A few days ago, I posted a question about how Bruce Lee would fare against the “Big Show”, a seven-foot, 450 pound wrestler. My current question is along the same lines : a top-notch, “black belt”-level female martial artist (let’s say she is about 5’ 7’’, 140 pounds, trained in a couple of disciplines, also has good grappling skills) engages a much larger male opponent, six foot four inch, 250 pounds, muscular fellow.
Actually, to make it interesting, why not imagine the following scenarios.
The guy is big but not muscular – a couch potato.
The guy is in good shape but not accustomed to fighting.
The man is a street brawler – has been in many fights, but is not a martial artist.
The guy is an accomplished martial artist himself.
How would our female martial artist fare against these opponents?
Defintely IMHO, and “martial artist” is just too broad a term to predict anything from.
That said, I’ve seen girls do some pretty impressive things when I was on the high school wrestling team. They almost invariably lost to the guys who also wrestled in their weight class, but I’m sure it was more than enough to embarass your average unsuspecting joe on the street.
Woman
Toss up, slight edge to woman
Man
Man
If you don’t believe the first one, check youtube for Royce Gracie versus Akebono. Or me versus my 6’2’’ 200+ lb friend, buwahahhaa. I’ve found for smaller guys like me with the armreach of a hummingbird, grappling is definitely the great equalizer. Your average guy on the street just panics and does absolutely all the wrong things once they’re on the ground because it’s just so foreign to them.
There is no “before he knew what hit him”. This isn’t The Matrix. He knows what’s hitting him: a woman he outweighs by 110 pounds and towers over.
Presumably the couch potato isn’t going to sit on the couch eating chips while the woman attacks him. He’s is fighting back, unless we want the question to be “how long would it take for a woman to incapacitate a man standing still with his arms at his sides.”
A small man, trained in martial arts is a completely different story.
Women are weak, and slow. People like to think that there’s some magical ability of martial artists to focus all of their body’s energy on one small point and deliver some death blow through pure technique. It’s not like that at all. She’s still a human. . .with the limitations of her fast twitch muscles, her body mass, and her strength.
The fight would go to the ground and would end with the woman getting choked, or having her head beaten into the floor.
Are we talking a sport-type fight here, with rules, or is this a two-person-enter, one-person-leave fight to the death? And do both combatants know the fight’s coming, or is this a surprise ambush of one by the other?
Certainly, the male martial artist will have a strong advantage. They both have the same training, but the man will have greater reach, and probably more strength and toughness. And almost equally certainly, the couch potato is a goner: If nothing else, the woman could just keep away from him until he tired, which is going to happen a lot sooner for a big out-of-shape sedentary person than for a trained athlete (of either gender).
The other two, though, it’s going to depend a lot on the circumstances of the fight. Most of the things a martial artist could do to make up for a size disadvantage are “dirty tricks” (eye gouges, groin shots, etc.) that are against most sport-fighting rules, so any rules will tend to benefit the man. And if there’s an element of surprise, that’ll benefit whoever has it: All it takes is one strike your opponent isn’t expecting to incapacitate em.
Seems she could avoid that for quite some time with her immense agility advantage. Imagine that they are fighting in a empty mall parking lot, as opposed to in a ring or a in a 12’ x 10’ room.
Big, slow untrained guy: gets clobbered by anybody who knows anything about fighting.
Big, not-so-slow untrained guy who’s in good shape: gets clobbered by anybody who knows anything about fighting.
Big, not-slow street fighter who hasn’t had any formal training: gets clobbered by somebody who has extensive training in several different styles as specified in the OP.
My money’s on the “top-notch” female martial artist. Size and weight are far from the end-all, be-all of delivering a strike, holding someone into submission or winning a fight.
If you ever have the chance to watch Fight Science you have to check it out! The way the deconstruct technique is amazing and it’s incredible the amount of power a human being can generate.
I also seem to recall hearing that Judo’s techniques focus on using weight and size against the attacker (but I don’t have any first hand experience with that).
If she could roundhouse to Couch Potato’s head, she might have a chance, but IRL given the size disparity unless Couch Potato has no real muscle power (which is unlikely given his size) it’s all over if he gets a good grip on her.
I’ve had female martial artists artists try and show me how they would break my grip, or toss me and it’s usually pretty frustrating and embarrassing for them when it doesn’t happen and I’d looking at them with an “OK now what?” look on my face" , and usually ends with a them saying “Well I guess I’d just have to kick you in the balls” :eek: .
Women have strong legs, but everything else is typically much weaker than a comparable mans, especially grip and upper body wise. In tournament will rules it’s be one thing, but if a fight goes to the ground, and tubby gets his mits on her she’s in serious trouble.
You can’t determine someone’s sex from a muscle sample unless you look for a Y chromosome. Male and female muscle fibers, and the distribution thereof, are identical. The only difference is that men have more muscle.
Untrained women will be slightly slower than untrained men just because men tend to do more roughhousing as children, and that seems to prime their nervous systems a bit, but that’s nothing that can’t be overcome by training. Take a look over here for a woman who can lift big weights quickly–would you care to be in the path of a light weight she’s accelerating with max effort?