I dunno, if anything, I’m assuming the couch potato being desperate and running on adrenaline would give a trained fighter the advantage still more. The couch potato may decide to get the first punch in on the fly, but somehow most couch potatos I’ve met don’t seem like the sort to do that out of the blue. For elaboration, when you say couch potato, we’re talking sitting on his ass, watching cartoon network chowing down on potato chips and pizza. Not “Flabby fat covering lots of muscle.” That’s not a couch potato, but that guy would have a fair chance in a fight, especially if someone just assumed he was fat.
Yeah, okay. For suitable values of ‘potato’, I’ll give the edge to the woman.
Nothing monumental to add here but, what stops men 1-4 gouging out eyes? This is a fight right? How bout a fist full of ponytail? Why can’t the men bite? Unsportsman sure, but most wouldn’t fight a woman in the first place. I’d say the biggest disadvantage of 1 through 3 are their unwillingness to fight. Make the male opponent gender blind, and the story shifts. I’ve never wittness a woman get in a fight, and I just don’t think a woman can muster the same testosterone induced rage that men were programmed with (the same way I can’t muster a progesterone anything).
You say that a woman can’t muster sufficient rage like a man who has never seen an irate Mexican woman.
Man, my mom can be SCARY. :eek:
You’ve never seen girls get into a fight in high school? They are every bit as savage as the boys, probably moreso, they have way less inhibitions about kicking biting and clawing. The boys are more interested in being macho, they’re not looking to be the guy who fought like a girl. The girls don’t care what they look like, they’re trying to take the bitch down.
Oh, and Sam, in terms of this fight, who’s to say the woman isn’t the one delivering the sucker punch? That could turn the first two scenarios distinctly in her direction, though I’d give the trained guys more chance of seeing it coming.
I take top-notch to be someone who is very good at technique and who has trained extensively, but not been in much actual real world fights.
A few years ago, the Danish female Olympic champion in Karate or TKD (I forget which) was attacked while walking home alone some evening in the small town I lived in a bit then. Not being accustomed to actual fights, she instantly forgot everything she knew about martial arts and was beaten up and raped, by, it later turned out, some average sized unfit and drunken dude.
You’re not that big, actually. 
Not knowing enough about scrapping to have an actual opinion on this, can I ask if it makes a big difference what environment this occurs in?
It would seem from this thread that it all comes down to our hypothetical Sidney Bristow using speed and training to out hit, out-dodge and out-grapple the various opponents, and the opposition trying to land a lucky hit and then use superior bulk to their advantage.
What happens if the dust-up happens in a bar, or a full parking lot, or an elevator? What if it’s a poorly lit alley or there is lots of clutter underfoot? Does this give an advantage to:
- Ms (better balance and physical coordination to adapt to the constrained environment)
- Mr 1-4 ( hard to dodge or strike if you can’t see, if there’s no room, or if your opponent is throwing tables at you)?
Reminds me of a bit from Jim Harrison’s A Good Day to Die. (Great book by a great author). The 2 protagonists are shooting pool in a bar, and some guy is giving them a hard time. The one guy silently walks up and coldcocks him - I think with a cue. The other guy says, “What are you doing? He might have known karate!” To which the first responds, “No one knows karate if you get a good enough shot in first!” 
Good points, which I think illustrates the significant advantage for a trained fighter. I believe the trained fighter would avoid any conflict that was possibly avoidable. But if they needed to defendn themselves, they would quickly escalate things to a level that would give them a clear advantage, which they could continue to press. JMO.
What Sam Stone said.
Regards,
Shodan
I am 6’4" and 242 lbs, and I would be afraid of a “top-notch black belt”.
My situation would be somewhere between #2 and #3, I am in pretty decent shape and I used to get in street fights now and then when I was in college.
In a “real world” scenario, as they usually went, combatant #1 would puff out his chest and threaten to kick my ass. I would try to move so that there was something behind him like a parked car, a bench, or a sidewalk planter. Anything really. Then I would act like I was still in the “chest-puffing” stage and try to back them up against it .
As soon as I was in range I would punch combatant #1 in the face and they would fall down over whatever was behind them. If there was nothing behind them I would punch their nose and then try to hook their leg to get them on the ground. As soon as your opponent is on the ground, they are done.
The key is to get the first punch and get them on the ground. I think a female black belt might move too quickly for me to get the first punch, and is probably used to opponents trying to get their legs out from under them. If I am not given either of those advantages I could be in trouble.
Please note that I do not get in fights anymore and am disappointed in myself that I once did. These days I do my best to remove myself from the situation or, if that isn’t possible, apply just enough force to discourage would-be brawlers.
Against 1-3, she’ll probably win. Against 4, at best she’ll break even.
I base that on the knowledge that any good martial artist will have learned about pressure points. Once she drills her opponent on one of them, it’s all over but for the cryin’ and whinin’.
#4 knows about them, as well. Her advantage is now neutralized, because he’s going to guard them on himself and probably be going for them on her, which forces her to guard and totally changes the scenario all around.
I’m giving the advantage to the guy in all cases except #1.
The flurry of activity around him will likely send the couch potato skittering off for the safety of the next bag of Doritos.
There are three unassailable truths about street fighting…
- There are no rules.
- Whatever you can do to win, you do.
- There are no rules.
Basically we’re talking apples and oranges, but if I (6’4" 350#) were assailed by the woman in the scenario, all she would have to do is get close enough for me to grab, which would be necessary, what with her reach being shorter than mine, and it’s done. My hand, on which the ring finger size is 14, wraps wround said assailant’s neck, and we’re drawing chalk outlines and talking to detectives.
