Why would you be limited to only kicking above the waist?
If it was that simple. Kicking leaves the kicker vulnerable. On one foot you have no base. You won’t see many kicks connect in full contact martial arts. One kick boxing organization had to require a minimum number of kicks by combatants because they would skip kicking altogether otherwise and just look like bad boxers. As I mentioned, it didn’t do Antonio Inoki any good against Ali, and Inoki was the bigger man. You’re also assuming Ali would stand still so he could be kicked, but he wouldn’t. You can’t move and kick effectively at the same time. It’s unlikely Chuck Norris would be able to kick while he was trying to avoid get knocked out. If you look at MMA fights they primarily use punching and submission holds. Kicking is rarely effective until an opponent has already been injured and can’t get avoid the kicks.
???
You must be watching a different MMA than I do. Leg kicks are very frequently used to open a fight.
Resulting in what? The other guy backs away. The round house misses. It seems to me to be an attempt at a lucky connect or a defensive move to keep someone off. I don’t see every MMA fight. Maybe I haven’t seen the one where kicks by fresh fighters are effective.
Just because someone does an unpleasant or disliked job has no bearing on how basass he is.
How about Marion Morrison vs. Carlos Ray Norris?
That’s true under American rules kickboxing, soemtimes called “full contact kickboxing” or even “waist up kickboxing” but not in other styles of kickboxing. Even though it’s called “full contact,” it restricts contact more than other styles. American kickboxing allows padded kicks (no knees) to targets on the opponent’s waist up only, and requires a certain number of kicks per round basically to keep fighters from foregoing kicks altogether and just boxing.
Other kickboxing rules, like International kickboxing or Muay Thai, allow kicks and knees to the legs as well, are considerably more brutal, and don’t have any per round kick requirement. That’s because you don’t have to worry about someone not kicking enough when allowed to kick either above or below the waist, as there’s plenty of incentive for fighters to kick to the leg. Kicks to the leg are very, very effective at reducing a fighter’s mobility and stamina, and hurt like hell. What’s more, allowing kicks and knees below the waist also make kicks and knees above the waist more effective as well. Kicking to the legs makes a fighter less mobile and more tired and frequently causes his defense with his hands to drop and falter, meaning that once the legs are softened up, the abdomen and then the neck and head become vulnerable as well. Muay Thai fighters call this strategy “chopping down the tree.” Adding targets below the waist also makes it possible for the fighter to feint at those targets and trick the opponent into opening up his body and head.
I don’t mean to imply that kicking below the waist is useless. But it doesn’t confer an automatic advantage to a martial art that employs kicking. The biggest factor in the Ali vs. Norris question (maybe this requires a new thread) is the size advantage. It’s that old thing about how a good little guy beat a big guy, but a good big guy can still kick the ass of the good small guy. I’m sure that Ali, who displayed remarkable balance and dexterity with his legs and feet could have returned kicks effectively enough to neutralize Norris’s additional experience in that area. None of that relates to the Wayne vs. Norris scenario though.
Other things: I’m not an expert on Muay Thai, but I see that style employing knee kicks more than others. An effective technique, but one that has less range than foot kicks. And as you mention, kicking increases the ability to feint, and as I noted, kicking is also an excellent defensive technique at keeping an opponent at a distance, much as a jab is used in boxing. Some people seem to believe the concept that one discipline is superior to another while ignoring the factor of the individual’s ability. I did a couple of years of judo when I was around 10, and the worst part was listening to our instructor start every class with a discourse on how judo was superior to all other forms of martial arts. That, and he was a sadistic bastard.
Chuck Norris jokes aside, you’re 100% correct. Ali would tear Chuck’s head off. Norris would be giving up 40-50 pounds in a fight against the world heavyweight boxing champion, a man who beat Frazier, Foreman, Shavers, and Liston in their primes. That’s not a slam against Norris - nobody could overcome a weight disparity like that against a professional boxer, much less a world champion.
True enough - knee strikes in Muay Thai are mainly thrown in the clinch. Deliberately clinching to strike is illegal in boxing, but perfect legit in Muay Thai. Of course, there’s always one martial art clearly superior to all others: whatever the speaker happens to be studying. 
None of us know the real abilities of Norris or Wayne, only the public version they wanted us to see. Same is somewhat true of Ali. I despise MMA, so I’ll leave that argument out of it.
Here’s how this would go down in my fictional world, based purely on who I like:
John Wayne and Chuck Norris, in a bar, square off over a girl, such as Angie Dickenson in Rio Bravo. Chuck starts to come at John, John starts to draw. But from behind Chuck, a tipsy Dean Martin smacks him over the head with a bottle. Chuck is down for the count. John gets the girl, Dean gets his drink from the bar.
Later, Chuck wakes up on the barroom floor gets to his feet, mumbles a few things. He starts to charge out of the bar to go after John and Dean, Chuck barges into the Sheriffs Office, but takes a shotgun blast to the head from Stumpy cause he didn’t knock first.
Actually, we know the real abilities of Ali. They were on display quite often. Sure, he didn’t kick, but we saw his agility, strength, endurance, and fighting skill. Norris, I’m sure, showed a quite a bit of his real ability in his competition days, though I personally have never seen any of those fights. This assumes that neither Norris’ nor Ali’s fights were rigged. I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m fairly certain that Ali’s major fights were not.
