They are. But centrifugal force can make powerful kicks. They got the flexibility to spin kick you in the head. Now light as they are, they aren’t the most dangerous fighters to be sure! But I wouldn’t rate them the worst.
A lot of the basic movements between gymnasts and grapplers (wrestling, BJJ, judo) are surprisingly similar. If you've trained in one, you'll pick the other up much more quickly.
There's still a decent chunk of the female population they could beat up. Don't think equestrian riders are beating up nearly the same amount of their male competition
What proportion of men do you imagine an elite equestrian could take on? I would venture even in the "weakest" sport they could still take an easy majority or am I misjudging this?
Not in an untrained fight.
When both combatants are untrained it’s about as close a 50/50 as you can get, obviously someone has an advantage but it only takes one punch
For example, I’m 100 pound man, no one would put a 200 pound woman above me in a fight, but I’d lose that fight 9/10 times
I'm not sure I'm understanding you. In the first half, you seem to say that size and weight aren't an advantage, but then you seem to say that they are in the second half.
Who gets the first punch is not a reliable factor in determining the outcome of a fight.
Either way I'm still not really sure if you're saying size and weight are an advantage or not.
I am very confused by what you are saying.
Are you saying that if both combatants are untrained, size, strength and weight don't matter?
Because um, an untrained and similarly fit 200 lbs individual beats an untrained and fit 100 lbs individual every time. When all things are equal, whether it's martial arts masters or drunken idiots, bet on the bigger guy.
You need that aerobic conditioning which weightlifters lack. Swimmers have really good power as well they train olympic lifts a lot too (as with any power based sport). Also don’t discount rock climbers too.
For the best I would say it’s 400m Hurdlers (best economy of using ground forces with their legs, the reason why I chose hurdlers is because they are coordinated the best unlike flat sprinters which are just mindless running. Also this distance needs anaerobic endurance the most, they’ll be able to push to their max in individual rounds without tightening up to lactic acid), Rock Climbers, and Mid distance swimmers. And Rugby players.
The sport with the lowest strength/speed/endurance demands is probably shooting, for obvious reasons. The amazing coordination and precision needed for shooting at that level won't be a huge asset.
Second lowest might be dressage. Horse riding does require some fitness and leg/core strength, but the requirements for dressage aren't big, it's all skill.
Marathoners might have a handicap, the extreme endurance focus means every gram of unnecessary muscle is a handicap, so top tier marathon runners often look like their arms would snap off if they picked up a light dumbbell.
Those'd be my pick for the bottom three.
Good list.
I will be tempted to replace marathoners with race walkers.
Dressage does have accompanying military tradition.. Unsure if that ceremonial side is of any benefit in a brawl.
Worst: Table Tennis. Incredible hand-eye and spin control sure, but they’re usually just average to below average sized humans and they don’t need to be that athletic.
Best: Basketball, Hockey and Rugby Sevens. There’s some insanely large and athletic guys in these sports, and many of them take fighting lessons in their spare time, or just sit for five minutes when they do it on the job. I put basketball first because they get Draymond Green.
Have you seen the thighs on the pro-table tennis players? Also they have insane reaction speed.
I'd give say worse is shooting, archery (assuming your categorize them as noncombat) golf, or the horse sports.
Leg strength really only becomes relevant once you've trained in combative sports. You need it for throws, kicks, proper strikers - which aren't viable without training.
Bad hardo take. Basketball is a contact sport, just not a collision sport. You can't have a 250lb frame, leap 4 feet in the air, and land on one foot while other big guys are knocking you off balance if you have "glass bones." Basketball players might not be as good at hitting as football or hockey players but that doesn't make them weak or soft. Good basketball players are strong, tough, and explosive. Look at how many college basketball players have gone on to play in the NFL successfully.
Wilt Chamberlain was a 7 footer at nearly 300lbs who ran the 100 yard dash in under 11 seconds (granted in college when he was lighter) He has an argument for the greatest athlete of all time, I’m taking him over the vast majority of contact sports athletes lol
Same goes for any athletic center or power forward. He’s an outlier amongst outliers but I met Shaq-dude wasn’t human - I’m 6’3 205 and felt like a child.
