I hain’t fought anybody since before he was born, so I’d give him my geeziest smile and hope he was more civilized than you apparently are.
He’d crush most of us into a fine red paste. Let’s not overestimate how much an advantage weight and height are - I’m taller and heavier than Bruce Lee (who according to what I can find online was 5’7" and weighted 135lbs in 1970), but I’m pretty sure he would’ve beaten me in a fight.
People who do manual labor can be unbelievably strong. I remember in my early 20’s I wrestled a guy who was a tree trimmer; it was at a get together at his house, we were just having fun. He was small and wiry; I was muscular and in good shape, but the amount of strength he had was scary, I was absolutely no match. Then again, the demands of the job were such that about only 1 in 10 people hired lasted more than 2 weeks, so I don’t know how that effects the analogy.
I have no idea who’d win - I mean, I’d have height and weight over him, and have some unarmed combat skills, but he’s clearly going to be a bit stronger. It all comes down to who gets in the first cockpunch.
I voted that he would whup me, but I hadn’t really considered my 60lb weight advantage and 3" height advantage. After considering that for a few seconds, I wouldn’t change my vote. I have virtually no fighting experience, and I’m a big softie. I would probably try to run away.
I’m combat trained, fat but in good physical shape in general (walk several miles a day and do athletic tasks), and I have no moral issues with putting a serious hurting on someone who attacks me or just flat-out does something to earn it.
I also spend a lot of time among the Amish and related sects.
My bet is I’m going to get my ass kicked.
(Thank your English Gods most OOD are pacifists or they would have overthrown us ages ago)
I’m voting in favor of the peasant, which is entirely because I have a sedentary day job and no fighting experience at all - not even a schoolyard fight as a kid. Ironically, I’m big enough that all of the would-be school-yard fights ended before they started. One time, the bully’s friend said “Look, he’s got big wrists!” which is supposed to mean something to the dim-witted, I suppose.
But on another note, I’m calling complete BS on this “peasants are stronger than modern folk” bit. Complete BS. Yeah, anyone who does physical labor for a living is going to be stronger than a computer jockey like me, but put this peasant up against a modern construction worker? He won’t stand a chance.
Same here.
I was a pretty good fencer, but I’m not very good at fighting barehanded.
I’m nearly twice his weight, I do physical work for a living, I do try to fit exercise into my leisure time,I have a decent amount of reach on him. It has been sometime since I’ve been in a fight. I think it’d be somewhere between stomp him and and a tough fight. I wouldn’t recommend betting on him.
He’s got thirty five years on me; I’ve got sixty pounds on him. I have a black belt and a bad back. On a good day, maybe a toss up. On any other day, he’d probably kill me.
Regards,
Shodan
I have 70 pounds and six inches on him, and I am in reasonably good shape for my age, so I kick him in the balls and run away. 
Tell you guys what. Head down to a migrant farm worker’s camp, and challenge some of the guys there to a bare-knuckle brawl, and see how well you do.
Yes, there’s something to be said for good nutrition and medical care and some training.
There’s also something to be said for hard labor from sunup to sundown every day of your life.
Come on, let’s get real. Fighting is a skill that is acquired through fighting, not through agriculture. Life isn’t the Karate Kid where shining cars and painting fences makes you a skillful martial artist; nor does moving rocks, tending oxen, and plowing fields give you skill in throwing a punch, executing a choke hold, or learning timing.
No, it surely doesn’t, which is why in real life professional fighters routinely slaughtered any number of peasant armies. This is how feudalism exists, professional fighters can kick the ass of farmers, so the farmers better get used to the idea of working for the fighters.
I’m just skeptical of the notion that a typical Doper is going to do very well against a subsistence farmer mano-a-mano. Yes, we’ve got a few professional soldiers, athletes, black belts, and dirty bastards here who could kick that poor farmers ass. We’ve also got a whole heck of a lot of pasty cubicle dwellers. Working out twice a week and taking a few Tae Kwan Do classes aren’t the same thing as being a professional fighter. Also imagining how much ass you would have kicked back when you were 28 and in your prime isn’t the same thing as actually being in the same shape you were in at 28.
My point was, there are plenty of people here in the modern era that would be comparable physically to that Medieval peasant. You could hop a plane to Guatemala tomorrow and head out to a random village, and get in fistfights with as many subsistence farmers as you like.
Assuming I’m my character namesake around here, I’m going to try to charm either the knight (lord) or the serf with a few lovely verses of song. Then again, my charming voice may be what got me into trouble with the landowner or the serf in the first place (see below). But, then again, my character namesake would normally have a katana available to use, as well.
But I guess the big picture questions are about why I’m being punished, why by the peasant, and who’s watching. Filling in from the OP…
…I’m suspecting I (as my namesake) got caught by the knight and his favorite serf while I was en flagrant delicto with the knight’s favorite serf’s favorite daughter and nothing else on me or in my hands. This would explain why the knight is thinking Hey, I wanted that! and telling the serf “Well, Attila, it’s your barn, your daughter, your rage. I’ll tell ya what, hon, show me you can deal with it and I’ll make this your land, as well.”*
Which means the landowner and his cohorts are probably watching me and Attila duke it out, either in some kind of an arranged combat ground or right there where I got caught.
