Do wrestlers generally win fights?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Another point - as long as we are talking about silly statements, the ability to do something against an unskilled opponent much larger than you is, IMO, largely irrelevant. If weight did not matter, I would guess that wrestling and boxing (not to mention NHB) wouldn’t bother with weight classes.

For my part, when I was competing I intentionally put on 25 pounds, because I just barely squeaked into the heavyweight class, and was sick and tired of giving up 125# to my opponents. There is no question that I was a far better fighter at 210# than at 185. If I had stuck with it, I would have liked to get up around 220.

It will not be “easy” for a wrestler to get an opponent 50% heavier than him off his back if that opponent has any knowledge of how to use his weight and keep himself out of trouble.

(Cue comment about Bruce Lee weighing 135# dripping wet …)

22

Heh…just to defuse that one, Dinsdale I was looking at an old thread on my JKD instructor’s forums yesterday asking who would win in a match between Muhammed Ali and Bruce Lee. My instructor very bluntly said “Ali would flatten him. No way 140 pound Bruce Lee could have taken Ali in his prime. It’s just not possible.” Kind of unexpected from a JKD instructor… :smiley:

23

Let’s face it. 90% of winning a fight is having greater speed, strength and stamina than your opponent. There is no “magic” technique that will protect you from getting your ass kicked.

Wrestlers train a lot more intensely than most people to get in top physical shape. They certainly train a lot more intensely than the weekly Tai Kwan Do workout you would get at the local Tiger Schulman Karate Acadamy.

That doesn’t make them invincible though. As a goof, we had the smallest wrestler (150 lbs or less) on my freshman hall wrestle one of the big (200+) football players/weight lifters. He showed extrordinary technique in moving the bigger opponent about as effectively as he would have moved a concrete piling.

I think by “sports” or “exhibition” oriented martial arts, people are refering to styles like Tai Kwan Do or that Braizilian stuff that looks like Zoolander break dance fighting, etc where two guys go at it with fancy kicks and stuff.

I would rather have 50 lbs, lightning speed, 2 friends and a baseball bat on any opponent over perfect fighting technique.

24

Wrestling is, like any grappling art, a very useful skill and I would go so far as to say that anyone serious about self defence should be serious about grappling.

As a last resort.

ftg no respect for boxers? Then you just lost any credibility as far as I’m concerned. It is clear you have a blinkered view on the matter.

Anyone who says “X style is great, Y style is rubbish” is just betraying their lack of undertstanding

25

Or one hell of a running head start.

26

Purely anecdotal evidence from my 17 year old son, who is on his school wrestling team: The gouge at his school is that wrestler=badass. The best fighter at his school was the wrestling captain (at least until he graduated last year). This guy was small – 105 pounds – but routinely took on guys much, much larger and won. Thanks to Donny nobody at Nick’s school wants to piss a wrestler off.

High school wrestlers do tend to have more stamina and endurance than high school football players, according to Nick. Nick’s been to football practice and, of course, he goes to wrestling practice. Wrestling practice, according to Nick is hard – the fitness training they do is much more strenuous than the stuff the football team does. And almost all of the wrestling guys lift weights as well. Nick is quite a bit stronger – pound for pound – than most anyone on the football team. Nick is only 5’7", 150 lbs. but regularly outlifts much larger football players at the YMCA. The otehr feature that would tend to make a wrestler a better hand-to-hand fighter than a football player (in Nick’s opinion) is that a wrestler is used to hand-to-hand stuff, and used to pain. Football can hurt, of course, but because of falling, or being knocked down while running, or something. Wrestlers are used to having parts of their anatomy twisted or rubbed along the mat, or being thrown down hard.

Of course, all of this assumes hand-to-hand without weapons. A knife, or a gun or a baseball bat puts the altercation at a whole different level.

27

“sport oriented MAs don’t train for real fights” - true statement

“therefore they are useless for self-defense.” - not a true statement

In fact, some sport MAs train so hard and diligently for tournaments; which is very stressful, that they ultimately develop a keen awareness of the adrenal stress that the so-called combat focused arts never achieve.

However, the solution to self defense is not a technical one. It really doesn’t matter what technique you use as long as it fulfills the following:

  1. fast
  2. overwhelming
  3. effective
  4. simple

Many wrestling techniques fulfills all of these requirements, so as a basic rule wrestling is an okay choice as a source of techniques to defend yourself with. Wrestling biggest drawback is that it is very one dimensional, it is like judo and other grappling arts and nothing but hold and throws. Make no mistake, throws hurt, especially on concrete. Which reminds me of another problem with some grappling arts, they’re too used to throwing on mats and sometimes hurt themselves doing a throw/takedowns. Plus, the other problem with grappling in general is multiple opponents. I don’t think wrestling is the best choice, but it is certainly workable.