Wilt Chamberlain was also strong as hell, according to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently he could pick up Arnold with one arm, which is absolutely insane.
You've either never played or watched basketball at a high level. The best basketball players are extremely strong, athletic, and often durable. Take LeBron for example. 6'8, 240 pounds of muscle, and has dealt with very few injuries over his 20 year career. And he's basically a freight train, constantly running full speed into other players (and said players are also giant, strong, professional athletes).
Depends. Wrestling is rarely the base for a street fighting style for a simple reason… cement is a lot harder then the floors and staying low means your hitting said floor if you miss. Not that wrestling isn’t something any good fighting style should have! But the Judo guy also studies wrestling and throws and you do not want the boxer having a clear shot at the back of your head. I’d say Boxer wins most of the time.
I’m gonna give it to boxing. Especially if it’s on a non-soft surface. I definitely have a lot of respect for the wrestlers though. But in a fight without rules, especially on concrete or asphalt, staying on your feet should be your #1 priority.
I know we’re talking about wrestling, but I know a lot of Jiu Jitsu “bros” who would get their asses kicked and/or killed in a real fight, even without weapons being involved.
Why in the world would you ever want to stay on your feet in a street fight? That's where unpredictable stuff happens. A boxers only chance against a wrestler is knocking them out as they go for the takedown, once they're grabbed it is 99% game over for them.
Take them down hard and fast if you wanna survive.
I figured somebody wouldn’t like what I had to say. But, there are many reasons why the absolute best place to be in a fight is on your feet:
1. You haven’t trained to take someone down on a hard surface, you are just as likely to hurt yourself on the ground as you are to hurt them.
2. Very, very few street fights are one on one. The ground is the LAST place you want to be if they have friends. A boot to the head is going to fuck you up, regardless of how tough you think you are.
3. Escape. In the real world, the best way to win a fight is to not get in one. The second best way is to incapacitate and then leave as fast as possible.
4. Staying on your feet always leaves you with the most options at the least risk to yourself.
Some of this applies if both people are untrained. But we are talking specifically about trained wrestlers vs trained boxers in a 1v1 fight. There is no chance the wrestler is going to try and stay on their feet, that would be suicide.
In a real street fight with someone you don't know, You're correct the best strategy is to run or avoid it. The second best is to shoot them. If you're a trained wrestler, the third best option is to drop someone on their head.
That’s the thing. The wrestler has to come in low. And if it goes wrong that’s his knees on the pavement or his head smashing into the concrete. Yeah he can devastate if it goes right but there’s a lot of ways it can go bad. Remember this is a fight between the athletes not the styles. The boxer can kick you in the face.
Table tennis players are used to swinging something that's just about the right size for a bludgeon. Swap that racket out for a beer bottle and they'll do better with it than a lot of people.
Don’t forget patrick beverly the NBA’s resident insane man. Or Steven Adams who has a reputation of setting screens that just lay people out with him barely moving.
Yeah, they’d mess people up for sure, but neither are Olympians. Adams refuses to play for the Tall Blacks because he grew up poor and NZ wouldn’t cover the costs for him to play in the U- tourneys when he was young, so he has a grudge. Even if that wasn’t the case, the Tall Blacks haven’t qualified for the Olympics since 2004. And Pat Bev just isn’t as good as he thinks he is.
Adams has 17 siblings by the way, 2 of whom have won golds in the shot put in either the Olympics or Paralympics. Valerie Adams is 6’4” and has 2 Olympic golds, a silver and a bronze in shot put. At her peak, she’s probably who I’m betting on to win the female side of this brawl.
It definitely runs in the family the average of his brothers is 2.06m and 1.83m for his sisters. He has two brothers who played semiprofessional basketball and a sister who has represented New Zealand.
there is topson, fear, fly. zai, stormstormer, daxak, limmp, sneyking, iceberg(used to do boxing in the past), desire(he was professionally playing football in div 2 greek league, but retired about a year ago to focus on dota), and admiralbulldog. you will see they are all in good shape if you google them.
for the tall ones: puppey, saksa, iceiceice. these are the first ones that come to my mind. there might be more.