All that said, speed and precision can overcome mass, some of the time. Speed and precision will generally NOT overcome mass+strength at all, and mass does not equal strength. In training, the trainers always pick me to do their take down examples. It virtually never works, at least not 1 on 1, without the help of a tool like a baton, kerambit, pepper spray or tazer. If I don’t want to go somewhere, I dont go. Period. Though if I want you to go somewhere, you (most of the time) will. Admittedly, the smaller, faster people (sometimes women) can be vicious, and are harder to corral than wet cats, but the moment I can both grab and hold a person, and in doing so let gravity take us to the ground, there’s no coming back, that person is down.
This, of course, does not take into account the mans willingness to hit a woman, adrenaline, testosterone, and mental state of both.
Same problem with “pressure points” as with the other suggested tactics against a rush. If it’s so easy, why can’t anyone bring it off in MMA?
I seem to remember one guy whose name I can’t recall who entered an early UFC with the claim that his ki made him invulnerable. He was promptly taken down and choked out. Same with the “unbendable arm” trick they do sometimes in aikido. Why is it never used against juji-gatame?
I had a semi-friendly sparring match against a person who claimed expertise in some ch’uan-fa or other. He claimed judo throws would not work against him because his ch’i made him stick to the floor. It didn’t seem to do so against o-soto-gari.
He left claiming that it might have worked against him, but wouldn’t against his teacher. His teacher never showed up.
Regards,
Shodan
In the early days of the UFC, before everyone figured out what it took to win, quite a few karate practitioners got in the ring and tried using their karate tactics against the opponent (i.e. get in a stance, wait for him to charge, attempt a hard kick/block technique, follow through with a flurry of punches to soft spots, etc). Some of these guys were no slouches - one I remember was the master of his style and had something like an 8th degree black belt.
Not one of them survived more than a few minutes, as I recall. And the guys they were fighting were either brawlers, or grapplers. The technique their opponents generally used was to just go ahead and let them have that first punch or kick, but just barrel right through it and get in grappling range. Then tie up their hands and legs and take all their tools away and start pounding, headbutting, or punching until the other guys submits. The grapplers like Royce Gracie were even quicker - let the guy kick them once, grab him, take him down, get him in a submission hold. Fight’s over.
There are no Vulcan nerve pinches in real life. There are no pressure points you can just strike and be guaranteed to disable someone with one punch. There are no easy, guaranteed ways to break a kneecap with a kick. This stuff just doesn’t happen in the real world. Sure, if you can get a guy’s leg extended and supported, and kick him in just the right spot, you can break a knee. Now try to make that work in the real world.
It seems to me that this thread is breaking down into two categories - the guys with actual martial arts experience who give the edge to the man, and and ones who have very little experience or training, but have the opposite opinion based on what they’ve read or heard.
I agree, and I think that the reason that most schools teach the technique but not the mindset is most people aren’t interested. China Guy brought up the Hawaiian guys like Ed Parker of Parker Kempo and the Kajukenbo guys in the other thread as examples of hardcore training, an example particularly close to me heart since Kajukenbo is my primary art. The training sessions when they were putting the Kajukenbo style together in 1947 were legendarily brutal, blood and occassional broken bones. My instructor asked one of the grandmasters if the stories were exaggerations, and he they were pretty much true; they would sometimes get mildly drunk prior to training to dull the pain. They also did go to bars to get in fights and test what worked and what didn’t, but that ultimately ended in tragedy when the founder’s brother was stabbed to death.
That’s a far cry from modern Kajukenbo training, but at the upper levels there’s still a big emphasis on hard contact for a number of reasons: it’s believed you have to both feel a hard technique and deliver a hard technique under pressure to understand it, and you have to overcome the pain and panic of facing a noncompliant aggressor. I understand Kyokushin has something similar, and other instructors have told me about training scenarios they use to bring the trainee to the threshold of panic to bring about an extinction response.
The thing is is that most people aren’t interested in that; they want to go to the corner school, get a belt and lose some weight, learn some self defense and maybe get some trophies, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If your average person goes into a martial arts school wanting to know what the training consists of and gets told “well, basically I’m going to pad you up and put a motorcycle helmet on you, then attack you with a bat until you learn not to panic,” he’s going to hit the door running. If you want to get your mindset changed, you really have to seek it out.
I guess my problem is that when I see “female martial artist” I think of a female who has trained to fight effectively. There are several of them out there. I have met them. Sorry you apparently have not. I really know little to nothing about most classical styles.
This thread is kind of bizarre to me. Why is there so little consensus from the folks that have MA backgrounds? Seems this should have a near-GQ level answer. The only explanation I’ve got is that in real life, actual fighting is so chaotic, that there’s no telling how things will turn out.
Agreed.
A question to the “Man wins 100% of the time” crowd: Given the following - small men can and do beat larger and stronger opponents. Small, highly trained men can and do beat much larger, much stronger, well-trained opponents. No resorting to magical “nerve strikes” or mystical defensive techniques.
Given all that, why does the dynamic suddenly change when the smaller person is a woman?
I’m not speaking for anyone else but I don’t think the difference is gender but the format of the encounter.
You are right, small men do beat larger, stronger men. However if by “beat” you mean anything other than a totally rule-less encounter outside of the the ring (that includes UFC too. there are rules there) then its apples to oranges.
Having grown up in a rough neighborhood I’ve seen smaller men beat larger men on the street but the disparity in size was nowhere near what is described in the OP. I’ve never seen a woman kick a guy’s ass. I have seen women kick guys in the groin and were subsequently floored with one punch (yes even after the women went into ‘berserker’ mode).
To sum up I think the guy (or significantly larger, stronger) opponent wins a street brawl 9 times out of 10 regardless of the smaller opponent’s training. This is just from personal observations of the encounters I’ve been present for.