The combat-oriented martial arts smugness is usually caused by uninformed BS.

28

Again, wrestlers know a lot more than how to hold someone. They know how to kill. It isn’t that hard. Thru practice and matches, you find out what hurts and why. Very useful knowledge.

Someone is going to have to explain to me why, after repeated and repeated postings, this “wrestlers only know how to grapple” non-sense persists.

Just to give my All Time Favorite Example of a wrestler vs. an big idiot:

The wrestler immediately charges in and grabs the idiot high up just below the arm pits, with his head under one of the idiot’s pits. This is the very first thing that happens in the fight. This is what a wrestler will do to most people. The idiot no longer has functioning arms. He can’t punch, grab, etc. worth beans. (Try pulling your shoulders up to your ears and see how much movement you have in your arms.)

The wrestler now starts ramming the upper back and head of the idiot against a concrete pillar. He pulls the guy back from the pillar, runs him into the pillar again. The idiot has no way on earth to fight back. Plus he’s too stupid to pass out. After several passes of this, it is clear that the wrestler is deliberately smacking the guy into the pillar relatively easily. He is prolonging his fun. If he wanted to, he could have cracked the idiot’s back, brains and ribs. So the wrestler’s friends pull him off.

If the wrestler had wanted to, he could have easily sent the guy into a coma. Remember, this was all standing up. He didn’t even waste time taking him to the ground.

It is downright non-sensical to suggest that the wrestler couldn’t seriously hurt the idiot. He obviously could hurt the idiot as much, or as little, as he wanted, with no response from the idiot to worry about.

The wrestler was unhurt. All such fights I ever saw or heard about thru highschool, the wrestler was unhurt. They were all that lopsided.
As to why I show respect to certain MAs and not others:

  1. Kickboxing. A semi-strong kick to just about anywhere is going to be a Big Problem. Not like a punch. A punch has to be delivered right and to a good spot. You can tell from stance who’s a kickboxer. Just charging in on the opening bell is a little risky.

  2. Judo. Again, just charging in immediately plays to their strength. (And a good Judo expert won’t do an obvious pose.) You can fight both, it just takes more than a second.

Watch a college wrestling match on TV sometime. Notice how not much happens for large periods of time and then whammo, everybody’s in a different position. During the lulls, there is a lot going on. In particular, trying to force the other guy to move wrong. In that split second you do your thing.

But these are guys that are evenly matched. In a not-so-well balanced fight, the split seconds all happen right away at the beginning.

Too many people posting here are very naive that they will be able to do their move while the wrestler (or any MA expert) is magically just standing there! Nope. 1/5 of a second into your move he’s already started his counter move. Then there is air where your opponent used to be. At the end of 1 second, he is now behind you and in control. Offer to buy him a drink.

As to snarkiness: geesh. What do you call the people posting “wrestlers only know how to grapple” nonsense here? Ultra-snarkiness???

29

ftg sorry to sound ‘snarky’ but if you’re seriously advocating kicking over punching in a real life situation then you just lost all credibility with me.

I also wish to add, speaking for myself of course, that I have maintained throughout my posts here (and on other simliar threads) that I think grappling/wrestling is very effective. I object not so much to your enthusiasm on the subject but that this enthusiasm has blinkered you to the possibilites of other approaches, and that you condemn that which you clearly, from your tone, have no understanding of.

I’m expressing this not just because of the “fighting ignorance” (no pun intended!) philosophy of the board but because self defence is a serious and sometimes life and death situation and as such information on the subject should be taken very seriously.

As for “wrestlers know only how to grapple”…I am fully aware that wrestling covers a wide basis of moves. However I don’t think any wrestler would deny that the emphasis is on grappling range techniques and indeed the situations you describe involve (admittedly standing) grapple techniques.

1/5 of a second in? There are no doubt wrestlers who can fight like this…as there are boxers who can punch faster than 1/5 of a second. My martial arts instructor has been recorded punching at 10 times a second. It is the individual who makes the art work, not the art making the individual work; if you understood the truth of this then you wouldn’t be so quick to hold up wrestling as the ‘perfect’ style against various flawed styles. I’d offer a refutation of your very deterministic ‘wrestlers kick ass’ examples but frankly I think your tone speaks for itself on the matter.

30

And immediately recieves a broken ocular bone for his trouble. Don’t be so quick to discount boxers, they punch very hard * and * very fast.