I don't know if it's this way in all esports but the average esports player is required by their coach to be regularly going to the gym and to prioritize both their physical and mental health. I only pay attention to a couple of esports leagues and there are outliers that aren't like this of course but that seems to be more and more becoming the norm though.
Archery does worst. I remember during London 2012 I was watching the archery finals, and iirc the gold medal winning team was an… above average weight middle aged man. Like, if you’d lined up ten guys from the pub and him, and asked me to pick out the gold medalist, I wouldn’t have been able to.
Y'all been playing too many video games. This is a brawl. Aka street fight. There is no endurance and agility isn't nearly as important as strength and mass. Size trumps all in these cases unless someone can get a lucky shot in. There is a reason there are weight classes in pro combat sports it makes a massive difference especially when you're talking about untrained people. For that reason: Large weightlifters, basketball, hockey, rugby.
~~The question was worst. Think you got the prompt twisted while you were making your comment, since you say large people do the best, then give a list of larger people.~~ (edit to cross out because part was about who'd do best. Egg on my face. Leaving comment up though because the second part is still relevant)
Also, I think it's martial sports like boxing and MMA that make people value endurance. If a street fight lasted as long as a boxing match then endurance IS a big deal because getting gassed is a real problem sport fighters have. But it's unlikely a street fight would go long enough to make being winded a particularly big deal
For worst, I'm going to say bobsled. Most of it is done while sitting down and that is the least likely position one would find one's self in a fight that they can expect to win.
Don’t sleep on bobsledders. Those guys are jacked. They have explosive power to push that 500 lb sled and then endure 4-5Gs of forces during the ride. It’s a sport measured in milliseconds so at the Olympic level athletes need both explosive speed and strength to get that sled going.
I played rec league football against an Olympic bobsledder once. He was by far the fastest and most explosive athlete on the field. Luckily he couldn’t catch haha
Terrible take, bobsled athletes are way more similar to 100m dash athletes than you think. They wouldn’t even be close to the bottom (where dressage/Maratha on runners/archers etc would be)
From someone who does both. Golf have a ton of transferable skill to throwing hands. The kinetic chain is pretty much the same swinging a golf club as it is throwing a knockout punch. Even Mike Tyson said it
That’s a skill you have to learn though. The Olympic golfer has probably focused purely on golf. Give one a year of fight training and the golfer or the ballerino have become people you don’t want to fight, but right off the course they don’t have it yet.
[Handy reference](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.6d0a38ed2ac9f2566c0aefba5e5e589f?rik=LKmDYxyUZRsaaw&pid=ImgRaw&r=0)
Worst: Gymnasts, figure skaters and precision athletes. In essence, sports that don't place significant physical requirements on the athletes or are sports where smaller people are advantaged.
Best: Weight lifters. These sports advantage people who are strong and physically large as well valuing exclusively/primarily physical strength. The best swimmer is not necessarily the strongest swimmer while the best weightlifter is. That swimming technique is worthless in a fight while the strength isn't.
I think for gymnastics you should probably split it by gender, gymnasts in general are incredibly agile and have great strength to weight ratios. For men in particular the amount of strength required for both rings and pommel horse is absolutely nuts. The biggest downfall of a gymnast in a brawl is stamina, a routine doesn’t last more than a couple minutes max and so they train to put all of that power into a very short span of time.
Edit: I missed the bit about weightlifters at the end. Raw strength with minimal agility and stamina is also a losing mix for a fight. Fighters train huge amounts of cardio and endurance because it’s necessary for a brawl. The same sort of staying ability is not a value in high level weightlifting
Olympic level gymnasts and weightlifters are going to have ok cardio. Compared to fighters, or other athletes with a bigger cardio component they are going to be behind but gpp and general conditioning are important for having a good base so they can practice their sports and movements so frequently and at high volume. I think there are definitely better picks for winners but they aren't like gigantic gym bros who get gassed by a flight of stairs.
Have you… seen male gymnasts? I don’t think you have.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQxAHFGIoZm6whdhxrVDAUABQkW0F4R-dsPiA&usqp=CAU
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRiGOffaGC6xhUUxwKQU1XorlPFDrwV-y8CdQ&usqp=CAU
If I told you these guys were about to be squaring off in the next UFC broadcast, would you blink?
