A man's fighting ability is written in his face | Hacker News Reader

A man's fighting ability is written in his face

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31 pointsmvikramaditya26 comments

A better title for this research would have been "Steroids seem to help people win fights"

As an MMA coach, I think a more likely explanation is the wider faces correlate to high testosterone, including steroid use, which in turn correlates with more wins in the Octagon due to strength and stamina, not necessarily "fighting ability".

If you want to look at raw fighting ability, take a look at any member of the Gracie family, the best family of martial artists this last century and you will find they generally have skinnier faces.

http://www.bjjee.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/rener-ryron....

Gracies were good by default. They fought inexperienced competition.

As soon as people caught up to BJJ they became irrelevant in MMA. Also when they faced somebody with ground game they had tons of issues (IE: Sakuraba "Gracie Killer")

Matter of fact recent performances by Gracies in MMA were embarrassing.

>http://www.mmamania.com/2010/2/10/1304038/cousin-renzo-rolle...

Etc.

Notice the pattern holds true within the Gracie family. Rickson and Roger are family champions and have wide faces. Royce and Royler have thin faces, but even they have wide jawlines for their size.

It's directly related to testosterone level, but that's an artifact of training hard. Let's not claim it's all steroid use.

>'A better title for this research would have been "Steroids seem to help people win fights"...I think a more likely explanation is the wider faces correlate to high testosterone...'

Pretty much, the article bears this out even.

'The researchers speculated that one causal mechanism may be higher testosterone levels - certainly past research has shown men with higher basal testosterone have wider faces, as well as greater strength and aggression.'

Though it's surely often misapplied, the terms 'gh/steroid/juice jaw' didn't develop out of thin air.

From a survival perspective, there is also research published this month suggesting that a greater face width-length ratio may be part of a facial structure evolved for resistance to punches.

I suspected that might be part of it. It's always amazed me that some people can take incredible punishment (in the form of punches) and not be knocked out. Maurício "Shogun" Rua to name one.

I'm reminded of possible the most classic MMA example of both taking punishment and having an exceptionally large dome [1] in Kazuyuki Fujita [2].

1: http://www.cracked.com/blog/worst-life-ever-the-story-of-kaz...

2: http://i.imgur.com/II49fRq.jpg

When I read that I immediately thought of BJ Penn. He has a rather wide face for his size. He's never been knocked out, although he was TKO'd by Hughes when held down in the crucifix position in their second fight, but I consider that different than being completely knocked out.

It's not mentioned in the article, but Composite A is rotated in a chin-up direction compared to Composite B. The difference is subtle yet distinct. Composite A's head angle appears to project a winning attitude, while Composite B's head angle appears comparatively submissive.

My theory is that the more you get hit in the face, the wider your face gets.

While you're probably joking you make a good point. While improbable, maybe the more experienced fighters started earlier in life while their faces were still growing and were shaped accordingly.

I'd bet wider faces correlate with other things that should be controlled for, like being stubby and short, thus having more muscle than other people in your weight class. Maybe teenage anabolic steroid use both widens your face and leads to steroid abuse as an adult which gives you an advantage in the UFC[1]? This is silly.

In addition, if their fantasy explanation for this correlation is another silly "evolved for punches" theory, why would you pick UFC fighters - who are in a sport where brutal matches can be won and lost with very few punches exchanged? If you still chose to use them, why wouldn't you use the records of their fights to discover how many punches they actually took in the fights that they won or lost?

[1] http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10500652/therapeutic-...

Anyone who has trained hard (in any sport) would recognize ability just by appearance. There are physical markers that appear, that include facial features. A wider face is indicative of nutritional status growing up - BUT, a wider jaw is something that is earned.

I've trained grappling sports for a long time, and my jaw and neck are one size larger for my weight. This is true of other people who have trained for a long time as well, even small people with skinny faces.

There are other markers as well, some sport specific, but that's another topic.

>'...a wider jaw is something that is earned.'

I have honestly never heard this said or suggested and I'm no newcomer to the sport. A thick yoke, sure - the contour of a jaw used to clenching, OK - the very obvious effects on ears, noses, shins and even toes - asbsolutely.

I have never seen a wide jaw picked out as something to be 'earned'.

It's earned by consistent hard training that ups your testosterone levels, giving you a wider jaw over time. You can't fake it by jaw exercise. It's bone structure, not muscle. Similarly you can tell who is just a gym rat, vs. a fighter, by looking at his build. It's not just the size of muscles (or uneven development) but the skeletal structure. Someone who got big quickly doing weight training isn't going to have a barrel chest no matter what he does.

Now let's not get started on the idiots who purposely rough themselves up and get cauliflower ear just to look tough.

Btw what sport do you train?

>'Now let's not get started on the idiots who purposely rough themselves up and get cauliflower ear just to look tough.'

Yeah, you had to expect a lot more of that sort of thing when the sport went mainstream 10 years ago. On the bright side, the level of foolisness has definitely leveled off in recent years.

>'Btw what sport do you train?'

I started with boxing and got into Muay Thai about 13 years ago, BJJ shortly after.

Eventually, work and later starting a family kill off my training. I can't complain, my career has gone well and I love my son more than life itself, but I miss training more than I thought I would.

Right now I'm just lifting and kicking around the idea of training for grip / strongman. Though, I had someone invite me to check out their fencing club the other day - that seemed interesting and really different.

A wider face is indicative of nutritional status growing up

Do you have a source for this?

http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Physical-Degeneration-Weston...

You don't have to read the book. Observe people around you. Healthier people have wider faces. First borns tend to have wider faces. People born into wealthier families.

So my pet theory is that most skills in life come from a bit of early talent + lots of opportunity to practice. From this perspective, a thin-faced fighter with some natural talent and great resources could break this mold and be extremely successful. This to me looks similar to when people started discovering that left-handed pitchers tend to confuse things in baseball.

But on average that thin-faced man is going to be at a genetic disadvantage, which I believe is the point of the article. Of course there will be outliers, and of course you can overcome some natural deficiencies with training, but on average they will hit limits that wider-faced men will naturally surpass. The article doesn't go much into the strength of the correlation, so I'm not sure how big a difference it really makes, but it clearly makes a difference. The original paper probably has more on this.

So there are several metrics that are not included here. First, what's the standard deviation on that average. How easy is it to be an outlier in this scenario? Second, how strong is the correlation?

More importantly, having a wider face is not a direct advantage. It's an indication of a disposition. This is dissimilar to height of players in basketball where you can in fact be too short to be effective. Because of this I'd argue that while looking at it as an average the findings could be very much valid, looking at an individual fighter will yield very different results. You could find that a thin faced fighter might actually be superior to a wide faced fighter precisely because he is thin faced.

This is somehow biased and ufc-specific, as a fight can go with ease over hours, and grapplers are put on a disadvantage with 5min rounds. Also judges like to stand up fighters because it does not look spectacular, even though there is more going on then between two strikers which orbit each other out of respect.

I hate watching strikers trade one-shots at a distance. A sure sign of mediocrity.

Seems like they didn't account for weight cutting? Sadly, a lot of efficacy in the ufc today comes down to who can cut more weight and be the bigger fighter. Maybe wide faced people are better at cutting.

I don't think weight cutting has anything to do with the article.

I've often heard people (in BJJ/MMA culture) say that a relatively large head/hat size makes it harder to get knocked out.

so so this help you work out in combat which soldiers shoot and those that don't :-)

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