31

In my opinion, wrestlers…or strong wrestling skills are the determining factor in a no-rules fight. And I think its important to keep in mind with this discussion that we are talking about no rules (right?).

I’ve seen most of the Ultimate Fighting Championships and if you view the earlier ones (with very few rules), very, very rarely did the fight end on two feet. It almost always goes to the ground and the wrestlers have the advantage. However, attitude and raw (seriously intense) aggression can win the day regardless of trained discipline.

In short, using two cloned fighters (same attitude and personality), I think the wrestler would cream the other discipline.
Just my thoughts.

32

“No rules” isn’t actually no rules Synthesis, at least in things like the UFC - there’s a few basic ones like no biting, no eye gouging, no groin shots and I believe no pressure points.

On the street, in the pub, in a nightclub, mention of ‘rules’ doesn’t come into it, its about survival. Grappling some nutter who’s gonna sink his teeth into anything he can find, knee you in the groin if he can, spit in your eye and then try and rip it out is an unpleasant prospect. Also, look down; thats a floor strewn with fag ends, broken glass or could be concrete if you’re outside, caked with mouldy take out food, dogshite and discarded religious pamphlets.

I’m not saying you won’t come out on top, but at what cost? Keeping the guy at a distance and putting his porch lights out with a solid right hook is quicker and cleaner and achieves the same end result and I don’t give a damn what the wrestling fanboys have to say, this works and my very simple reason for believing this is that the vast majority of bouncers, doormen etc employ this methodology to deal with violent customers, and they face situations like this with depressingly high frequency.

33

I was in a wrestling club for 6 years. Got quite good at it. I’ve used it IRL in a few fights and always won. As some people have said fights generally turn into wrestling matches anyway so if you know how to throw, keep your balance and use your weight to your advantage you’re on to a winner. Generally when I got them on the ground I just punched the head off them from a position were they couldn’t do anything to me. A very effective ploy.

34

In answer to the OPs specific question:

Many sport-oriented Martial Arts are laughably ineffective when it comes down to ‘real’ fighting. Sport Taekwondo for instance is very flashy but trains only kicks and light contact. In effect, you’re learning how to score points by tapping the other guy. You learn to pull the power out of your techniques and unfortunately, muscle memory will take over in a fight and you’ll end up not hurting anyone. And before someone chimes in saying “I/my friend/their roommate does sport Taekwondo and totally kicked this guys ass”, there are exceptions to every rule and I’m talking about the vast majority here. The reason I know sport TKD is ineffective outside of a match is because I’ve competed at the national level using it, and have expored other martial arts techniques and self defence which are vastly more effective.

Wrestling is a very different kettle of fish; wrestling matches you hurt the other guy, you are working body strength against each other. Grappling is one of the best ways to get fit, it is very tiring and you develop a lot of stamina, flexibility and tolerance to pain. You learn effective techniques which, provided the teacher knows what he’s talking about, translate well into a real world arena.

So in comparison to other sport martial arts, wrestling has to rate very highly. Remember though, that wrestling is not just a sport, like taekwondo is not just a sport. It just happens that a lot of the ‘martial art’ of wrestling translated into the sport, unlike taekwondo.

I myself practise techniques from Greco-Roman wrestling and Sambo (Russian), and also grappling techniques from Brazillian Jui Jitsu and Judo. However, I would never CHOOSE to grapple an attacker, and I think the primary weakness of most wrestlers is that they would choose to grapple, whereas a good boxer will hit first, hard and have a good chance of a KO. If this fails, grappling is essential and as nothing is guaranteed, grappling is indeed an essential skill.

35

3 The guy sees you standing on all fours and starts pounding the crap out of you and your kidneys while you have absolutly nothing to defend yourself.
Very bad advice dude. All the martial guys I know say the first thing every wrestler has to learn is that face down is bad and helpless in a street fight, at least on the back you can at least fend them off with hands and feet.

36

I think you are hugely under-estimating how hard it is to knock out someone with a punch from a bare fist.

It is not impossible, but it is nearly so.

