Regular looking women who can beat up much larger men...

Am I the only one who would be interested in a Magiver vs. Martin Hyde pay-per-view match? :smiley:

I’m just not that convinced size is that big a factor when you have an untrained male against a trained female. Or to take gender out of it, a large, untrained individual vs. a small trained individual.
Martial arts were designed to equal the playing field. Some disciplines use the attackers size and energy AGAINST them by redirecting it. When simple physics and the limitations and weaknesses of the human body come into play, size and big muscles just aren’t that big a factor.

Another issue is conditioning. Here is an example where I believe most women have an advantage. If you go to a gym 90% of the women are doing heavy cardio work and have excellent stamina and core strength. Most of the guys are lifting heavy weights, often with poor form in order to lift as heavy as possible. Most of them concentrate on upper body to the detriment of their legs, they are top heavy. Of course this is not true in all cased, there are men who are in
great cardio shape with great core development and women who lift heavy, I’m just saying, at least in the gyms I’ve been to, it’s mostly guys lifting heavy weights and women doing heavy cardio and core work.

This describes the two fighters I mentioned in the OP perfectly. The guy had huge upper body muscles but fairly normal legs, he was panting and out of breath. The woman was not exerting herself much at all.
Yeah, he was drunk but he wasn’t stumbling over himself drunk. In addition, there were lots of guys in the crowd and none of them seemed very eager to challenge him. If it were life or death or he were threatening family or friends, I’d step in but I’d quite likely get my ass kicked, even today after some training. I’m just not at the level that woman was and I am much bigger than her.

I’ve heard a few people mention weight classes in boxing. That’s between equally trained fighters!
If you take a smaller trained fighter against a larger untrained person though, I’m betting on the training!

I would agree with this but it goes further than that. In judo I learned to work my opponent’s movement against him. This was more important than specific moves to make.

guns are worthless unless you’re holding one. This isn’t about fighting. Fighting is a sport. It’s about hurting and maiming your opponent. I’ll take a pen in my pocket over a gun for self defense. guns are great if you have the time to get to them out. But if you have time to get the gun out in a bar you have time to leave.

You doubt this somehow? There are entire schools of fighting dedicated to this very premise. The point is relevant because stand up fighting is a lot less common IRL than a fight quickly becoming a flailing scuffle on the floor.

The bar fight scenario is an aside, I believe the discussion started about real self defense. A bar fight is typically mutual combat between drunk idiots. In a real self defense scenario you’d be insane to want anything over a gun.

I don’t do Seibukan anymore unfortunately, I had to slow down some with age. But if I was in some weird fight between me and someone trained in judo where we both had to follow the rules of our sport I’d say the judo guy would win. Lot of advantages over a striking oriented martial art.

It just amuses me because, in threads like this, someone always breaks out that phrase to make themselves sound more worldly when it comes to fighting. The assumption that the guy will always overpower the girl is amusing to me, too. The biggest badasses I’ve known (military and mercenaries) know and respect females in their biz, and if *they *wouldn’t underestimate a girl, I don’t see why I should pay attention to some internet tough guy.

Did you miss this part of the post (underlined below) you commented on where I’m bragging of my martial arts prowess?

We’ve had these threads many times before. The consensus from experienced martial artists (and I’m not one) seems to be that when you have a matchup like this with a large size and strength difference a woman might be able to dominate until it’s time for grappling or blows. If the guy is drunk or out of shape enough she might be able to inflict enough damage to take it, but if it goes to the floor and he gets his hands on her she’s on serious trouble regardless of martial arts prowess.

You don’t need to be an “internet tough guy” to make a commonsensical observation about what’s going to happen if someone stronger than you are, who outweighs you 2-1 drags you to the ground. I have no idea why you think this is disrespectful.

Yes, there’s no doubt it’s the great equalizer. But you have to have it in your hand. I think a smaller person with training can defend against a larger person.

What a stupid and worthless post. It’s a simple fact well known basically forever that big strong men will typically beat up a small woman in a fight. If it makes me an Internet tough guy to say that I’d love to know what it makes you to refute it. Ignorant? The simple fact is most, as in the large majority, of people trained in martial arts but not experienced in a real self-defense situation often fare poorly. Martial arts are great fun, but nothing replaces actual experience defending yourself from a realistic threat. That’s why someone like a small woman wanting help defending themselves would be foolish to just take Judo or Karate lessons. They can take those for sure, but they’d be well served to take an actual self defense course which can simulate real scenarios a lot better than most martial arts.

I think a lot of people watch too many movies and thinks trained fighters can do all kinds of amazing, Hollywood style things. The truth is most of the time they cannot, you might have some degree of edge but so many things go into situations where you’re actually being attacked that can totally negate any skills you might have.

Sure, sometimes. The grim reality is, situations self defense training teach you to deal with and real self defense situations there are typically vast advantages for the assailant. Element of surprise if the biggest one, surprise is a major neutralizer and is how a lot of lesser fighters and even lesser military forces have won…it can be very difficult for a superior force to prevail when ambushed…true on an individual level just as true as it is with military units. With a gun you have some possibility of maybe drawing it and killing the person, but even still if some random person you never see coming tackles you to the ground and is punching your face in before you know what’s happening I don’t care if you’re Chuck Norris and Rambo’s son carrying a flamethrower there’s a good chance you lose.