You wanna say that again, Pilgrim?
But all that really does is show you their skill in engaging in stylized combat under a rigid set of rules. Real life fighting is not at all like that - even MMA is not as close to real life. For example, if someone tries to control you by putting their head against yours, you’re not allowed to bite their nose off. If someone goes into a guard position, you’re not allowed to gouge their eyes out.
In my experience, the person who generally wins in a street fight is the one who is meanest, assuming there is no huge disparity in skill or size. Some people approach a street fight like it’s a boxing contest or a martial arts match, and find themselves wholly unprepared for the screaming maniac who comes at them spitting in their face, clawing at their eyes.
I’ve seen some scary street fights, and I’ve known some scary street fighters who scrapped a lot, hurt a lot of people, and won almost all the time. To a person, they enjoyed it. Getting hit just made them mad. Hurting the other person was satisfying. They’d fight without hesitation, often starting a fight with a sucker punch and then just going batshit insane on the other person.
All the skills in the world won’t help you if your brain shuts down and starts to yammer because it just can’t compute what’s happening. It’s like being attacked by a crazy dog - you may outweigh it by a lot, and have all kinds of tools and weapons the dog doesn’t have. But the dog is just completely converted into a ferocious, snarling, attacking thing, and you’re a human trying to sort it all out and think about what to do, and that’s really, really hard for most people.
In the early days of MMA, before everyone had sorted out what wins and what doesn’t, there were quite a few high-level black belts who tried to fight in a ‘traditional’ style, going into a stance and attempting to block blows and counter. To a man, they got destroyed, and more than one was almost instantly reduced to a fetal position, hopelessly lost while some maniac brawler kicked and punched them with abandon.
So who would win between Wayne and Norris? My money is still on Norris, simply because he had a lot of experience actually being hit and hitting back, and that’s worth quite a lot. But ultimately it would come down to which one was more capable of just fighting all-out. Ali would probably have killed both of them.
When the brain is under stress, it stops being able to process information laterally and starts narrowing its focus. The reason doors are designed to open outwards and have big push handles is because in a real emergency, many people aren’t even able to figure out how to open a door. They’ll just slam into it and push and push. If it opens inward, too bad - especially when the people behind you also push against you, and no one is capable of rationally sorting out the problem. The same is true for many emergency situations in cars - many accidents are completely avoidable, except that when the driver is suddenly terrified he or she loses the ability to make even the simplest decisions.
That’s why real training for real fighting involves a lot of sparring - to desensitize you and allow to you think normally while being attacked. The real hardcore self-defense schools spar full-contact, sometimes with no rules other than “no permanent damage, please”. There’s no real substitute for this - if you’re not used to all-out brawling, you can have all the technical training in the world and it won’t help you because you won’t be able to use it in a real situation under real stress.
So the real winner between the three would be the one most able to keep his wits about him when the fight starts. I’d put my money on Ali, then Norris, then Wayne.
Spot on. When people say that “martial arts training doesn’t work,” that’s because most schools don’t train anything like this, in turn because most people are simply not interested - they want to get in shape, earn a belt, maybe get a trophy, and that’s fine for what it is. Training for actual violent assault involves a process of being taken far out of one’s psychological comfort zone that most people simply aren’t interested in.
I disagree with this part, if you are referring to UFC. The early open tournaments of UFC were dominated by well trained, skilled martial artists. A perfect example is the Oleg Taktarov vs. Tank Abbot final where Abbot went batshit style maniac against Taktarov, but Taktarov kept his wits about him, and when Abbot began to run out of steam he choked him out. This fight had a lasting effect on the sport because Taktarov bled profusely, causing much criticism of MMA as a ‘bloodsport’. This despite the fact that the cuts were superficial.
Your general argument might work in favor of John Wayne. He might have had more actual brawling experience than Norris, but I don’t have any info regarding Norris in that regard, and the evidence for Wayne is anecdotal. Ali however participated in full contact boxing matches against opponents who weren’t always concerned with the rules, and even when they were they were very dangerous men. Ali’s experience in training and actual fighting far exceeded Norris’s so even in a back alley brawl he would have had the upper hand. His ability to keep his head under the worst conditions was demonstrated numerous times.
D_Odds is correct about the real people, but you are absolutely correct about the film version, dang nab it.
I think you are underplaying the training and athleticism. I’ll give you that they might not be the craziest guy in the fight, but Ali could take a ton of punishment, and could dish out a ton of punishment efficiently. Is there a skilled street brawler who could have beaten Ali in his prime? Probably. Are there many? Likely not. Most likely, a brawler isn’t getting tagged by ‘Ali’ punches. Sure, he’ll get mad when I hit him (if he even notices it), but Ali would cross his eyes and dot his tees.
Now if a skilled mat fighter gets Ali off his feet, that’s a different story altogether.
That said, without knowing just how much experience Wayne had as a brawler, I’ll give the nod to the more skilled opponent in a fist fight. If we are talking Green Beret Wayne versus Delta Force Norris, that’s a toss-up, though Delta Force Norris probably had more current weapons.
Only by luck. A professional boxer will beat a street fighter at least 99 out of 100 times.
I’m assuming there are more than 100 street fighters and playing d odds.