Check the history of the old bare-knuckle boxing matches. They went on for hours. This is because
[ul][li]They learned that punching against a hard, rounded surface like a skull is far more likely to break the bones of the hand than to score a knockout.[/li][li]It was a common tactic, particularly for a veteran against a novice, to try to sucker him into taking a big shot, and catching the blow on the top of the head, or the forehead. Crunch. [/li][li]London Prize Ring rules allowed Greco-Roman wrestling trips and throws - but no leg picks, groundwork, or locks. Marquis of Queensbury rules were adopted to prevent wrestling, because it is too effective. Add the gloves (to protect the hands), and you push the fighters back into boxing and away from wrestling. John L. Sullivan, in training for his last bare-knuckle fight (against Jake Kilrain), chose as his training partner, not a boxer, but a Greco-Roman wrestling champion, William Muldoon. [/li][li]Knockouts are quite rare in boxing. I read a study that said that only about 5% of all Golden Gloves participants ever either win or lose by knockout. It is quite difficult to knock a person out, especially if you have to do it fast enough to stop him from grabbing you. [/li][li]The list of boxers who went against wrestlers and lost is a mile long. Ali, Roberto Duran, John L. Sullivan, Bob Fitzsimmons, Leon Spinks, Kingfish Levinsky - many of them legitimate punchers. But none of them could hit their wrestler opponent fast enough, hard enough, to stop the clinch.[/li][li]Check the history of the UFC. I do not remember a single instance of someone who was able to stop a wrestler from shooting in by punching him. [/li][li]The boxer’s initial advantage ends, once the clinch is effected. At that point, it is wrestling, whether the other guy likes it or not, and the better grappler is going to have the advantage. [/ul][/li]All other things equal, the grappler usually wins.

Regards,
Shodan

37

One more minor point - in my experience, pure boxers tended to have better footwork and head/body movement, making them more elusive targets than kickboxers. Boxers need only perfect the use of their wheels to get in and out, instead of as a weapon as well. YMMV, but I don’t know of any art/style that has better footwork than western boxing, and I do know of many that have worse.

Also, as far as learning curve is concerned, IME at lower levels a good portion of kickboxers telegraph their kicks, and do not throw high low combinations well.

For that matter, many wrestlers I have encountered seem to over-rate their ability to shoot. Sure, I would have absolutely no chance against an NCAA wrestler who wanted to take me down, not to mention one of the grappling UFC combatants. Probably a top level high school wrestler in their prime as well.

But wrestlers of that calibre are as few and far between as top notch practitioners of any other art. Far more wrestlers telegraph their intentions and shoot slowly enough to be met with a series of uppercuts, be directed into your knee or away from you, or effectively sprawled upon.

I’m surprised no one yet has mentioned shooto/shoot wrestling/shootfighting. Possibly because IME there are so few qualified practitioners/instructors around. But IMO shootfighting may do about as good a job as any single “style” in combining grappling and striking.

38

Shodan in what context are you talking? In a controlled sporting environment like the one you describe I have no doubt, and have asserted, that the grappler stands a good chance of winning. The source from which I draw the idea that the boxer usually stands a good chance of a KO is from what I know of door-work; in specific the experience of Geoff Thompson for example. I think the main factor that increases the boxer’s chances is surprise; from a self defence point of view, if you strike pre-emptively, you stand a much greater chance of KOing the other guy.

When asked how he won over 300 fights working on the doors Geoff said ‘I always hit first, and I always hit hard’. He’s not alone either; these kind of tactics, in the UK at least are the foundations of most self defence organisations; check out the Self Defence Federation, the British Combat Association and geoffthompson.com.

They all advocate grappling as an essential back up system as well.

39

In general terms, and as an average over all instances of HtH combat.

In the scenario you are describing (a sucker punch), I would still prefer to make some kind of grappling my first move. I am reasonably certain I could shoot in and clinch as a surprise attack at least as effectively as a punching attack. Probably more so, since I stand less chance of breaking my hand on his head. Plus, close in, it is much harder for him to hit me back.

I have done a little work as a bouncer (nothing heavy), and it was considered a very bad idea to hit someone first. Legal problems, as always. Better to jump in, get an armlock and/or start him spinning, and walk the drunk out the door. Leaving no marks is the best defense when the police show up, and it is much easier to act innocent when the drunk is shouting and yelling and I am standing there innocently, and no one has shed a drop of blood.

IOW, I would advocate grappling first and striking as a back-up rather than vice versa. You hit to destroy his posture or to distract from the throw, joint-lock, or choke. Or as the last part of a ground-and-pound.

And punch much less than you use other strikes, especially to the head. “Hard target, soft weapon. Soft target, hard weapon.” Thus, your left hook should go to the groin, not the face. The face is for things like elbows, palm strikes, and head butting.

Regards,
Shodan

40

Didn’t some kenpo guy KO a huge sumo guy but brake his hand doing so?

The weight difference was fairly large. But he got knocked-the-fuck-out. The guy who won that fight couldn’t continue because he broke his hand with that punch.