Well, there is some disagreement on what people mean when the OP said “highly trained” and “couch potato.” If there was a more specific example I think there’d be more of a consensus. There is also just a fundamental difference in thought though. The only way to get a real consensus would be to figure out an agreed upon group of women and men that represent the OP, and have them go at it.
I think we all have a different idea of how the woman looks. All collegiate qualifiers and above that I have met and trained with all had the same thing in common: low body fat, high muscle to fat ratio (as high as a guys, but not a competitive college athlete, but close). I know I’m using the term wrong, but the only way I can describe it is these women have more “density” to their hits. Getting hit with 20 lbs of blubber hurt nearly as hard as getting hit with 20 lbs of muscle. Snapping a fist or kick with 20 lbs of muscle is much easier than being burdened by equal amounts of blubber.
Look, no one’s saying it’s impossible for a trained woman to beat a man. When we start talking about individuals, all bets are off. Some men will simply cower and fold at the first physical contact, and allow themselves to be beaten mercilessly. There are obvious grades of ‘couch potato’, too. As well as obvious differences in strength and talent level among women.
Given the parameters of the question, however, we are of necessity talking about generalities. I take ‘a trained female martial artist’ to mean a composite of all the women out there who have achieved a black belt in Karate. Not the most ultimatest, meanest, killingest woman on the face of the planet. And by ‘couch potato’, I assume we’re talking about your average guy who goes to work, comes home and sits on the couch and watches TV, and is carrying around a decent-sized spare tire. Not a slovenly blob of meat who can’t get off the couch.
So given those composite characters, I happen to think the man would win most of the time. I know several female black belts, and not one of them has a ‘killer instinct’. They’re not mean people. They may never have had serious physical contact in their lives, even in training. They also may have an over-inflated sense of how well they might do against a man, because during their training the men may have gone easier on them and they don’t know it. I know I sure did - there was no way I was going to open up a full power roundhouse kick on a 110 lb woman in training like I would on a man of my size, so when I sparred with women I held a lot back. So did everyone else.
My experience comes from actually sparring with women, and being a training partner holding heavy bags and kicking and punching targets. I may have held back, but they generally didn’t. And in my style, we fought full-contact to the body and semi-contact to the head. So I’ve been hit many, many times by women of all levels of training, with everything they could muster. And believe me, there is simply no comparison in strength and power to what a man can deliver.
So for a woman to beat the man, she has to have big edges in other areas, which I mentioned. Excellent grappling skills might do it if she gets a chance to use a submission hold and has the strength to maintain it. A vast difference in desire or ferocity would help close the gap. If she’s really fighting for her life, then going for the eyes would be a great playing field leveler.
But in general, what’s going to happen is that the man will simply overpower her. I’ve seen women fight men for real before - usually at crazy parties where someone throws a fit and goes berzerk on the boyfriend or someone else. The man usually ends it by simply swarming her, pinning her arms and legs down, and telling her to calm down. There’s never any question as to who might win the confrontation. He might even get hit a few times. A good solid punch might even leave a mark for a few days. That’s about it.
Sheesh, this is nothing. You should see the martial arts message boards. Martial artists rarely agree on anything, if ever. 
Current disagreements:
Combat oriented arts vs. Sport oriented arts
Traditional martial arts vs. Modern martial arts
Striking vs. Grappling
Gi vs. No gi
Knives for self defense v. That’s insane
Pressure points are useful vs. Pressure points are useless
Kata are useful vs. Kata are useless
My martial art is cool vs. No your martial art sucks mine is cool
Bruce Lee vs. (Muhammed Ali, Chuck Norris, an orangutan, etc. ad infinitum)
And many, many more. Any one of these topics can start off a flame war that makes our Pit look civil.
Well, that’s true too. Even between two professionally trained fighters, a lot can go wrong. I’m thinking boxing or ultimate fighting.
I’ll even give the woman against the couch potato more of a chance than I did when I started reading the thread.
BY THE WAY – for anyone interested in a big ole size mismatch, Saturday night on HBO, 6-3, 240 pound Monte Barret is fighting 7 foot 320 pound, Nikolai Valuev in a heavyweight championship boxing match.
But that’s a lousy comparison. Two extremely heavy men in a battle of what will probably come down to endurance or a knockout punch. Not the same thing at all.
Put them in an untimed battle with no rules until one of them submits, and you’d have a better comparison.
That was just an FYI. I don’t expect the outcome of that match to contribute anything meaningful to this discussion. Still, its as big a size discrepancy as you’ll ever see in boxing (unless one of the guys is essentially a gimmick, like Butterbean) and that makes the fight interesting.
That explains a significant portion of our disagreement. “A black belt in xyz” means extremely little to me. I’m not saying that a person w/ a BB has no abilities, but just that given all the styles and schools out there, you don’t really know what it means.
I was thinking about one of my first relatively full contact boxing sparring sessions, against a flyweight. Teeny little guy. But man, I couldn’t touch him, and he was just popping me at will. Not sure if he had KO power and I was playing by boxing rules, but I could imagine that if I were anything other than the most determined attacker, that would get mighty old mighty fast.
Hah! Now I know you’re making stuff up.
I saw that fight onTV, and it was at a baseball game, not in the hallway!
-Cem
P.S. Ryan really taught that Sox-playing Ventura a lesson. Hah! Go Cubs!
That’s more or less where I was coming from. I took “top-notch” to mean a cream-of-the-crop professional fighter.
Man, pravnik - if we had met 5 or so years ago, we coulda had some fun together!
Hey, still could, you know! Did you retire from the game altogether? Time constraints or busted knee or something like that?
Yeah - other than a little light sparring w/ my son. The x-rays of my left wrist convinced me that - even if I did have it surgically corrected, the last thing I’d want to do is hit someone with that hand or let someone crank on that wrist. And repeated breaks and subsequent arthritis to my right big toe took away my wheels, as well as leverage on the ground.
It was tough enough trying to hang with the young bucks as a reasonably healthy 40 yr old. I guess I decided I didn’t want to put in the effort to continue to try to hang as a creaky 46 yr old. When you are already giving up 10-20 years, it is too much to also essentially concede full use of a couple of limbs. And knowing the type of MA I enjoy, I couldn’t commit myself to some less strenuous form of “dance.”
while i realize that this is just anecdotal, i once saw an average 5’8"-5’10" maybe 175 lbs sized m.a. fighter (sorry, i do not know what discipline) throw a very stylish roundhouse kick at the head of a guy just like guy number two in this guestion. the big, in shape guy stepped inside the kick and grabbed the m.a. guy’s ankle and continuing along with the motion of the kick, swung him up off his feet and into a phone booth with considerable force. outcome? the big guy didn’t have a scratch, the m.a. guy was taken away in an ambulance. due the the number of witnesses, the police on the scene did not arrest the big guy.
As I pointed out, the opponent knows about pressure points as well and is guarding against them.
That statement is totally incorrect. That’s why law enforcement officers train in PPCT, for that very reason.
Check out this clip which very clearly shows the effect of a stunning blow to the brachial plexus origin.
Sorry, that’s a bad link. Try [this one.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRawFZ5 Cg2A&search=karate+pimp)
I think this can settle the debate.
(Yes, I know this is a zombie)
While I’m not a martial arts expert, everything I’ve ever heard indicates that that kicking at someone’s head like that is considered a really dumb move suitable mainly for showing off, for just the reasons demonstrated in that incident.
Sorry, that is choreographed and required both parties to be in on it.