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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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If I were forced to bet on a no-holds barred brawl between a barely-trained 70 year old male and a heavily trained mid-twenties female in the same weight class, I am picking gramps for the win.

This doesn't pass the sniff test to me. Digging up one robust 70 year old example doesn't change anything. 70 year olds have a 3% chance of not even making it through the year on average. They are, in fact, rather fragile.

Granted I have some bias on this issue because I train with guys approaching 70, so the availability heuristic has me thinking of the most robust members of that age cohort.

But it is hard to understate just how advantaged, pound for pound, a male is over any given female. I stipulate same weight class and the average male weight for an over-60 is about 190 pounds. I want you to try and imagine what a 190 pound woman looks like. Especially if we assume she's NOT freakishly tall (another factor impacted by testosterone).

In my mind, the theoretical fight really comes down to whether the woman can avoid the guy long enough until he's mostly gassed, and then execute a successful submission. Similarly, if the guy manages to grab hold of her and keep her from getting away, dropping her with a strike to the head or slamming her hard to the ground are likely finishes. I'll stipulate that a lightly trained male is almost certainly not choking out a heavily trained female.

I want you to try and imagine what a 190 pound woman looks like.

I assure you that the average 190 pound male looks like a sack of dog shit.

And if a 190 pound male manages to lie on top of a 190 female, she's going to have a hard, nearly impossible time getting unpinned regardless of how he looks.

We're talking about a heavily trained woman and almost untrained man. That scenario seems unlikely.

Yes, that's why its fun to consider, since we really have almost no real-world examples to prove up one side or the other definitively.

On the other hand, I watch a lot of videos of street fights, and virtually none of them depict a female KO-ing a man in any context.

Here's a Mixed MMA fight from about two months ago between TWO females and one large dude:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lQllTuPzOXU?si=H90MBAshtGUD2IL4

The women were allowed headgear and he wasn't. Notice him turning all his attention to one and not even reacting as the other woman hits him from behind at about the 2:00 mark. Skill is not really the determinant factor here.

I cannot overstate how huge the physical advantage is for the male, even if that guy gets gassed its still not safe for a female to approach lest he grab her and just SIT on her.

I watch a lot of videos of street fights, and virtually none of them depict a female KO-ing a man in any context.

How many street fights involve seventy year old men, let alone a seventy year old man and a young woman?

How many street fights involve seventy year old men

Virtually zero! But not quite zero.

So my priors are not well informed on this but I still have priors.

So the speculation is fun! I have to consider a number of disparate data points and project outcomes into a realm of uncertainty and argue my case based on inductive logic and reasoning from whatever similar situations exist.

Virtually zero! But not quite zero.

The robber is not exactly "highly trained". It's pretty obvious that a highly trained woman would mug that guy no problem.

Look, I don't disagree that men have a big physical advantage vs women. But for the most part your supporting evidence equivocates between the actual scenario (barely trained 70 year old vs highly trained 25 year old) and various unrelated scenarios (70 year old prizefighter, 30 year old man, etc etc). Again, most 70 year olds are extremely fragile and have no chance against someone who knows what they are doing.

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Hell, even if that was a barely-trained mid-twenties male and a heavily trained mid-twenties female in the same weight class, I would probably bet on the woman.

Since she's heavily trained, she will keep her distance, avoid the telegraphed punches and grabs and attack the joints and the groin until she can go for a throw and an armbar.

Male and female weight classes are different, a male and female in the same weight class is one where the male has a mass advantage.

Hard disagree, the male will compensate for poor technique with brute strength and mog her.

Really? I am a mid 20s decently fit male who knows nothing about boxing and has never been in a ring. I don't think I'd manage to hold a candle against the women competing in my weight class at the olympics.

The gap is much larger than what popular culture lets people believe.

Lucia Rijker one of the best female boxers and kickboxers got knocked out by an amateur Muay Thai fighter. Polish arm wresler Ula Siekacz got in an MMA fight with Piotrek Muaboy and he brutally mauled her.

Technique helps but it doesn't substitute for all the biological advantages even an average man gets: they just hit a lot stronger and can take a lot more punishment.

Realistically the average fight between a man and a women is over as soon as he grabs her and/or she gets knocked out. You can compensate a lot with technique so top women can probably take on men that don't exercise, but introduce any sort of strength training and it's just over.

An amateur Muay Thai fighter is a huge step up from a barely trained rando like me or BC.

I am quite sure that I could pound a woman into submission if I got on top of her, but getting on top of her is the problem. You need several months of training as an adult to be able to avoid cheap shots if you didn't grow up fighting in the playground.

I'll admit I don't know how much that matters in that particular configuration. Could an expert woman neutralize the average dude in at most a couple of blows? I guess you just go for the nuts and the eyes. But you can't really go hard for that in any sort of sanctioned fight so unless you can go for a knockout that's going to involve some level of wrestling, and it's very hard to compensate the strength advantage then.

Seems like you have to thread a needle to make it work.

We were talking about a no-holds-barred fight.

Fights between really strong unskilled fighters and really skilled but weak fighters (under marquess of Queensbury) look more like the skilled fighter dancing on the outside, trying to sneak in jabs and counterpunch while avoiding taking big hits. A woman defeating a man would look more like going the distance without taking many punches, than it would like getting a quick ko.

Yup-yup, that's what I was trying to say. And if it's not boxing, then throws are an option. Just wait until the stronger unskilled fighter tries to rush you, trip him, throw him, and when he's down kick him in the shins, in the kneecaps, in the groin, in the liver, in the face if you're wearing shoes.

I sincerely think you would perform better than you think. Even a man's skull is harder than a woman's, the woman's punches won't hit as hard.

I used to row in a past life and happen to sort of know one of the Olympic GB female rowers. Despite the fact that she almost the same height as me (height is very important for rowing) and basically the same weight class as me (if not lighter) she had a 15-20 second faster 2K erg than me (this was before she went professional), although the caveat is that I was only training 3x a week while she'd have been doing 7+ sessions a week.

Perhaps boxing isn't like rowing but equally in the other sports where I can do a direct comparison easily (like weightlifting), the Olympic women in my weight class are miles and bounds ahead of me. The lowest score for the snatch was 90kg in the 76-kg category in Tokyo 2021 while I topped out at like a 50kg snatch back when I used to train for rowing.

I mean, if we're being 100% literal, yes, BurdensomeCount would almost certainly lose a boxing match. If he knows nothing about boxing, he doesn't know which moves are illegal, so he'd get DQed.

@faceh's thought experiment specified a "no-holds barred brawl" rather than a boxing match with rules and a referee.

In the latter case, my money's on the trained woman (if for no other reason than the man fighting cautiously out of fear of accidentally breaking the rules) - and it might well come out with the trained woman getting knocked out, but winning by default by referee's decision, because the man broke a rule.

In the former case, my money's on the untrained man: assuming he's reasonably fit for his age and body mass, he will absolutely dominate the woman through brute force alone, no matter how much training she's received.

Yep. Have to assume that both sides are allowed to use whatever tactics and techniques they like or else the victor probably wins on a technicality.

Ironically the main thing that a trained female has going for her is less fear of being punched in the face, whereas an untrained guy might flinch and cower when he gets struck.

But the other thing an untrained male might do is flail and swing wildly, and the female CANNOT afford to take an errant hit by pure luck.

The main thing a professional female fighter would have against an untrained male is cardio. Especially assuming we get rid of round breaks.

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