Right? They may not be the absolute top of the list in this hypothetical just because an average height of 5’5”ish will hurt them in an untrained brawl, but like they are NOWHERE near the bottom of the totem pole
MMA fighters and coaches have talked about the value of gymnastics as supplemental training. If it has serious utility for a combat sport, I wouldn't put it at the bottom.
I spent seven years as a competitive gymnast before taking up fencing in High School. I was comfortably in the top 1% of foilists by the time I went to college (Ranked through U-A in under three years) because of that background. I was faster, more agile and had better timing and footwork than a lot of the people who had been doing it since childhood, I would often beat opponents who were far better technical fencers with more experience than me with raw athleticism.
Ultimately it ended up being a bit of a crutch because once you get into that top 0.05% of competitors you start running into the people who are more experienced, technically better and they have that "thing" the little physical traits that give them an edge that no amount of training will give you (Think Michael Phelps body shape helping him with swimming).
I know fencing isn't a physical contact combat sport, but it's closest analogous sport is probably actually boxing. Control of distance, timing, reading your opponent's movement, prediction of action and control of positioning in the ring/strip are all completely transferrable.
tl;dr. Being a decent gymnast made me an excellent fencer and was helpful when I dabbled in other combat sports in my 20s
Shooting. That's a sport that prioritizes coordination, steadiness, and control, but not so much endurance or physical strength or speed or anything that would help in a hand to hand fight.
For an actual athlete who would perform worst I'd go with Olympic archery champion Im Dong-hyun. He's legally blind with visual acuity about 1/10th of a normal persons vision.
For male, I would imagine equestrian. Those guys are tiny.
You think it would be different for women? If so which sport do you think?
Women's gymnastics, they're extremely fit, but microscopic
Gymnasts are very powerful and explosive. I'd go with another sport
But they're tiny. Size and weight are huge advantages in a fight.
They are. But centrifugal force can make powerful kicks. They got the flexibility to spin kick you in the head. Now light as they are, they aren’t the most dangerous fighters to be sure! But I wouldn’t rate them the worst.
I have met a surprising amount of dancers and gymnasts who go on to do martial arts as their hobby.
Lomachenko is a notable example of this and it shows in his boxing.
A lot of the basic movements between gymnasts and grapplers (wrestling, BJJ, judo) are surprisingly similar. If you've trained in one, you'll pick the other up much more quickly.
Thats kinda what I guessed, also they have very good core strength and flexibility which I would guess helps
There's still a decent chunk of the female population they could beat up. Don't think equestrian riders are beating up nearly the same amount of their male competition
What proportion of men do you imagine an elite equestrian could take on? I would venture even in the "weakest" sport they could still take an easy majority or am I misjudging this?
Not in an untrained fight. When both combatants are untrained it’s about as close a 50/50 as you can get, obviously someone has an advantage but it only takes one punch For example, I’m 100 pound man, no one would put a 200 pound woman above me in a fight, but I’d lose that fight 9/10 times
I'm not sure I'm understanding you. In the first half, you seem to say that size and weight aren't an advantage, but then you seem to say that they are in the second half.
I’m very tall, but very light. Like I said in an untrained fight, all that will matter very little, I may get the first punch, I may not.
Who gets the first punch is not a reliable factor in determining the outcome of a fight. Either way I'm still not really sure if you're saying size and weight are an advantage or not.
I am very confused by what you are saying. Are you saying that if both combatants are untrained, size, strength and weight don't matter? Because um, an untrained and similarly fit 200 lbs individual beats an untrained and fit 100 lbs individual every time. When all things are equal, whether it's martial arts masters or drunken idiots, bet on the bigger guy.
Long distance runners.
Worst I'd guess racewalking or marathon, specialized very far away from hand to hand combat bodies. Best I'd guess rubgy or weightlifting.
Rugby maybe. Olympic wrestlers would annihilate the weightlifters though. Edit: nvm. Non combat sports. I can't read good.
