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Comment by petegrif | Hacker News Reader

It is really fascinating how many people take seriously the idea that Rousey would be remotely competitive with ANY decently trained MMA fighter. She wouldn't stand a chance. Period. End of story. Don't go there. This is nothing to do with how skilled she is, how motivated she is, or her track record. She is a fantastic highly trained mentally strong athlete. But she's not remotely strong enough to fight a trained man. Could she kick my ass? Absolutely. Could she kick your ass? Probably. But a trained guy? No! Emphatically not. With the best will in the world there are very real differences between the sexes that can't be glossed over. It may be great marketing to present her as someone who could beat guys at MMA but it isn't real.

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Can you provide any examples of trained women vs trained men fighting in a martial arts competition? I haven't encountered such fights myself. If you haven't either then I do wonder, what exactly do you base your opinion on so strongly?

I find it plausible that males have some advantage due to larger bones & muscles, but there's a long spectrum of skill between "decent" as you say, and what it takes to be a UFC champion. I don't think the extra muscle & bone mass will do much if you're unable to defend the elite level judo throws.

Has rousey ever used a judo throw in a match? The #1 time judo throws are used is when another person is trying to judo throw you(that is, in a judo competition)

Yes, she has. Lots of times.

Yes. Many times. Here is one instance: https://artofgrappling.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/ufc-175-r...

As has already been mentioned, yes, she's used judo throws extensively. Her judo is exceptional. Her mother was AnnMaria De Mars[1], the first American to win the World Judo Championships.

Beyond that, Rousey herself won the bronze medal in the 2008 Summer Olympics in judo.[2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnnMaria_De_Mars

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympi...

Her mother is also pretty damn smart, and I would expect the daughter inherited the same intelligence. That is a pretty nasty combination of brawn and brains.

I've done Japanese jiu-jitsu for 10 years. We train in free fighting as well as ground fighting. I'm not great by any means. I'm decent and a new person isn't going to beat me. I have sparred with low level pro fighters including one guy who fought in the now defunct IFL and one guy who made it to the semi finals of the Ultimate fighter one season and another contestant on that show. I've also sparred with a number of amateur fighters. All of them could defeat me in ground fighting and especially in sparring. They were and are way better than me.

I've also sparred with amateur MMA women and none of them could even come close to winning against me. They simply don't have the strength. I could muscle out of any move they do. They don't have the punching power of a man and their striking ability does not instill fear.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Ronda Rousey could beat me in a fight. She is strong for a woman and she is in great shape. Fitness is a skill in a fight. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she could not even defeat a low level pro male fighter. She would have not a single advantage and all of the disadvantages.

Such is my opinion based on anecdotal experience.

It seems odd that the defense against all of her amazing moves and choke holds happens to be having a few tens % more muscle strength.

I believe you have reached a conclusion that is not justified by what I actually wrote. Nowhere did I imply that the only defense against against her moves is to have more muscle strength.

The point of commenting on muscle strength is that if one is strong enough to muscle out of a person's move then they don't have to be as talented to defend against said moves. Hence the belief that many people have that Ronda would not stand a chance against even a low level pro male fighter.

I didn't suggest that that is the only defense against her moves, but you seem to be saying that no matter what move / hold someone puts on you, you'd be able to get out of it with mere brute force if only you were 50% stronger. Is that really true?

I don't know about the 50% mark, but at some point it becomes true. When I was in college, one of my friends was big into MMA, to the point of participating in organized fights and maintaining a winning record. He was wresting with another friend (much larger and stronger, but not at all involved in MMA) on one occasion and learned rapidly what raw strength does. The MMA-participating friend was completely outclassed. Everything he tried was basically just beaten with brute strength. He attempted to put the larger guy in an armbar and the larger guy basically just did a bicep curl with him.

You're also underestimating the strength difference between women and men. Pound for pound, an untrained man will be about 50% stronger than an untrained woman. With both trained, the difference approaches 100%.

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards....

Edit: Whenever I hear comments about women beating men in physical sports, I think about the Williams sisters both losing to the 203th ranked male tennis player, who supposedly didn't try very hard, and according to some reports spent the morning before drinking and playing golf, and smoked between sets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)#1...

http://www.yourememberthat.com/media/15978/Karsten_Braasch_v...

I seriously doubt that the 203rd ranked male had better technical skills than the Williams sisters. Skill only gets you so far, though.

I see what you were saying.

