Of course, violence and crime are contemptible. But I am curious about who would be more likely to win?
Can a special force soldier (either from USASOAC, Navy SEALs or Rangers) beat a thug on a street fight? Assume they have no guns or tools. Do their training help them survive this type of situations?
What if the thug turns out to be a boxer or martial artist (Karate etc.)?
Firstest with the mostest !!!
I have no answer, but I do have two friends, but were SOF (one Canadian, one Israeli) and since I am relatively tall for a female, hijinks would start this:
“Okay, Poysyn, pretend you have a knife…”
To which I would reply “I have NO KNIFE and am in no way a threat to you. I do not wish to engage in this game. I absolutely stipulate that you can handily kick my ass. Please cease and desist.”
“So you have a knife and you are coming at me…”
“Please note, not only am I not ‘coming at you’, I am actually planning to run the other way.”
At this point, I would usually find myself (gently, since they were my friends) flung through the air with the greatest of ease and pinned in various ways. They usually liked to say “What?! We are teaching you some excellent self defence techniques!”
Jerks.
Speaking generically, special forces operators (actual field operations, not logistics and intelligence support) are extensively trained in close quarters combat (CQB) both with empty hands and with weapons including improvised weapons, and are also selected, trained, and conditioned to take punishment and keep going. Their CQB training is highly focused on simple techniques that have been shown to work in real world conditions where the defender may not have perfect coordination or be able to see precise critical strike areas.
Your typical streetfighter has probably learned how to take a few punches without falling down and crying but their fighting techniques tend to be pretty primitive (a lot of windmilling or rushing body checks). Your typical ‘sport’ martial artist, on the other hand, has often learned a lot of techniques of varying practical effectiveness but may have never taken a solid punch in training or learned how to shed strikes. I think the only ‘amateur’ fighters who probably stand a real chance against an operator would be Brazilian ju-jitsu/mixed martial arts/Systema students, and even then only if they have some pretty solid experience.
A professional boxer or MMA fighter probably stands a good chance against an operator assuming the latter is not able to use weapons, but in a real fight for survival, no trained operator is going to stand around fighting from stance; they’re going to find anything they can use as a distraction, weapon, or restraint, and apply it without hesitation.
Stranger
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
If someone really is a true street beating thug and not some woofing poser, who takes and dishes out violence in uncontrolled circumstances I’d have to give the odds to them unless there is a huge size disparity. Experience counts for a huge amount and even experienced martial artists can get their asses handed to them if some big, strong, rage/drug fueled “thug” takes it to the floor. If you have someone larger and stronger than you going at you in confined, to the ground circumstances a lot of secret sauce martial arts skills are not going to count for as much as you might think.
This seems like a silly question. Can a street basketball hustler beat one of the Chicago Bulls at HORSE?
SEALS, Rangers, and Special Forces operators are some of the best trained, best conditioned professional soldiers on the planet. They are literally trained to kick people’s ass in combat situations. I’d be willing to bet that a fair number of them would probably have been a fair match for the average street thug before they even enlisted.
Special Forces operators don’t do as much hand to hand training as people think, I have a relative who was a Green Beret and an instructor, and the motto is “if you find yourself fighting without a weapon, you fucked up.”
That having been said, they do spend a lot of time training to be a bad-ass. That is, they are going to be confident, aggressive, highly focused, and in superb physical condition. As such, they are going to wipe the floor with the average street thug.
As Yogi Berra probably never said, “90% of baseball is 50% mental”. No one is invincible, but someone who has trained for years into the attitude that “I am going to hurt you no matter what” is someone who is going to be very unpleasant to deal with.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, yeah. Actually, they could. If it’s someone as bad at shooting as Shaq, at least. The street basketball hustler has put 100% of his effort into training for a single thing - shooting baskets from various spots on the court under conditions the NBA player doesn’t see except in practice. So it’s entirely possible to be an NBA superstar but not be amazing at that single skill.
Similarly, while a special forces soldier is going to have spent maybe a day a month, at best, practicing hand to hand, they plan to go into combat :
carrying at least 2 firearms, generally. (special forces soldiers frequently carry a sidearm - my source is Chris Kyle’s biography)
Carrying at least 1, probably multiple knives.
With buddies
It’s highly unlikely that they would find themselves hand to hand, unarmed. Almost never has happened.
I may have mentioned this before but I tend to recall it when these sorts of scenarios are discussed. About three or four years ago there was an incident here where a trained boxer got into a fight with a martial artist (amateaurs but they had won awards, not just joe-schmo), in Hollywood this would be a drawn out battle with fists and kicks landing in all directions.
In reality the boxer struck the martial artist once* and he was knocked cold, fell backwards and hit the back of his head off the ground ultimately killing him.
People can be a lot more vulnerable than you think, even people who have experience of hitting others and being hit back.
*it may have been the other way around
What answer was the OP expecting? That our killing forces are pussies?
Yes, in a fair and just world they would never have to engage in CQB. All threats would be eliminated at 300 m with a clean CNS shot and no direct contact. But as my edged weapons instructor used to say, “This here’s the fleet, son.” In reality, special forces units are often required to enter confined areas, fight at close quarters, and even capture and detain high value targets alive for further interrogation or prosecution. This always has the potential for hand-to-hand combat, even if it undesired, hence the need for training in practical, simple, effective techniques that can be learned quickly and applied in less-than-optimal real world conditions which do not exist in a dojo, boxing ring, or fighting cage. And hand-to-hand training develops aggressiveness, awareness, and proprioception, which are useful regardless of whether you are armed or unarmed.
Engaging in combat with “multiple knives”, by the way, is barely more desirable than having to fight bare hand. Once you get within stabbing or slashing distance the same essential risks and threats apply. Fighting with long bladed knife is more effective than a punch or kick, but it is not the position that even someone trained in edged weapon combat wants to find themselves in. Or, as my edged weapons instructor said, “In a real knife fight, one person goes to the hospital and the other one goes to the morgue,” and “You may not have to reload a knife, but you’re probably only going to get one shot, so you’d better make it count.” Those choreographed dances you see in film between actors waving rubber knives at each other are essentially pure fantasy.
Stranger
Hmmph. Next you’ll be telling us that cars don’t explode every time they roll over or crash into something. 
I can’t imagine most street thugs have THAT much experience in non weapon combat - simply because they eventually will run into someone that will have a weapon and kill them.
Based on my viewing of seal documentaries - I’m pretty sure these guys are taken to their limit and have been beaten up quite a few times - I think they would be less likely to get mentally flustered as they know what their limits are. I’m guessing more training is designed to get out of a bad situation- then beating up the other person - and I think once they get out - they know how to dos coupled finishing moves pretty well.
I don’t think they’d do as well against a MMA - those guys are crazy - but the same thing might apply - the SEALs are probably pretty good to getting to a safe distance. I prefer to avoid all three - all opinions off against a guy with a gun - at enough distance - a gun is gonna beat anyone.
Yes but how often do sf soldiers find themselves in unarmed combat? If they have a weapons hierarchy of their own weapons it probably goes.
Rifle and grenades
Pistol
Knives and other handheld weapons
Hand to hand combat
You’d have to lose all your weapons to have to resort to unarmed combat. Other than capture, how would that happen? Seeing how the time and money to train is finite, spending it on scenarios that rarely happen would be a low priority.
Why would anyone assume a street thug would be more used to unarmed combat than an SF soldier?
WADR we aren’t talking about a fair and just world - we are talking about a street fight.
Sure, it can happen. It doesn’t happen very much. On a mission, special forces are always armed, and it is much, much more likely to involve close combat shooting rather than hand to hand. Therefore, they spend a lot more time training with weapons than in unarmed combat. Because that’s cost-effective - training to black belt level in some form of unarmed combat is less likely to be useful than training to be an expert shot. That’s not to say it will never come in handy to be able to break a knee or an elbow or take someone down and choke them out.
Absolutely. Add to that the very high level of physical conditioning, and the average special forces op vs. the average street thug (if such a thing exists) is going to turn out badly for Mr. Thug, nine times out of ten.
A lot of the disadvantage that the normal person labors under in a street fight is dealing with the panic. It is very high-stress to enter into a fight with someone who wants to hurt or kill you. Special forces are used to going into situations where the stress level is high - either from actual combat experience, or because they have been required to perform under situations where the stress level has been raised artificially - by sleep deprivation, fear of washing out, excessive fatigue, and all the other creative ways that military brass can come up with to make life interesting for those under their charge. So the special forces op isn’t going to panic when some jerk throws a punch. Plus the “do whatever it takes to achieve the goal” mindset tends to teach how to do what is the recommended course of action in a serious fight - once it is clear that things are going south, ignore all the posturing and chest-thumping and dominance displays so common in the beginning of fights, and go straight to the “here’s where people get hurt” part. And they are going to be well-conditioned enough to stick to the people-hurting part longer than the thug can do, thus making sure that the thug gets hurt more.
There are no guarantees in fighting. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. But that’s the way to bet.
Regards,
Shodan
What if the street thug spends every friday night in an illegal cage match fight or something, fighting bare knuckled? While the SEAL or Green Beret has to learn a vastly larger array of skills, and is presumably going to spend much of his CQB training time practicing those close range snap shots.
Now, to be fair, I think what would happen is the SF operator is going to walk or run away as his first line of defense. He’s not going to accept a fair street fight if he can avoid it. If there’s someone to defend, he’s going to pickup a weapon if one is available. He’s going to have a concealed firearm if the state laws allow it. So I think he would win most of the time - but not by a fair street “duel”.
No special forces operator is going to engage in a “fair street ‘duel’” (whatever that is). Their entire training is basically about gaining and maintain the tactical advantage by any means available, using the weapons at hand and the environment to gain the upper hand. In a boxing ring or a cage match against a fighter trained in that sport and limits on the kinds of strikes which are permitted, an operator would probably be at disadvantage. In the real world facing a fight for survival, I’d put real money on the operator over a “trained martial artist” or MMA fighter any day of the week just because the operator isn’t going to show any restraint or be hobbled by a set of rules drilled he has been trained to respect.
Stranger
Martial artists who have not had actual fight training will not fair all that well against even a good street fighter. Any decent MMA fighter of approx. equal size would easily take an average ranger or seal, no contest. Navy seals and rangers both have gotten their asses kicked many times in bar room brawls.