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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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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.

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 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:

Cardio will 100% be a factor here, but also, old man strength is REAL

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.

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