I think there are some pretty significant differences between an MMA match, a bar-room brawl and a stranger-danger assault. I have a friend who assists in self defense classes by IMPACT. Women of all shapes and sizes take the classes. But they are skewed towards women who have been attacked in some way and women of diminutive size. From that I hypothesize that a great number of stranger-danger encounters involve men looking for easy victims. To the extent that is the case, I have some optimism for the prospects of a 6 hour trained women fighting off an attacker.
I’ve wanted to dig up data on the subject for a while though.
tl;dr on this entire thread: Yes, there is a possibility that she could. How large the possibility is and what factors it depends upon is left as an exercise for the student.
That’s a good question. I suppose it’s that the story made my urban legend alarm bells go off. A newsworthy event in which the evil-doer is served with instant justice but no reliable contemporaneous news reports.
Anyway, I agree with the other posters that it is pretty plausible:
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trained female
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thug male who attacks trained female, not intending to beat her up but instead for other purposes like robbery or rape.
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trained female fights back and distracts the thug long enough to run away.
And significantly more speed and reach.
And the weight difference between male and female is magnified by the fact that even for the same weight, a woman has significantly less muscle than a man.
Well sure; that’s wrestling. It’s a form of fighting that by its nature maximizes the advantages of size and strength. And as a high school sport, the smaller person can’t use dirty fighting to equalize the odds a bit either.
Dirty fighting is knocking her to the ground putting a hand around her throat and telling her that if she moves she will never see her kids again.
It’s not hair pulling or scratching or kicks to the balls
Unless “certain circumstances” involves him fighting her while being hogtied with a ball gag in his mouth I’m not clear of what handicap you could set up where she would have even the remotest chance of prevailing. After a few solid hits from a fighter of his class she’s going down.
I don’t think there is any argument that a trained woman, or even an untrained but very strong woman, could have decent chance to prevail again an untrained male attacker of similar or lesser size, especially if the male is not very muscular. Claims that a trained female fighter, regardless of accomplishment, could defeat a trained male fighter anywhere close to her weight range are utterly absurd.
Here’s proof from the movie Jackass. (I’m not being facetious, this is pretty convincing to me)
Ther is an expression-
“A good big man will beat a good small man.”
I think this can be extrapolated to men & women.
After all this, it boils down to, “it depends”.
my 2 examples: As a blue belt in Hapkido, I sparred a 4th degree black belt in Hapkido. She had about 15 lbs on me at that time. I won very easily and probably had 2-3 times her strength.
My son is a 135 lb MMA fighter and had the privilege of sparring Rhonda Rousey. Her takedowns were very good but she could not keep him down and could not tap him out. He took it easy on her with his striking and she later thanked him for that. Yes, he is good but not reality show good.
It depends because it’s not as simple as just comparing sexes and weight. Men can get much,much stronger if they work out than women, but a man who doesn’t work out has only a small natural advantage over a woman pound-for-pound, and if she works out she might be stronger.
When I used to work fast food we’d arm wrestle a lot and I was a pretty weak dude. I could only barely beat most of the girls, but one particularly athletic one I couldn’t. Despite my weakness, I could hold my own against all the guys who weren’t going to the gym, although I eventually lost after a couple of minutes. Of course, the guys who did work out, it was like a bear vs. a man.
This is just painfully ignorant. Floyd regularly dismantles trained men who outweigh him. He has been fighting longer, against better competition, has much better stamina, is MUCH quicker, MUCH stronger, MUCH smarter, and more accomplished. There is just no reasonable scenario under which Rousey (or any woman) makes this a toss up. PERIOD. It’s not close at all. Floyd is one of the best boxers of all time who is still near his peak. There is almost zero chance he loses the fight.
It’s one think to wonder if she could beat up Meatloaf, but there are only maybe a handful of elite women that could beat an elite man in any athletic competition, be it basketball, boxing, or track.
To the OP, I think one point that was raised, but has been overlooked, is that the type of guy who fights women is most likely not some shrinking violet even if he is untrained.
When has a boxer ever done well in MMA competition though? They always get defeated easily by an experienced grappler, which Rousey is. Usually, the boxer can’t even lay a single effective punch on the grappler.
Grappling vs. boxing is as much a mismatch as man vs. woman.
All three of these sports have been dismissed as not apt comparisons but in truth they all pit people against each other in different types of fighting. All three of these sports separate the sexes and all three of these sports have weight classes. They do this in the interest of fair competition.
That’s making threats, not dirty fighting.
It is however gouging out his eyes or gutting him with a broken bottle, or in the case of rape biting his balls or penis off; I’ve heard of the latter happening. I recall a case where a woman ripped a would-be rapist’s balls off, stuck them in a paper bag and delivered them to the nearest police station as evidence. I’d say that counts both as “dirty fighting” and “winning”.
Before MMA had weight classes it was fairly routine for smaller men to beat bigger men.
When I look back at the Rua-Varelaans fight, I wonder why any woman with good kicking ability wouldn’t be able to use the same strategy he did to defeat a much larger man.
I hereby proclaim the first rule of dirty fighting is that threats are against the rules. The second rule of dirty fighting is that only the smaller and weaker can fight dirty against an opponent.
No; the “first rule” of dirty fighting is that it has to actually be fighting. Threats aren’t dirty fighting any more than offering the other person a bribe to take a fall is “dirty fighting”.
Who said anything about that? Although as rule women are statistically prone to go for weapons and the like before men are; probably because they are both smaller and not prone to macho nonsense about fair fights.
Lol, nice one.