Even having a gun in your hand can be little defense when taken by complete surprise. A few years ago a lone nut in Wisconsin killed five armed hunters by walking right up to them and shooting them all. They just were totally unprepared for trouble and took him to be another hunter and he shot them all dead before they could even raise their guns in defense.

I have no doubt Martin would be the person to bet on in any kind of structured fight. I’d get pile driven into the ground if I had to follow rules. There is no substitute for mass in a competition and I’d avoid a fight with him like the plague. Also Judo is not a striking sport. It’s a leverage sport.

I learned to hurt people (badly) more or less by accident and of that I’m not proud. But what I learned was how to do the most amount of damage with the least amount of effort. This is why I think women are capable of defending themselves. It doesn’t mean they’re going to do well in a competition but that they can disable a man long enough to retreat.

I have a family member who is 5’5 and 119, she has very long slender arms and small fragile looking hands, and she just kind of looks delicate like a petite pretty ballerina. Looks can be deceiving , lol, as i have seen her push her boyfriend when angry, who looks around maybe 175 1bs and pretty strong…to my surprise when she got pissed off, she pushed him and he fell back lost his balance and stumbled back, and grabbed his arm and he actually struggled with her a bit to free his arm, like the kick ass ballerina, not sure how that can be when shes so petite, but damm

Seibukan is a form of Okinawan Karate so it is a striking sport. I generally think judo and other martial arts which specialize in grappling and throws have advantages…it’s almost like the boxer vs wrestler duel that everyone typically says a wrestler wins in these fantasy bouts where you have to follow the rules of your particular sport.

If they are both untrained fighters, I agree with you.

If they are both TRAINED fighters, I agree with you.

If the smaller woman has fight training and the larger man doesn’t, I say the woman has the clear edge.

Size and strength is an advantage but not so much if you don’t know how to use it.

THis used to be really true because martial arts classes taught pupils to do two things well:

  1. Fight other martial artists of the same discipline
  2. Basic self-defense where the assailant was really stupid

But one of the sweet things about MMA fighting is that it really showed what works and what doesn’t. Of course tournaments don’t simulate a real fight but they came a lot closer than the heavily regulated bouts that came before. So now it’s a lot easier to get lessons in the more brawling, ground level fighting that you’re likely to encounter in a real situation.

You have gone TOO DAMN FAR.

Chuck Norris and Rambo did NOT have a son together. I would have said it’s not even biologically possible, but… it’s Chuck Norris.

Martin Hyde, there are many, many confirmed cases of people (yes, even pathetic, weak women! It’s true!) subduing attackers with martial arts or sometimes just plain ol’ rage. I always bring up the famous streetfight that was caught on tape between Rashad Bobino and Roger Huerta. As always, I would like to state that I am very aware that Huerta is not a girl, thank you very much whatever neckbeard out there is about to hit ‘submit reply’ to correct me. But that ‘matchup’ is pretty much exactly what people always debate in these threads – a much bigger, heavier opponent against a smaller, but skilled opponent. Rashad Bobino is a Texas Longhorns linebacker who is 5’11 and weighs 250 lbs. Roger Huerta is several inches shorter and only about 170 lbs, and a respectable but hardly legendary MMA fighter. And Huerta laid out Bobino so fucking fast that I bet Bobino starts twitching and has flashbacks anytime he sees a tiny Mexican. If it weren’t on tape half the people in this thread would be shaking their heads, saying there was no way Huerta could win, Bobino would take it 9/10, etc. Well, 9/10, 1/10, I doubt Bobino could calculate his odds of winning after Huerta finished stomping his face into the pavement about 12 seconds into the fight. And unlike Bobino, who sneak-attacked a girl from behind, Huerta was nice enough to face his opponent like a man.

Now, before that same hypothetical neckbeard starts trying to build any strawman arguments, I am in no way suggesting that A) any smaller dude could take a guy like Bobino, that B) anyone with MMA training could take a linebacker (Huerta is a pro, even if not top-tier) or that C) that a girl who takes Judo at the Y could fight off any attacker. But I guarantee you that there’s women out there who could take a guy like Bobino, even some who could take bigger guys, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. It may not be many women. Hell, it may be in the double, or only single, digits. Just like there are tiny Mexican MMA fighters who can take a linebacker almost twice their body weight, no problemo.

I still remember the UFC fight between Paul Varelans and and Marco Ruas. Ruas is like half his size. Varelans just followed him around and Ruas just kept kicking the leg, kicking the leg, kicking the leg. Until Varelans finally went down on one knee. Guess who was the bigger guy then?

Sure, the big guy will usually beat the little guy, that’s why even UFC instituted weight classes. But watching those early fights with no weight classes, it sure didn’t seem obvious at the time that they were necessary.

I don’t think anyone is saying a well trained but small female could never defeat a man in a life and death situation. It’s just that it is not very likely without modern weapons on the woman’s side. Further, I think the training and skills of the woman would have to be quite high, as in expert level, for a woman to be able to straight up beat or defeat a man in such a situation. But many male assailants looking to rape/rob will run away if the woman puts up a significant fight, so even if the woman might not be capable of actually physically beating her attacker in many cases you can drive an attacker off without meeting that threshold.

Now, I think in an organized fight a trained female would kick and untrained male’s ass, but in that scenario the structure of an organized competition would provide a massive amount of protection for the woman.