If you devoted your life to some school of body/mind/spirit discipline like the legendary Shaolin Monks, could you really be that much better a fighter than someone who simply developed the strength, reflexes and practiced skills to be a champion fighter? Does “inner strength” really count? Pit the best Shaolin against say, the best assassin the Emperor of China could obtain. Or to use an American boxing example, does “heart” really count more than size, strength, training, and tactics?
I am pretty sure we have done this one a few times. The martial artist is going to be at a disadvantage against most other skilled practitioners of the fighting arts. Boxers in particular would generally have an advantage against a regular black belt in karate for instance. I have heard it argued that boxing itself is a martial art and is more centered around power and offense than the Asian fighting styles. I would guess that the most deadly would be one of the people at the top of his game for extreme, bloodsport type fighting that blends different tactics.
Judo in a street fight: “I’m gonna kick your ass, but first put on this bathrobe and tight it real tight-like, so’s I can get a good grip on your lapels… no, not that way, the opposite… ok, are you ready to get thonk owww…”
I don’t doubt that martial arts help somewhat, but many martial arts are taught mainly to be used against someone of the same or similar styles in competition. Of course in a fight with a badass street fighter, I’d still rather be a judo master than a tax attorney.
What makes you say that? I’d think (in my seriously non-expert opinion) that the boxer would be at a significant disadvantage, as boxing has such a limited repetoire of legal moves. A boxer isn’t trained to deal with kicks or grapples, because you can’t do those things in the ring.
Boxers are badasses in general. There are some renowned boxing schools (gyms) in the poorer parts of Boston and the Boston Globe loves to do exposes on them. The schools are run by grizzled and hardened men that know how to select talent among the poor guys that come through their door. They make them practice and they make them keep their nose clean. I suppose you could say that it is the boxing equivalent of a dojo.
However, there is one difference that I see. These kids beat the hell out each other day in and day out. They are also perfectly conditioned because training for boxing and boxing itself does that. I know you have to be fit to get a black belt in karate but none of the black belts I have known were in that level of fitness. Training for boxing is a real high-intensity fight day in and day out. They know how to take a true beating as well. Other martial arts don’t simulate fights in the same way.
Come to think of it, true wrestlers would probably do great in a real-world fight because that is how most fights end up anyway.
One dimensional anything is going to be at a disadvantage against a well trained fighter. By well trained I assume good striking and ground game. “Inner Strength” I’ll also interpret as innate fighting skills and obviously that plays a part. The trend for Modern MMA fighters seem to gravitate towards not a specific art, but a collection of. Schools like Miletich Fighting Systems that teach fundamentals from all schools. A boxer is at a disadvantage against a good grappler. If the the boxer has good ground defense he can be the one with the advantage.
I have never been in a “real” fight. I have trained in a variety of martial arts styles and the thing that I noticed is that you get good at what you practice.
A fight means an actively resisting opponent who is trying to physically beat you and you are going to get hit and hurt. If you don’t train like that, you won’t be very good at that.
So arts where you practice as hard as you can against a fully resisting opponent, within the framework of whatever rules the art has, will be much better preparation for a real fight than if you never have an opponent or if it’s all non-contact.
So a “traditional” boxer (who does lots of sparring, hitting and getting hit) will be much better off than someone who does “cardio boxing” at the gym.
Grappling arts such as judo (sorry, Cosmic Relief) and BJJ spend a lot of time on actual matwork or randori, where you are wrestling hard with someone who isn’t cooperating and is doing their best to throw, pin, choke or submit you.
So if you’ve got a well trained fighter, by which I will assume that you mean someone whose training involves getting in a ring and mixing it up with other fighters as hard as they can, even though they might not be “stylish” or have great “form”, I’ll put my money on them against the guy who spent 25 years perfecting his katas and stances and whatnot but never got hit or grabbed.
Yeah… I dunno, somebody that incorporates boxing in their training might have an advantage. You don’t see any boxers dominating the cage match type of situations, so I’m gonna say… no.
