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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.
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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.
Yes indeed, I granted in the hypothetical:
I don't know how much the cardio will help if she actually gets caught by the opponent. She can certainly try to outrun him the whole time.
But again, 70 isn't inherently an age of fragility and decrepitude. It would be for many, I grant. But part of the reason I zeroed in on THAT age is its just high enough that we might question the outcome. I do reassert that I would bet on the 70-year-old, but I could lose money on it.
So are we assuming that your 70 year old is a top 1% athlete for his age group? That obviously changes the calculus significantly!
I'm picturing a robust 70 year old man, of which I know several. Many are still very strong, more than capable of deadlifting a decent number or helping you move a couch. But age brings limitations: most are not going to be tremendously good at keeping up physical activity for extended periods. Mile times slow by about 33% between peak and 70. An untrained 70 year old is going to do a mile in around 10-12 minutes, a girls high school track runner of mediocre ability will do it under 7, and I'm going to very much bet an olympian will be equivalent to a high schooler in miles run per week. And I don't even think we need to question who will recover more easily from the effort of the mile.
The thing is, assuming we've removed the Marquess of Quensbury rules, we've also removed round timers, rest period, and the 10-point-must system of judging. So our female olympic boxer is under no obligation to limit the fight on time, or to attack at a pace necessary to avoid losing points. The 10-point-must system is the only thing protecting the old man from defeat here, take it away and I think he's hosed.
The standard outline strategy for a lighter, weaker fighter who is trying to win by finesse and speed is to stay on the outside, hit and run striking your opponent quickly and getting away before they can hit back, counterpunching when they try to come in on you and then retreating before they can close the distance, feint and then dodge and retreat, wasting your opponent's energy. As he gets tired, go in for the kill, increase the attacks as he slows down and gets worse at catching you.
An untrained guy, especially one trying to "mog" you with power, is going to be throwing big wind up haymakers. He can't produce power while remaining compact, that's a technical skill that is very difficult to teach and takes practice. His arm punches will not be threatening, only his haymakers. You'll be able to see it from a mile away if you're an olympic level boxer. There's almost no chance of "catching" her in open field, it's only going to happen if she chooses to close. In a standard match, you can't just retreat constantly because you're handing the round to your opponent. Without judges' scoring or rounds or point deductions or DQs for not being aggressive enough, you can just choose to retreat and only do the absolute bare minimum to force him to keep expending energy pursuing you (ie to keep him from being able to rest with his hands at his sides for extended periods). This is where cardio goes in: no average 70 year old can keep up intense physical activity for half an hour with no break. Every olympic boxer can. After running in circles and swinging at air for thirty or forty minutes straight, if he doesn't die of a heart attack on his own, he'll be wheezing and his hands will be down and it will be easy to knock him off.
This should be fairly doable for a female fighter unless we're going with a really big weight class and height difference, Amy Broadhurst is 5'8" and I think she could fight a 5'10" 175lb geezer without too much trouble on reach.
I give it a 5% chance one of his haymakers connects early, but not much more than that. You'd lose a LOT of money.
Well let me ask the specific possibility, if the 70-year-old eschews striking and just attempts to grab the opponent, what are the chances they are able to lock down the fight and just throw the female to the ground and hit her there? No elegant takedown, just grabbing on and throwing her down.
I'd speculate that a 175 pound geezer could sit on Amy Broudhurst's chest and obviate most of her cardio advantage right there.
Zero. If he eschews striking in favor of lunging, she'd just run away, while peppering him with jabs for his trouble. He's not going to catch her. She's faster, especially within the context of moving while keeping cover on an opponent. If he just sprints at her, she's going to change direction faster than he can, while hitting him in the face, which may not immediately knock him out but he's not going to like it.
I'll cede that a man, even a relatively old man, who is in reasonably robust condition could probably win a hockey fight where they grab each other's sweaters and wail on each other with no room to escape, strategize, or dodge. But now we're sort of building a series of increasingly absurd hypotheticals that don't tell us much about olympic boxing at all at all.
Ilona Maher is actually a pretty dead on ringer for me in height and weight, while I have the advantage of being male and she has the advantage of being an elite athlete. She posted workouts that I think I could do trivially, but not without effort, like hitting a 235# front squat for three reps and multiple sets. ((My wife joked that I should have married her, we could share clothes and spot each other on squats.)) Do you think that every random untrained man can hit a 235# front squat for a clean triple? Idk. Probably within six months to a year of training I would expect a reasonably fit man to hit two plates, but I have friends who work out for whom it would be non-trivial. Certainly if we had a motte-up I would expect to see a few mottizens drop the bar onto the safeties if we made everyone do 235x3 below parallel.
I don't think the strength difference is big enough to make the difference, unless we start playing with absurd hypos: he's a 70 year old but he's a track athlete, and we shoved a neuralink up his ass so we're playing him with an xbox controller and he isn't going to feel fear or pain he's just going to go for it no matter what, and he's 70 and has spent his whole life training but has no nagging injuries or health issues, no bum knees or blood thinners that mean he bleeds like a stuck pig, he's never fought in the ring before and is totally untrained but he's got a perfect head for strategy and ideal sangfroid, etc.
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