeth or a broken jaw is quite possible, and possibly spine stem damage or even broken vertebrae. A body shot is less likely to cause serious damage, but a rib could be broken or organs bruised, and possibly ruptured.
If the boxer knows it’s not a serious fight he’ll probably just block punches until he can get in one good body shot. A punch to the solar plexus will drop the pretender and put an end to it all quickly. Hitting him square in the stomach will freeze him up or drop him. A left hook to the liver or the rib cage will leave him writhing in pain on the floor. The boxer will avoid any punches to the head because he knows what serious damage can be done but if the average guy keeps at it the boxer will probably try to catch him on the point of the chin and knock him out.