Attila and I have about the same dimensions, though my diet is probably more nutrient-rich and the extra pounds around my middle are from fat that he lacks. At 21 years of age, he’s been alive for about a dozen years less than I’ve been studying, practicing, and teaching various martial arts. This means I have my brain and training, my body, and at least two more weapons at my disposal: The ground can be a surprisingly painful horizontal bludgeoning device (the trick is to wield Attila, not the ground), and anything on it (dirt, grass, leaves?) will make decent projectiles in a pinch – speaking of which, the fact that I’ll probably do this (at least) barefooted will tend to mean Attila is going to be nicely bewildered by the dirt-in-the-eyes trick. He’d probably be expecting it, but not expecting it to be thrown by my feet at the end of a roundhouse kick [nice idea, Ravenman (post #30)]. Of course, if there’s other stuff around that I can turn into a weapon (rocks, twigs, hand tools, clothing, branches, trees) then I’m going to do my best to figure out a way to employ them. After all, I’m thinking this is my life in the balance and rules probably got discarded when I started the tryst with the knight’s favorite serf’s favorite daughter.
Of course, if I have access to one of the weapons I’ve trained with (well, maybe not the bow, in this situation), then Attila is toast.
This is one, but not the least, of may reasons my hands won’t be heading for the peasant’s face unless I’m setting him up so I can attack something he’s left vulnerable while protecting his face.
And, Shodan (post #50) I have an inclination to disagree with you but this time in a positive way: Whatever art you learned, you got to 1-Dan level after several years of learning (among other things) kinesiology, kinesthesiology, and proprioception – as well as timing and accuracy. Your muscles might not react as quickly or smoothly as they used to, but if you can survive the first 10 seconds (that will feel like a drawn-out decade, no doubt) your brain will adjust and you’ll remember your feints and set-ups and be able to place your techniques in the right places at the right times. Add to that the six quarts of adrenaline pumping through your system and the strange and subtle techniques you’ve learned and they’ve never seen before, and you will mop up quite nicely – IF you can survive those first critical moments and assess Attila’s abilities first.
All in all, though, my bet is on Ryan (post #39) if it comes down to an endurance test.
–G!
*On the other hand, if they’re just making sport of me because my 21st century ideas make me seem to be in league with the devil, then winning the fight is just going to piss 'em all off that much more and they won’t leave me alone until I’ve been exorcised from the land. In that situation, I’d really be better off saving everyone the time and effort (and myself the guilt) by letting Attila kill me quick and thereby prove his piety or demonstrate that God loves him or whatever.
Maybe I could cough on him and give him some sort of modern disease.
Weren’t peasants sometimes called to do battle for their lords? At least during the early middle ages, you might be messing with some dude who has killed before, possibly facing more skilled opponents.
Later on the odds that he hasn’t seen combat or is probably missile infantry are much better though, so lacking a longbow or crossbow, or sling, he would probably not be skilled in hand to hand combat at all.
Let’s see. I’m 31 years older, but not an old man by medieval standards. I’ve got 90 pounds on him and 7 inches in height. But I’ve no training, am a big lump of lard and a heart patient. If I don’t get really lucky in the first few seconds of the fight, I’m toast. My strategy would not be to run, I can’t run more than a block, but rather to close and grapple and while we are still standing to try to kick his kneecap so hard it breaks. I really don’t see this working out well for me.
This is all true, what I actually tried to point out is if medieval peasants were anything like farm hands of the early 20th century or even farm hands today, they probably drank and got into fights. More specifically without any of the modern forms of entertainment they probably were more likely to do this than modern laborers.
Something else to consider too is that while during the backbreaking parts of the year peasants basically stumbled home at dusk and passed out (and we believe they probably did a biphasic style sleep where they woke up, put on a small amount of light and did a few things around the house after 4-5 hours asleep, then slept another few hours until sun up), during many parts of the year peasants may have actually had less work than a modern worker does. Some parts of the year they had little work at all. “Work is never done on the farm” is very true of 19th and 20th century small farmers, but remember peasants worked a small parcel of land for a lord, they were not nearly as diversified as modern small farmers who probably had their main fields then a lot of other small side things going on (chickens, pigs, etc.) Peasants often would have little or no personal livestock and also were unlikely to have all the out buildings and other stuff that more modern farmers have. It was a simpler type of farming that did mean during parts of the year they basically had time “off”, and I would expect these rough necks going to county fairs and other gatherings and drinking various alcoholic beverages of the time probably lived a rough and tumble life.
If they grew up with brothers (likely) they also probably got into fist fights recreationally from a very young age. That’s why I said a modern person who hasn’t been in a fight would get their ass kicked. One of the biggest parts of handling yourself in a fight is being able to get hit and keep going. You don’t learn that in no-contact practice, either–only getting hit can teach you this.