In my experience if someone has done a move on you and has it tight then it is very hard to get out of. However, before the hold is tight then muscling out of it is very much a huge concern for a lighter, weaker fighter. A smaller person usually is quicker and more scrappy. Speed is an asset but there is a reason there are weight classes. Larger opponents are much harder to defeat if both people are in equally good shape and have around the same skill set.

I recognize that what you are saying sounds totally rational to you. But your position is one that is based on general ideas and (I strongly suspect) no practical experience. If you read the comments you will notice that people with direct experience are very clear on this matter. A woman like Rousey has no chance against a moderately skilled male fighter because strength does matter - a lot.

Grappling fights tend to be a gradual progression. Even in Rousey's first round victories you can see it takes a bit of working back-and-forth to get an arm-bar.

The stronger you are, the more tiny mistakes you can make before you end up in a position where they can't get out.

Perhaps more devastating is that you need less leverage to put them in a compromising position. It can be the difference of grabbing them in a slightly sub-optimal position, then muscling them into the optimal position. where if you were of comparable strength your sub-optimal grab might not be advantageous at all.

I suppose as programmers there is a tendency to put things into a % more muscle or % more bone mass. As an ex NCAA wrestler and combat sport enthusiast I can tell you far more goes into the equation than simple percentages of strength or bone mass.

Allow me to put this in terms you may better understand. The secret lies in the Y chromosome. This small chromosome contains the instructions for making males. The way the bones and joints are positioned give males equal in weight to a women a distinct strength advantage. Take this into account along with the male hormonal profile which is vastly different.

The most powerful thing is the male hormonal profile. Testosterone allows you to hold more muscle and less fat. It gives men that burst of strength and horizontal punching power that puts them in an entirely different league. I'm sure you are thinking of outliers, but I'm talking about a well developed athletic male, not a couch potato.

Now you see some men that seem more or less masculine and the same goes for women. Rowdy is for sure a more masculine women. I'm sure this is genetic as well as from her training. Her hormonal profile and bone structure is more masculine although in comparison to a male fighter not so much.

I have a similar background, though in an obscure style of Japanese karate. I can't really comment on ground fighting since anyone with Japanese jiu-jitsu will wipe the floor with me (probably litterally ;-) ), but I can say something about striking.

I will probably start an argument, but a great deal of strength is unnecessary if you are trying to damage your opponent with strikes. When I say "damage" I mean "cause injury". You want to deform your target so that it breaks. To do so, you need speed, not strength.

Consider, for a moment, a glacier. Because it is ridiculously massive, it has a huge amount of momentum as it creeps along at 5 cm per year. A glacier can level mountains, but anyone can stand next it it and let it "hit" them with no damage. That's because it is moving very slowly and your body has plenty of time to adjust itself to any deformation the glacier will cause.

Now consider a bullet. It has not even a fraction of the momentum of the glacier, but it can drill holes in you. That's because it is moving very quickly. When it hits you, your body deforms and there is not enough time for it to adjust before it has deformed to the breaking point.

Another good analogy is Jello. Put some Jello on a plate. If you are careful, you can push the Jello around. It deforms when you push on it, but then rebounds and moves backwards, bouncing back to its original shape. If you push too quickly, though, there will not be enough time for it to rebound and you will create a hole.

Striking in fighting works the same way. There is not enough space in a comment to explain how to use this idea to strike optimally, but most people with good technique can seriously damage any human opponent. Certainly any adult (whether male or female) that has trained for 10 years or so will be "strong enough".

Strength is important in grappling and positioning an opponent. It is also important when you are wearing pads designed to deaden the impact of a strike. If the pads deform instead of the body, then if you want to knock someone out (for instance) you need to be very strong to physically move their brain case around. Similarly, strength is important to push their muscles around to tire them.

Part of the problem is that in sport we are hoping to have a competition in which people compete but don't unduly injure each other. In such a situation, strength will certainly play a big role and so women are at a disadvantage. If we were intending to see how fast we can injure our opponent (very possibly killing them in the process), then I think it levels the playing field considerably.

Jiu-jitsu is designed to constrain striking attacks so as to make them less dangerous, so possibly it wouldn't make any difference anyway -- a very skilled striker may not get many opportunities before they are taken down. However, I think we will never really know because I don't think there is any way to be really effective in striking without intending to kill your opponent. IMHO it is not a technique that lends itself well to sports (it is worth noting that the head of my style disagrees on this point!) I have also never seen an MMA fighter that strikes well (fast enough, choosing the correct targets, relaxed enough, etc). I don't think I ever will because such a fighter would injure too many people to get fights.