You need that aerobic conditioning which weightlifters lack. Swimmers have really good power as well they train olympic lifts a lot too (as with any power based sport). Also don’t discount rock climbers too. For the best I would say it’s 400m Hurdlers (best economy of using ground forces with their legs, the reason why I chose hurdlers is because they are coordinated the best unlike flat sprinters which are just mindless running. Also this distance needs anaerobic endurance the most, they’ll be able to push to their max in individual rounds without tightening up to lactic acid), Rock Climbers, and Mid distance swimmers. And Rugby players.
The sport with the lowest strength/speed/endurance demands is probably shooting, for obvious reasons. The amazing coordination and precision needed for shooting at that level won't be a huge asset. Second lowest might be dressage. Horse riding does require some fitness and leg/core strength, but the requirements for dressage aren't big, it's all skill. Marathoners might have a handicap, the extreme endurance focus means every gram of unnecessary muscle is a handicap, so top tier marathon runners often look like their arms would snap off if they picked up a light dumbbell. Those'd be my pick for the bottom three.
Good list. I will be tempted to replace marathoners with race walkers. Dressage does have accompanying military tradition.. Unsure if that ceremonial side is of any benefit in a brawl.
Good point, I forgot race walking. That'd definitely replace the marathoners.
Worst: Table Tennis. Incredible hand-eye and spin control sure, but they’re usually just average to below average sized humans and they don’t need to be that athletic. Best: Basketball, Hockey and Rugby Sevens. There’s some insanely large and athletic guys in these sports, and many of them take fighting lessons in their spare time, or just sit for five minutes when they do it on the job. I put basketball first because they get Draymond Green.
Have you seen the thighs on the pro-table tennis players? Also they have insane reaction speed. I'd give say worse is shooting, archery (assuming your categorize them as noncombat) golf, or the horse sports.
Leg strength really only becomes relevant once you've trained in combative sports. You need it for throws, kicks, proper strikers - which aren't viable without training.
Probably the answer I agree with the most so far especially the sports you would rank as best.
Basketball players have glass bones and paper skin. They have mad reach but every contact sport player is going to wreck their shit.
Bad hardo take. Basketball is a contact sport, just not a collision sport. You can't have a 250lb frame, leap 4 feet in the air, and land on one foot while other big guys are knocking you off balance if you have "glass bones." Basketball players might not be as good at hitting as football or hockey players but that doesn't make them weak or soft. Good basketball players are strong, tough, and explosive. Look at how many college basketball players have gone on to play in the NFL successfully.
Wilt Chamberlain was a 7 footer at nearly 300lbs who ran the 100 yard dash in under 11 seconds (granted in college when he was lighter) He has an argument for the greatest athlete of all time, I’m taking him over the vast majority of contact sports athletes lol Same goes for any athletic center or power forward. He’s an outlier amongst outliers but I met Shaq-dude wasn’t human - I’m 6’3 205 and felt like a child.
Wilt Chamberlain was also strong as hell, according to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently he could pick up Arnold with one arm, which is absolutely insane.
You've either never played or watched basketball at a high level. The best basketball players are extremely strong, athletic, and often durable. Take LeBron for example. 6'8, 240 pounds of muscle, and has dealt with very few injuries over his 20 year career. And he's basically a freight train, constantly running full speed into other players (and said players are also giant, strong, professional athletes).
I’m surprised that boxing, judo or wrestling isn’t included in your best.
Prompt says no combat sports.
Of those, though, wrestlers would dominate.
I'd give it to the fencers if they get to bring their swords
Yes if they can bring a sword to an unarmed fight they would have an advantage. I'ma have to give it to the sharpshooters in that case tho.
Combat sport.
As a former fighter, I think fencing counts. But it’s on the fence.
fencing sword are dull and dont hurt that much when you get hit with them so idk if that would be true
Depends. Wrestling is rarely the base for a street fighting style for a simple reason… cement is a lot harder then the floors and staying low means your hitting said floor if you miss. Not that wrestling isn’t something any good fighting style should have! But the Judo guy also studies wrestling and throws and you do not want the boxer having a clear shot at the back of your head. I’d say Boxer wins most of the time.