If boxers were such bad asses, they would be representative in that sport, much more than they are now. All I see is mixed martial arts (some incorporate boxing, but most of the stuff boxers learn, so do martial arts).
In my experience, wrestlers are much more bad ass than boxers.
I know little of martial arts, except that one of my kids takes classes.
But I can toss out this anecdote. I attended, God help me, one of those ‘Ultimate Fighting’ tour things when it came to town last year. In addition to the three or four scheduled matches they invited local martial artists to participate against their fighters as an exhibition.
Match one was the sensei of the local ‘fighting style’ dojo. He’s huge and strong and fights mean (his school teaches, he says, how to WIN in a fight). He destroyed the visiting fighter almost immediately.
Then my kid’s sensei got in the cage. Get me here: Sensei Mandy (yes, a woman) is a 23 year old pre-med student who also runs a dojo that she inherited. She’s maybe all of 125 pounds of curvy, giggling muscle. Red, curly hair, freckles, etc. Not what you’d expect.
But she got in that cage and the guy was laughing and doing the ‘c’mon little girl’ routine. Her face was dead. No expression at all. She just got into position and waited. When the match began they spent a few minutes trading punches and such with the visitor trying to clinch and Mandy punching. Both got bloody noses and a little banged up. Then she just started dodging him and tossing him. Left, right, into the cage, up in the air, and so forth. She was so damn fast that when she got serious about it he couldn’t touch her and she just wore him down until he threw in. She just dissected this guy. It seemed intensely unfair after the first few minutes.
Feh, maybe it was staged. She’d get a kick out of that. But it looked real to me.
That’s probably true, but I would think that a skilled martial artist would have a pretty good chance of getting in a really punishing kick to the knee or groin before the boxer gets a punch in.
(Note that a boxer’s stance is not designed to protect against kicks to the knee or groin.)
I would think that after being kicked like that, the boxer would be at a big disadvantage.
A Master is a Master for a reason. I submit that in general a Master would do better than a well trained fighter simply because being a martial artist is more than just being a fighter. It is about discipline, self control, knowing the difference between when it is appropriate to fight and when it is not. That is what “Masters” are trained in.
I would submit that in a no-holds-barred match, the knee shot is the most important. Any kick or punch ultimately is leveraged against the ground via the legs. Damage the knee, finish the rest at your leisure.
In mixed-martial arts competitions where rules are limited, the winners are almost never specialists in one particular style. Most martial arts emphasize style over substance. Those with strong boxing or wrestling backgrounds usually dominate and I can’t remember any typical “kung-fu” fighters doing well, though I don’t follow it as closely as I used to.
I wrestled quite a bit in high school, folkstyle (schoolastic), Greco-Roman, and freestyle. I’ve never boxed, but I hate getting hit in the face. I don’t mind pain in any other parts of the body, but I think boxers have that over wrestlers, or at least me.
I also think people who play contact sports have, while not necessarily a higher tolerance for pain, but at least a different tolerance. It may be pure adrenaline, but very rarely have I felt actual pain in a sporting contest, and most of those times resulted in a real injury.
I actually know a mixed fighter. He has a boxing background. One thing he said was tough when transitioning to mixed was boxers are only taught to fight standing up. It was difficult for him to learn how to fight in other positions-like on his back.
Boxers have phenomenal footwork, of interest to anyone who is interested in hitting as well as not getting hit.
A good rule of thumb is anytime your opponent has a preferred style/range, you should refuse to fight him in that style/range.
If an opponent’s style prohibits any techniques/actions , that’s a good clue as to the types of techniques and actions he will likely have difficulty dealing with. Learn his rules, and then break them.
Also, an advantage will generally go to the guy whose training involves “live” full contact sparring.
I’m calling BS on this. No way this happens in a real fight. They traded punches to the head? That’s the end of the fight right there. You can’t really toss a guy up in the air either. Also, nobody is fast enough that you can’t get touched while in a ring or cage. You might be able to defend a takedown, but you’ll get an arm on you.