I believe they placed a lot of emphasis on the Spartan bronze armour and shield, the rim of which they used offensively to some effect. The steel naginata polearm of the samurai couldn’t penetrate the Spartan’s cuirass and the kanabo club barely dented the hoplon shield. However, the Spartan spear couldn’t penetrate the Samurai’s armour either.
Both warriors on foot, by the way.
Even on foot, even without his bow, I’m picking the Samurai to win.
There is a rather obvious reason why men fighting in phalanxes and squares have always carries pikes and spears, and why men fighting as individuals have always preferred swords.
Our Spartan is as well trained a soldier as has ever lived but this is not the kind of combat he is trained for. The Spartan is also going to lose against a medeival knight, even if the knight doesn’t have his horse; the Spartan is not a duellist.
For the record, the Deadliest Warrior pitted a Spartan against a ninja and the spartan won a very lopsided victory.
They matched a samurai against a viking in the previous episode in which the samurai won
Well, in their defence, they do not purport to analyse or even predict wider logistical or strategical considerations. They merely seek to determine, once and for all, whether Tiger pwns T-34.
That being said, yes, that show is retarded on so many levels 
And here’s one level where that show blows such stupendous amount of chunks. Their rating of “who would win” is a statistical analysis of which of the two contestants scored more kills in four discrete but arbitrary categories. They then force every contestant to actually have a valid implement of death in each category. Which leads to such retardedness as making the Roman legionnaire compete at range with a bloody siege engine since Romans didn’t do range.
Let be. That’s not where the rage is at.
The rage is that they arbitrarily decide what should be a given Warrior’s weapon at a given range. Then gauge that particular weapon or tool strictly on its damage potential on a human body.
In this particular example, at mid range they decided that Spartans would have thrown javelins (which phalanxes never used - that’s not the rage yet, read on) while ninjas would have black eggs. Black. Eggs. Then assert that javelins win, since a thrown javelin can kill a guy, while an egg filled with pepper spray doesn’t. OF COURSE METSUBUSHI* ARE NOT GOING TO SCORE KILLS ! THAT’S NOT WHAT THEY’RE USED FOR, YOU ASSHAT !
Eh, lots of misconceptions, some of which have already been noted. The Spartan would be using the dory spear, which is not a javelin, and not a sarissa or long pike.
Bronze is not at that great a disadvantage against steel as one might think – bronze can be quite hard. It was replaced by iron despite iron being softer because bronze (well, the tin required to make bronze) is very rare. Steel (iron with the right amount of carbon) is probably better for weapon use , but it’s not orders of magnitude better. And the Spartan is wearing solid bronze armor, probably more effective than the laquered plates the Samurai is wearing.
If the contest were without any cultural baggage, the more lightly-equipped Samurai should just run around until the very hot, heavy gear of the Spartan exhausts its wearer. But the Samurai’s culture won’t permit him to do that.
Yes, if they start at the visual horizon, the bow is a huge advantage.
The comments about individual fighting are onto something – I would say that 100 Spartans would probably win against 100 Samurai more often than one against one – but there’s a catch.
I’ve just finished reading two books on Greek warfare by classics professor/historian Victor Davis Hanson. Although Greek hoplites indeed fought in phalanx, the Spartans were famous for training for individual combat – which Greeks from rival city-states ridiculed as almost an affectation. Team fighting was everything to the standard hoplite, and they would probably be all but helpless against a Samurai one-on-one. But Spartans were different.
If we discount the bow, I’d give the edge to Sparta. Otherwise, Nippon.
The Spartan is from a relatively metal-rich society.
His gear reflects this.
Spartan.
I think a lot of people are discounting the utility of a shield. It doesn’t appear shields were heavily used in Japan ever, but they are extremely effective because you can use them to block your enemy and counterattack all without significantly exposing yourself to injury. Unless you’re trained at getting around a shield you could easily end up eating the full force of a shield bash to the upper body which would almost certainly knock you to the ground–and in any real fight the first person on the ground is almost always the loser.
The OP specifies a bow, but not arrows. However, if the Samurai has arrows the Spartan is cooked. Spartans had bows also, but thought firing arrows from a distance to be cowardly compared to direct combat. However in the one-on-one situation described, the Samurai might make it a matter of honor and eschew the arrow. Or not, it’s hard to tell what to believe about either of these types of warriors.
But overall, I give to the edge to the Samurai, because Samurais are cooler than Spartans. If they make a series of movies about 300 tough guys getting together on a suicide mission I’ll reconsider.
Samurai all the way
They ran a ‘back for blood’ special where they pit series 1 champions against each other..
Not so sure about that.
Yes, samurai have that warrior caste & honour baggage, but that doesn’t make them stupid. In fact, that very same warrior caste baggage led to such things as Pearl Harbour, or Musashi setting the time and place of one of his duels so that his opponent would have the sun in his eyes - because the Japanese notion of honour in warfare is not the same as ours, or that of a chivalry novel. To them, pulling devious tricks in combat is not dishonour, it’s just smart. You do what you gotta do to win. Victory is where the honour’s at.
Consider how quickly they adopted firearms, despite the fact that the old guard naturally thought they were cowardly weapons and giving them to peasants was a disgrace. That they might be, ojii-san. But they win battles.
It’s worth noting that medieval honor – Chivalry – was largely a product of French fiction, written after the medieval ages. Japanese honor – Bushido – was largely a product of 19th century Japanese Nationalists. I wouldn’t trust that a Warring States era Samurai was really all that imbued with honor and tradition.
(This isn’t to say that there weren’t warrior codes at the time, just that they aren’t as stylized nor deeply rooted as popular perception has it.)
Oh, absolutely. I’m just saying that, even going by the stylized and romanticized portrayal of samurais there’s really nothing that would make skirmishing tactics “dishonourable”, because the samurai is *supposed *to fight smart and leverage the weaknesses of his opponent, sometimes ruthlessly so.
The Japanese are pretty damn pragmatic when it comes to combat, even when it’s symbolic, philosophy-laden stylized fictional combat. The lithe nimble guy running circles around the big guy until he’s too tired to fight properly is a pretty common occurrence in samurai fiction (or anime, for that matter).