Do wrestlers generally win fights?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Of course a high school wrestler will beat most other kids at school - his athletic training significantly overlaps what is useful in fighting, whereas none of the other sports do. IOW, you’ve got a trained conditioned guy going up against an untrained guy. Pretty simple. A kid with 3 years of boxing would also beat most untrained classmates too.

Pissing matches or drunken fights are seldom if ever fought between two equally trained and motivated fighters with both being ready to go; there’s almost always lop-sidedness going in which can distort how good someone really is… was he and his style great or was the other guy just an over-confident drunk who chose the wrong moment to look to the side at the waitress?

Once you start comparing wrestling to other trained people in different things, it still comes out pretty good - though the wrestlers will usually need to throw in a few things to finish a fight that they may or may not have been shown along the way; ground & pounding with headbutts isn’t in the normal high school curriculum.

If you know what you’re doing, being on your back with someone on top isn’t very dangerous against most guys if it’s just 1 on 1 in a controled environment… then again going to the ground on top or bottom are both equally risky in a real-life scenario… but from a technical point of view I’ve fast-forwarded through hours of boring no-action footage of even mediocre fighters getting put on their back, tying the head and hands of the guy on top up, and just laying there. You can’t do much to a guy who just wants to tie you up from the bottom. Untrained guys on their backs?, well yeah - it can be over pretty fast.

Again if you know your stuff there are several things you can finish the guy on top with. Here are a few pictures from fights where just that happened:

Triangle choke (coming up in a few seconds)
Another Triangle (sunk in this time)
Armbar

Note that the first two pics are of mulitple title-holding wrestlers getting caught; one of them an olympian. Finding good action pics is hard, but there are lots of things you can do from your back. It’s not a place you ever want to go, but it’s far from hopeless.

Giving your back to a submissions guy is pretty risky, unless you are going to escape and/or get back up real fast. Here are some pics of what can happen when you “turtle up”:
Rear naked choke
Knees to the head
Punches to the side of the head (yeah they hurt)

Notice it’s the same guy getting kneed and punched in two different fights; he lost twice from knees to the head while turtled - and he too is a former olympic-level wrestler.

I don’t mean to pick on wrestlers here, and checking MMA records of fighters who started as wrestlers shows they usually do a bit better than most others; however they are not heads and shoulders above any other style. The OP was asking about wrestlers, and there have been some questionable things written here about their capabilities (and those of punchers), so here are some more pics from NHB events of wrestlers going against strikers and loosing:

Not a KO loss but the wrestler couldn’t get this kickboxer down or keep him there even though he had over 20 minutes. Looks like he didn’t like those fists and feet coming at him.
The same wrestler in overtime again after his opponent keep getting away. This was a KO, and a particularly hard one at that.

Sorry Mark, but you take a good picture :D. (This guy actually did very well in NHB, but he definately had his weaknesses and off nights)

Another big wrestler having a tough time dealing with punches.
Just over a month ago Wrestler about to be KOd by a striker’s nasty knees.
One-punch KO
This last one isn’t of a wrestler losing, just a shot of what a good punch can do. This fight lasted 30 seconds total, about 2 seconds of that was the set up and punch that finished it.

Now those pictures don’t really prove anything on a large scale, and I don’t mean them to. I just provide them so that I have more than words for people to assess my opinion on. They are almost all of very popular fighters at the tops of their games, and you can check their records and find more info on them too. Just to finish, almost anyone who has trained in one of the many practical fighting arts will kick the ass of an untrained guy. If you only happen to see a wrester doing it in your lifetime, then that style will appear pretty good. If you live in China and the local college tough guys are Kung-Fu men, then that style will appear pretty good too. Trained people in most anything shouldn’t be messed with; one style will kick your ass in 20 seconds, another in 10 seconds. You’ll still loose against either one of you don’t know what you’re doing.

42

Shodan, whatever works for you mate; you’re obviously experienced and knowledgeable. The only thing I don’t really like about your posts is the business of breaking your hand on the guys head - the ‘sucker punch’ if you train it hard enough, should hopefully impact on a relatively soft surface such as the side of the jaw, which moves under impact. I’m also aware of the problems with punching, most notably knuckle damage. Palm heels, hammerfists etc make an excellent substitute. Hitting the head isn’t the only option of course, a decent powered gut punch will knock the wind out of someone long enough to follow up and has the advantage of coming in under their line of sight.

Grappling in the terms you describe it, certainly works well one on one. What if you have multiple opponents though? One of the main points I like about striking in general is that it has the potential to quickly neutralise an opponent with a great deal fewer variables than if you get into a grapple with them.

The only thing that bothers me about this discussion is that there are some people who are repeatedly advocating this style or that style, when the only really important factors are the practitioner, the nature of the training and the teacher; to a greater or lesser extent, a good martial artist who trains hard under realistic conditions with a good teacher should be very capable no matter what style they happen to be doing. And, IMO, the only way to get really good is to have decent ability in all ranges; kicking, punching, knees and elbows, stand up grappling, throws and takedowns, and groundwork. You never know what conditions you’ll be fighting under (you could have a broken arm for example?) and perhaps more importantly, you’ll never know who you’ll be fighting - someone with good knowedge of a range you’ve neglected has the potential to surprise you.

If you accept this as being sensible, then it follows that any discussion of ‘is this style better than that style?’ is nonsensical, as no one style places equal emphasis on all the ranges.

43

I would say that nobody should really be messed with. A friend in Jr. High was told by his dad that if he ever got into a fight, then he should tuck his chin into his neck and blindly throw upper-cuts with both hands alternating until the fight is over. The kid ended up getting into a fight with two other guys and did exactly that, knocking them both out in the process. A lucky punch or a finger in the eye–none of it seems worth the risk to me.

I definately have great respect for the wrestler. If anybody here lives near a university, you definately want to watch some wrestling meets. I really don’t know squat about the sport, but I do know that you’ll see some amazing stuff out there. When I say that they’re easy to choke, that’s only because I’ve trained for it and they haven’t. A sambo guy will tell you that leg & ankle locks are easy to get on judo guys for the same reason. If I had to fight and I could choose my ally, any randomly chosen former highschool wrestler would rank highly on my list.

But well reasoned arguments aside, this is a crude & anecdotal empirical test of the theory that sport fighting and real fighting don’t mix using a large pool of potential data points: the school wrestler. So if anybody coming along has more data, that wrestlers win or lose, school yard fights, etc., please share. I appreciate it.

44

My husband placed high at state for wrestling in high school (I was a cheerleader for the wrestlers;)).

Anyway, he’s only been in one fight and it ended quickly. My husband has such quick reflexes and strength, that the other guy couldn’t get a punch in before being “taken down” to the floor. haha

45

Shodan,was cruiding great debates and noticed you advocating an ‘ultimate martial art’ is this correct?

46

green dragon -

I advocate Kano jujitsu, or old-style judo, as the “ultimate martial art” because it concentrates on the things that you and I agree are vital -

Combat judo includes all these components, and incorporates them into a relatively safe form of “full contact” training. Gracie makes this point in one of his books - all out training with relatively safe techniques makes a stronger fighter than no-contact sparring, and the reduced rate of injury and general wear-and-tear makes the training more accessible than full contact kickboxing.

Regards,
Shodan

47

Shodan, I did a quick google on Kano JuJitsu but there was no decent information, could you possibly direct me to a decent web page on the subject? After all, if there is an ‘ultimate martial art’ out there I’d rather like to be doing it :wink: