the fighting skills of the average man

In My Humble Opinion
141

This ^^. I’ve refrained from commenting because DSeid and some others have this unshakeable Seal fanboy belief that being in excellent shape is a going to allow them to triumph over all very experienced bar fight adversaries in good shape no matter how experienced, even though hand to hand throw downs are very small slice of Seal training. It’s almost like they believe they’re the military version of LOTR elves.

Being experienced at the game and having a plan to disable someone already in play is going to put even a person in great shape at a serious disadvantage. If the fight involved carrying logs, swimming miles in the ocean, or diving to place explosives the Seals would be the undisputed winners. If you are tussling in some dive with a strong man who is n experienced fighter, who works out, and may outweighs you by 50 t 100 lbs your Seal training is not guaranteeing you will prevail.

142

It makes so little sense I just wonder if it’s too many movies, or people trying to be patriotic by refusing to admit a SEAL isn’t the best at everything cus they’re the bestest!

You’re misinterpretting my point on this thread. Russian streetfighters often can throw a proper 1-2, and move their heads, and have basic fighting skills which are often missing in 90% or more of the American streetfighting videos where guys only throw overly telegraphed windmill punches and bounce around like idiots because they think thats what real fighters do.

I’m not calling them Russian supermen, I am saying they at least have the basics down usually. Which most American men do not that I have seen. Wild flailing punches might work on other people who also don’t know what they’re doing, but they are not basic fighting skills.

143

Anyone who prepares for a fight, as in a bar fist fight is an idiot. There I said it.

This doesn’t exist except in movies and fantasy.

If you need to defend your self, you use what you need to. Nothing disperses a crowd like mace or pepper spray, your fists will be of limited value and a concealed gun is overkill and pointless.

As for a smaller amount of attackers a gun comes in very handy, or some very quick stabs with a chisel or knife.

There is no situation where you should get into a mano a mano fight, that is basic conflict avoidance. I don’t care if someone calls your mother a super whore it is foolish to engage. Given no choice and attacked you aim to kill or incapacitate.

Maybe I’m sounding like some other poster but fist fighting is stupid beyond stupid.

144 
   Some of the best fist fighters I know are extremely intelligent, intelligence is probably one of the best weapons in a mans arsenal. Some people just like to fight, some people just don't take shit. It might relate to sanity but not intelligence.
145

Move goal posts much? Most experienced bar fighters in decent shape now morphs into all very experienced …?

So take your typical “experienced bar fighter” - tell how much training does he do a week? How many fights does he have a day?

The mythos here is to imagine that someone who gets into a fight or so a week a bar has somehow gained these amazingly awesome fighting skills and that “decent shape” is any sort of bar or that most of these schlubs are special.

rogerbox has - based on what? - some wet dreams it seems - an impression of awesome fighting skills of Russian streetfighters.

Again no one except these bar fighter fan boyz is discussing any claim that SEALs are super hand to hand fighting machines. Against people trained to fight and in equal condition they would be toast. Most “experienced bar fighters” are not those people. They are either idiots or bullies or hot heads and their “decent” condition is probably better than better than the average American, let alone average American bar patron, but that is pretty low bar to achieve.

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No it’s not. It’s a sign of an improving society. Times and places where kids grow up hard tend to be times and places that suck to live in.

147

I’ve repeatedly said that Russians have at least basic competency. How you got from that to ‘awesome’ and me having ‘wet dreams’ about them I don’t know. If I had to guess, you’re probably a disingenuous jerk.

148

Didn’t ‘Fight Club’ address this? A bunch of average guys; bloated, slow, crap at fighting, got better and fitter the more they fought. When they tried to start a fight in public - with a non-member of the Club - it was almost impossible.

There isn’t an ‘average guy in a fight’, 85% of the time. 85% of guys avoid fighting if possible, either by not getting into any situation which could erupt or deescalating the situation asap. They’d probably lose in a proper fight. 10% aren’t backing down from any fight and will either win or lose but cannot, in any way, be described as average. The other 5% aren’t looking for a fight but have an unlucky day and probably get their faces messed up.

I’ve seen bar fights and it’s pretty obvious 90% of people step back and 10 step forward, with the odd drunk/oblivious guy getting slapped hard and going down. I know guys who go out looking for bar fights and they’re experienced, often *enjoy *pain, are much physically stronger than the average and much angrier, and often have martial arts/contact sports history.

I did some martial arts and you learn a lot about avoiding a fight in the first place, just by keeping a cool eye on the situation - much easier when you know you can defend yourself (and your girlfriend, if she’s present). If a fight erupts and you stand there, coolly watching, maybe in a defensive stance, people - experienced fighters - usually will see that and won’t start on someone who isn’t throwing random punches. And punches are pretty wild and only lucky ones make good contact, unless you’re a trained boxer/fighter; elbows and feet more effective at close range :wink:

149

Personal insults such as this are not allowed outside of The Pit. Don’t do this again.

Hal Briston - IMHO Moderator

150

That’s not true. Most of us just have French supermodels for girlfriends.

I wonder exactly how many fighters a typical “experienced bar fighter” would have.

I used to hang out in Roppongi in Tokyo, and knew a guy who liked getting drunk and into fights to let off steam. That said, I think he probably had four or five, and mostly they were pretty wild swings on both sides. I had a couple of drinks with him one night and he looked like he was on another mission, so I went to another area in the bar.

A while later a guy comes looking for me, to tell me that my “friend” was about to have his ass kicked. He was exchanging stupid words with a group of US Marines. Not that they have any particular skills, but they outnumbered him five or six to one. I got him out of that one, and the marines seemed happy to win by default.

Bars don’t like having regular boxing matches, it’s bad for business, and places which are rough enough have bouncers.

Has anyone actually said this, that SEALs will win no matter what?

151

I don’t think anyone is disagreeing on the level of training or abilities of SEALS.

Rather, people seem to be disagreeing over what is meant by “experienced bar fighter”, and just how much skill that entails.

Is an experience bar fighter a bully thug who likes to beat on weaker people? Is an experienced bar fighter someone who gets into brawls on a regular basis? Is it a bad guy from a low socio-economic group getting into violent gang conflicts? Those often turn to guns nowadays, rather than the good old days where they used fists, chains, knives, and clubs to beat each other senseless.

152

rogerbox, you have claimed

… which may be at least somewhat true, I don’t know. Russia has twice the homicide rate of the United States, lots more drinking to excess, lots of poverty, a high divorce rate, and men tend to die young. It makes sense that Russian males would have more experience fighting than American males would, and experience gets some skill, albeit not MMA level, but some. As Tamerlane points out, crappy environments are more likely to produce males who fight more and thus “better.”

But my question remains the same: what do you base that assessment on? Some comic books? Some magazines with pages stuck together? Some mythos that your bros have passed along? Something you have heard? Have you actually cruised the bars in Russia and observed this first hand?

And again I ask, as TokyoBayer does as well - how much fighting experience does a typical “experienced” bar tough have? 10 minutes a week in actual fights? Not likely that much. How long does a typical bar fight last for? How many of them do they have a week? A boxer trains for hours per day, as do MMA competitors. How do hot heads and bullies who fight in bars get much in the way of experience? 10 minutes a day is not even enough to really develop skills.

153

This point has been made several times in the thread, but it bears repeating. “Average guys” fighting against anyone with experience is going to lose.

Of the 10% you quote, how many of them have been in any real “fight,” let alone any that take more than one swing?

I think the percent of people who go out looking for fights is really, really low.

Just out of curiosity, how many bar fights have you seen?

I was an alcoholic for a while, so I spent a lot of time in bars on the seedier side of Tokyo, (which still isn’t that bad of a place), and can’t recall that many.

How many fights are there that involve bystanders? From my extensive experience (well, looking at a few fights on youtube now and then when I can’t sleep) and such, you just don’t really see guys going crazy and attacking people in the crowd. This goes back to your 90% of people who step back, and those are the ones who are in a potential “situation” to begin with.

Knowing martial arts would be real cool, but I don’t think it’s particularly necessary for us latte-sucking suburbanites. YMMV.

154

What do you call someone saying you’ve had a wetdream?

155

That’s right, rogerbox! Don’t let this go, man! He’s insulting you! I strongly suggest you take him to a bar in Russia and get an average guy there to beat the crap out of him! That’ll learn him!

156

You haven’t ever had a wet dream? They really are not abnormal.

But in any case, I apologize for suggesting that you may have had wet dreams, if such offends you.

Of course the point of the comment remains unresponded to: you state this Slavic average street fighter expertise (to MMA levels) over the average American street fighter (however many of those creatures exist) as a statement of fact. I still question the basis of that claim. Is it fantasies derived from a selected set of videos on the internet, dreams not associated with any arousal at all :slight_smile: … what people you believe have told you …?

Bringing back around to the op, I do suspect that your point there is valid and is consistent with the consensus of this thread. Men fighting, especially younger males fighting, is something that varies much culturally and regionally. In Russia today it is minimally a more common event if nothing else, common enough that “boozed up fighting” gets listed as a major contributor to the early death rate among Russian males:

(That said I doubt drunks have great fighting form …)

In this country I think there are fewer cultural/regional pockets that still consider young men fighting to be as normative as there had been. So yeah, the consensus in this thread is the average American male just does not have even any experience fighting. And American males who are prone to violence use other means than their fists and feet.

The related GQ thread about long term violence trends had noted the probable impact of lowered environmental lead exposures in lowering rates of violence in much of the West anyway. It is of note that environmental lead has remained a major issue in Russia.

That article was from 2002. In 2003 Russia banned leaded gasoline, about 13 years behind America’s phase-out. I doubt though that lead exposure is the sole reason for more deaths from fighting in Russia (alcohol, poverty, cultural norms, so on likely are bigger factors). Still interesting.

157

In the interest of fighting ignorance, I googled “MMA amateur vs. street fighter.”

There’s a bunch of youtube videos (who would have thought?). Lots out there, but a few show that amateur MMA are pretty damn good.

I don’t see where the typical Russian street fighter is at that level.

158

I’m not entirely sure about how to parse this sentence, but I think having a wet dream is a problem because you haven’t called someone.

159

The average bar fighter has not trained nearly enough on H2H to make up for the physical difference in fitness levels, IME.

The other major advantage a SEAL would have over the average bar fighter is not that he is “trained to kill”, it is because the SEAL has demonstrated an extraordinary mental toughness that is not likely in some obnoxious drunk who likes to start fights. If you can get thru the elite level of testing and training in SEAL training, you are not likely to fall apart the first time you get hit in the nose.

Are you still talking about the average bar fighter? If so, they will not be in equivalent physical shape to a Navy SEAL.

I agree. A SEAL, however, is going to surpass the average bar tough in physical fitness as much as the bar tough does the average man.

You think a SEAL is going to curl up and start crying when Dicky Drunkass lands a right?

YouTube as evidence is like a Google dump as evidence.

Regards,
Shodan

160

Since we’re apparently letting anecdotes pass for evidence, I’ll throw in my 2 cents.

In my youth, I didn’t go to many bars. I’d been to dance clubs a few times, but don’t drink myself.

Got a little older, hanging out with friends, started going a few places.

One group of us went to downtown Houston for a promotional event, big dance club. While we were approaching the front door, I watched a black guy and his two buddies walking out of the bar, and a white guy and his buddies sucker punched him in the face. He started making noise to draw attention, but nobody wanted to wade into that mess, and the two groups started a scuffle. This is with a line of patrons waiting to go in trying not to get stepped on. I took a look, decided I didn’t know who had said what to whom inside or what it all was about, so I kinda directed my friends back and we stayed out of trouble. I think the bouncers came out, some people took some hits, and it kinda winded down. Me and my friends went inside to our event. My evaluation of the scuffle - some punches exchanged, some grabs and fall to the pavement. No real grappling skill, no punch combos or real technique.

Another time, I was hanging out in a strip club, I watched a couple of drunk cowboys start sizing up and the bar staff come over to move them outside.

Another time, another strip club (this one fairly crowded), I was watching a dancer having a talk with a guy and she slapped him in the face. I was afraid the customer was going to respond poorly to that, but before he could do much, someone jumped him from behind into a choke hold and they stumbled past/over me toward the door. No riot broke out.

Another situation, another strip club, I noticed a drunk guy giving me the eye and kinda making provocative motions at me. I ignored him and he moved on.

In 10 years, that’s maybe 4 events that happened around me.

There are a couple other events that didn’t happen in bars that involved someone else getting testy and potentially provocative, but I ignored them rather than feeling the need to “stand up for myself”. They went away and claimed victory, I got to go my way in peace and not deal with an asshole.

My brother in law worked as a bouncer, and has broken up some fights. He also studied judo and jujitsu, and used choke outs.