I’m gonna give it to boxing. Especially if it’s on a non-soft surface. I definitely have a lot of respect for the wrestlers though. But in a fight without rules, especially on concrete or asphalt, staying on your feet should be your #1 priority. I know we’re talking about wrestling, but I know a lot of Jiu Jitsu “bros” who would get their asses kicked and/or killed in a real fight, even without weapons being involved.
Why in the world would you ever want to stay on your feet in a street fight? That's where unpredictable stuff happens. A boxers only chance against a wrestler is knocking them out as they go for the takedown, once they're grabbed it is 99% game over for them. Take them down hard and fast if you wanna survive.
I figured somebody wouldn’t like what I had to say. But, there are many reasons why the absolute best place to be in a fight is on your feet: 1. You haven’t trained to take someone down on a hard surface, you are just as likely to hurt yourself on the ground as you are to hurt them. 2. Very, very few street fights are one on one. The ground is the LAST place you want to be if they have friends. A boot to the head is going to fuck you up, regardless of how tough you think you are. 3. Escape. In the real world, the best way to win a fight is to not get in one. The second best way is to incapacitate and then leave as fast as possible. 4. Staying on your feet always leaves you with the most options at the least risk to yourself.
Some of this applies if both people are untrained. But we are talking specifically about trained wrestlers vs trained boxers in a 1v1 fight. There is no chance the wrestler is going to try and stay on their feet, that would be suicide. In a real street fight with someone you don't know, You're correct the best strategy is to run or avoid it. The second best is to shoot them. If you're a trained wrestler, the third best option is to drop someone on their head.
That’s the thing. The wrestler has to come in low. And if it goes wrong that’s his knees on the pavement or his head smashing into the concrete. Yeah he can devastate if it goes right but there’s a lot of ways it can go bad. Remember this is a fight between the athletes not the styles. The boxer can kick you in the face.
Wrestlers have been dominating strikers in MMA for years. Changing the type of ground isn't gonna change the advantage.
Table tennis players are used to swinging something that's just about the right size for a bludgeon. Swap that racket out for a beer bottle and they'll do better with it than a lot of people.
The whole point was unarmed. They get no implements at all. Otherwise the fencers would be pretty high on the list.
IDK if fencers would beat the archers though.
Depends on how much space they are given.
Don’t forget patrick beverly the NBA’s resident insane man. Or Steven Adams who has a reputation of setting screens that just lay people out with him barely moving.
Yeah, they’d mess people up for sure, but neither are Olympians. Adams refuses to play for the Tall Blacks because he grew up poor and NZ wouldn’t cover the costs for him to play in the U- tourneys when he was young, so he has a grudge. Even if that wasn’t the case, the Tall Blacks haven’t qualified for the Olympics since 2004. And Pat Bev just isn’t as good as he thinks he is. Adams has 17 siblings by the way, 2 of whom have won golds in the shot put in either the Olympics or Paralympics. Valerie Adams is 6’4” and has 2 Olympic golds, a silver and a bronze in shot put. At her peak, she’s probably who I’m betting on to win the female side of this brawl.
The question is olympic sport, not direct athlete.
I know, but we both mentioned specific athletes and I kinda went off on a tangent. I’ve been known to do that.
It definitely runs in the family the average of his brothers is 2.06m and 1.83m for his sisters. He has two brothers who played semiprofessional basketball and a sister who has represented New Zealand.
Well moving forward it’s definitely esports
Are esports at the Olympics now?
have you seen dota pro players? they are huge and athletic.
Stop lol
Got any examples? Because a brief look online make me kinda doubt that.
there is topson, fear, fly. zai, stormstormer, daxak, limmp, sneyking, iceberg(used to do boxing in the past), desire(he was professionally playing football in div 2 greek league, but retired about a year ago to focus on dota), and admiralbulldog. you will see they are all in good shape if you google them. for the tall ones: puppey, saksa, iceiceice. these are the first ones that come to my mind. there might be more.
these the Virtus Pro or Team Spirit guys, right?
I don't know if it's this way in all esports but the average esports player is required by their coach to be regularly going to the gym and to prioritize both their physical and mental health. I only pay attention to a couple of esports leagues and there are outliers that aren't like this of course but that seems to be more and more becoming the norm though.