The no-injury situation is probably more beneficial to males in a male vs female matchup indeed. Even the strongest male fighters seem to have a serious problem with getting hit by groin strikes, while I haven't seen any targets on females of comparable weakness. There's of course eye gouging, but that goes both ways and isn't as easy to execute.

There certainly is this spot on the female crotch area anatomy that is at least as sensitive as in us, males. Curiously enough, young female fighters are as a rule completely oblivious to this, until the day they get hit in sparring.

Source: co-ed thai boxing classes.

Generally speaking targets of choice IMHO (roughly in order):

- knee (easy to hit, easy to break)

- shin (if the person is standing on that leg it's easy to break)

- ribs, breast bone, collar bone (big huge target that is hard to move out of the way. Ribs are easy to break. A collar bone break will effectively stop an opponent from using their arms, though it is hard to hit)

- neck (hard to hit but if you miss you've got collar bone and jaw as backup. Some fighters handily give you their jaw to protect their neck. If you hit the neck with a clean shot, there will be no fight...)

- head (hard to hit, but you can break it in two with a clean shot... seriously).

You will notice that all of my targets of choice other than neck are bones. Soft tissues are not a good choice for a striker because they absorb damage too easily. Also, they don't incapacitate the opponent immediately. Often the person can go for a good 10 seconds before they even realize that they are damaged.

Furthermore groin and eyes are very hard to hit. The groin is easy to protect and the eyes are just too small. You could hit them against an untrained fighter, but you can do just about anything against an untrained fighter.

You will also notice that apart from the head and ribs, none of these are targets that are used often in sports matches. It's obvious why. If a sports fighter walks out, notices that his opponent's leading leg is too straight and breaks the knee on purpose... well that person isn't going to get invited back to most tournaments.

Also most sports fighters put too much power into their strikes. If you actuate your muscles all through the strike, it slows it down. Rather than thinking about powering through an opponent, they would do better to think of their limbs as whips. You accelerate quickly, using every joint as a way to multiply the speed. When you hit, you then need to align your bones so that the rebound force is directed along the longitudinal axis of the bones. Each bone must be aligned in an arch leading to the ground so that you take the brunt of the force through your skeleton not through your muscles.

It takes a long time to master this technique (and I have not done so ;-) ). One of my instructors could break the ribs of his opponents with kicks even though we wore padded fibreglass armour. We also wore plexiglass helmets. The people who first started using these (one generation before me) sometimes broke them into pieces while sparring so a rule was implemented to tell people to be careful when hitting the head ;-)

Like I said, I don't really know how far you would get against a well trained ground fighter who is good at avoiding getting hit badly. I think the odds are in favour of the ground fighter winning the fight if they don't make any mistakes, but it would be very dangerous against a good striker.

I'm sure there are lots of people who think the above is complete poppycock ;-) In fact, it is testament to HN etiquette than someone hasn't said so up to this point. For me these days it is occasionally fun to think about this stuff, but I have been "retired" from karate for nearly a decade now. Hope someone will find it interesting even if they don't agree ;-)

>> Can you provide any examples of trained women vs trained men fighting in a martial arts competition?

Here is one example: Lucia Rijker vs Somchai Jaideea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsaTPtUl4vs

Wiki's description of this fight:

An exhibition match involving a man verses a woman was sanctioned between Lucia Rijker who was then undefeated and Somchai Jaidee who considered a journeyman amongst his division, they both were almost identical in weight apart from the arbitrary weight discrepancy of 1 pound, during the opening minutes of the first bout Rijker proceeded to stand virtually toe-to-toe with Somchai whos strength advantage was already apparent, however Lucy shows impressive speed, Lucy then makes several attempts to kick Somchai to which Lucy bounces of him and loses her balance on multiple occasions due to the lopsided physical superiority of Somchai, Lucy however did not make it to the end of the fight when she attempted to brawl the stronger male Somchai and was knocked completely unconscious, many believed that it served as an example of why a women should not be sanctioned to fight a man(hungdaddy patriarchy), the match was since then dubbed the "cook the man some eggshibition".

The physical differences between the genders is very large. I remember hearing about a study on grip strength - the average man was roughly equivalent to an elite female athlete.

This is true, of course. But to me, the most impressive thing was how well female fighters technique is now. Even as recent as 5 years ago you could watch two females fighting, and they'd be fighting "like girls" to put it frankly, but now, their style is pretty much like any male fighter.

I think some people rolled their eyes a bit when females first entered the sport, but now a female fight on a card is 100% legitimate and they are as great to watch as any other.

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