Who will Win a Fight

Who will win a fight? – Learn how trying to answer this question can teach more than the actual answer...

Who will win a fight?

This article is the third in the “trilogy” of

“Martial arts most frequently asked questions…” :

• What is the Deadliest Style of Martial Arts?

• What is the Best Martial Art?

And now this

• Who will Win a fight?

Who wins fights?, is a question which was answered during the writing of “what is the best martial art?”

But we decided to give it a page of its own, because it’s an important enough question.

It is important not because of the bottom line answer it supplies (we’ll save you the scrolling down…it doesn’t), but because it emphasizes and prioritizes the different elements and qualities of our training.

So…

The qualities of a fighter most important for winning a fight

When 2 people meet for a fight or engage in battle someone usually wins (aside from draws, or from situations when the battle was stopped in the middle)

Who will win? Will it be the more experienced? ; Or maybe the stronger opponent? ; Perhaps it’ll be the better skilled? ; Or maybe the more aggressive?

This is a very important yet hypothetical question which the Warriors Project will try to answer.

The importance of it lays on what we can do with the answer, in other words, how we can improve our training according to the answer.

However, there is no proof for what we will claim below, and it is disputable. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the project agreed on the following claims.

• For winning a fight, assuming we are empty handed, the most important attribute is

Mental ability – all the qualities we referred to in the mental training of the martial arts – fighting spirit, aggressiveness, the willingness to do what ever it takes to win, fearlessness, mental endurance and more…

Meaning that it doesn’t matter how strong a person is, how fast and how skilled he is – if he is a coward, or doesn’t have the will to fight, or is too gentle…he will not win the fight.

Our mental ability is the most difficult to change, but also the quality with the most potential to change, because it is not “confined” by something physical –

We can not train to make ourselves become higher, we can become faster and stronger to the best of our physical potential (no matter how hard we train most of us will never drop the 9 second margin in the 100 meter dash…)

Our mental ability isn’t bounded by any limitation.

During our experiences we witnessed, many times a smaller person less skilled beat the bigger, faster and many times better skilled opponent, just because he wanted it more, wouldn’t give up and so on…

• For winning a fight, assuming we are empty handed, the second most important attribute is

Physical ability - We all have physical abilities (we referred to some of them in the physical training section) we were born with. Within the limits of these abilities we can improve and develop. However, as we said above, our potential improvement and development of these abilities is bounded.

Meaning that if a person has great mental abilities and also good technique but has very poor physical abilities; it is possible for him to win the fight, but it would still be very difficult.

Our techniques are supposed to help us “gap over” our physical disadvantages – through proper behavior, correct timing and proper concentration of force (an armbar applied with the torque of the whole body, a strong kick to the groin…) and so on…

Nevertheless, no matter how we turn and spin it – strength, stamina size, weight, speed, agility, reaction time physical endurance… matter and are very decisive in the out come of any fight or battle.

Our skills and techniques are supposed to gap over any disadvantage we might have against our opponent either natural or ones that even with the help of our martial art training system we couldn’t improve.

• For winning a fight, assuming we’re empty handed, the third most important attribute is

Technical ability – our martial arts skills…

A martial art “supplies” many things. Among the main ones are the martial art technique platform – what to apply, when to apply it….These are important questions and their answers are what, in many cases, differentiate between the martial arts themselves.

As we wrote above – without superior technical ability, a fighter which is out classed physically has little chances of winning. On the other hand, a person with strong physical abilities and the right fighting spirit, despite having low technical abilities can still give a trained person a “run for his money”.

Technical ability is detainable, meaning that with enough hard work almost any one can obtain it (as opposed to what we discussed regarding the physical aspects).

Any one can eventually learn to throw a good punch or perform a well executed juji-gatame, but whether or not he’ll be able to execute and apply them in a fight is very much dependent on his physical and mental qualities.

Fighting experience - Fighting experience is a quality which is not prioritized, because we view as being part of the martial arts training methods – it is a way in which we train the different qualities.

However fighting experience as a quality is indispensable for any fighter and functions as an enhancer of his mental and technical abilities – Read more about

Sparring and fighting experience

Midway conclusions for who will win a fight

As we said in the martial art training system article a systems main goal is to prepare the fighter and warrior in all 3 aspects. Many of the drills we perform in training try to assimilate many elements and qualities at the same time.

However when training it is very easy to ignore and sometimes even underestimate the importance of a quality – we should use this article as a reference, for reminding us the elements we should concentrate on in our training – so we can improve and develop them.

Weapons and how they affect the “equation”

Above, when writing the “priority list”, we based ourselves on the assumption we’re fighting empty handed.

The “math” changes when a weapon is used.

There’s a saying in the Middle East:

“In front of a gun all man are equal” – in other words our mental, physical and technical abilities won’t change any thing when we’ve been shot. They will also not have substantial influence on whether or not we get hit (assuming that the gun is drawn and the person holding it wants to shoot).

There are certain martial arts weapons which can be added to this saying... the samurai sword is a great example.

In general any martial arts weapons, especially bladed ones and especially if one of the opponents doesn’t have a weapon at all, change the balance and order of the list composed above.

In which case the kind of weapon and the knowledge on how to use it (technique) is as important and sometimes even more, than the mental abilities of its user.

Conclusions on who will win a fight

So who will win a fight?…

It depends…

It is hard to say, it depends on so many factors which we haven’t even begun to cover… one of them being sheer luck… and who can calculate luck, who can put 2 fighters in a fight with “laboratory conditions” and are they relevant for reality?!

However, we do know and understand the priorities and emphasis we should put in our martial art training regime, regarding the qualities we want to develop and improve.

When we ask questions regarding the martial arts – is it the “gossip” which interests us or the essence of the discussion and the “fruits” it leads to?!

The conclusions we reached along the way were definitely worth trying to answer.

Read other interesting Martial Arts Articles

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