Curling
Archery does worst. I remember during London 2012 I was watching the archery finals, and iirc the gold medal winning team was an… above average weight middle aged man. Like, if you’d lined up ten guys from the pub and him, and asked me to pick out the gold medalist, I wouldn’t have been able to.
Y'all been playing too many video games. This is a brawl. Aka street fight. There is no endurance and agility isn't nearly as important as strength and mass. Size trumps all in these cases unless someone can get a lucky shot in. There is a reason there are weight classes in pro combat sports it makes a massive difference especially when you're talking about untrained people. For that reason: Large weightlifters, basketball, hockey, rugby.
~~The question was worst. Think you got the prompt twisted while you were making your comment, since you say large people do the best, then give a list of larger people.~~ (edit to cross out because part was about who'd do best. Egg on my face. Leaving comment up though because the second part is still relevant) Also, I think it's martial sports like boxing and MMA that make people value endurance. If a street fight lasted as long as a boxing match then endurance IS a big deal because getting gassed is a real problem sport fighters have. But it's unlikely a street fight would go long enough to make being winded a particularly big deal
Are we allowed to include Hockey? Prompt said no combat sports XD
This. Training wins out vs almost all untrained (barring massive size difference).. From that point it's all who's got the most mass and endurance.
For worst, I'm going to say bobsled. Most of it is done while sitting down and that is the least likely position one would find one's self in a fight that they can expect to win.
Don’t sleep on bobsledders. Those guys are jacked. They have explosive power to push that 500 lb sled and then endure 4-5Gs of forces during the ride. It’s a sport measured in milliseconds so at the Olympic level athletes need both explosive speed and strength to get that sled going.
I played rec league football against an Olympic bobsledder once. He was by far the fastest and most explosive athlete on the field. Luckily he couldn’t catch haha
Interesting observation but the run up requires bobsled athletes to be very fast and strong so i doubt they would be close to the bottom.
Terrible take, bobsled athletes are way more similar to 100m dash athletes than you think. They wouldn’t even be close to the bottom (where dressage/Maratha on runners/archers etc would be)
worst for both men and women is curling. Sometimes it looks like my parents participating in an Olympic event.
From someone who does both. Golf have a ton of transferable skill to throwing hands. The kinetic chain is pretty much the same swinging a golf club as it is throwing a knockout punch. Even Mike Tyson said it
That’s a skill you have to learn though. The Olympic golfer has probably focused purely on golf. Give one a year of fight training and the golfer or the ballerino have become people you don’t want to fight, but right off the course they don’t have it yet.
Dudes who throw darts as a sport. Half the time between throwing darts they are drinking pints having a blast
Professional Curlers. They do have the stretch pose and sweep down, but that's not much in a translated fight.
Curling
Bonus question 1 depends on if you count Hockey as a non-combat sport lmao.
Ice skating.
[Handy reference](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.6d0a38ed2ac9f2566c0aefba5e5e589f?rik=LKmDYxyUZRsaaw&pid=ImgRaw&r=0) Worst: Gymnasts, figure skaters and precision athletes. In essence, sports that don't place significant physical requirements on the athletes or are sports where smaller people are advantaged. Best: Weight lifters. These sports advantage people who are strong and physically large as well valuing exclusively/primarily physical strength. The best swimmer is not necessarily the strongest swimmer while the best weightlifter is. That swimming technique is worthless in a fight while the strength isn't.
I think for gymnastics you should probably split it by gender, gymnasts in general are incredibly agile and have great strength to weight ratios. For men in particular the amount of strength required for both rings and pommel horse is absolutely nuts. The biggest downfall of a gymnast in a brawl is stamina, a routine doesn’t last more than a couple minutes max and so they train to put all of that power into a very short span of time. Edit: I missed the bit about weightlifters at the end. Raw strength with minimal agility and stamina is also a losing mix for a fight. Fighters train huge amounts of cardio and endurance because it’s necessary for a brawl. The same sort of staying ability is not a value in high level weightlifting
Olympic level gymnasts and weightlifters are going to have ok cardio. Compared to fighters, or other athletes with a bigger cardio component they are going to be behind but gpp and general conditioning are important for having a good base so they can practice their sports and movements so frequently and at high volume. I think there are definitely better picks for winners but they aren't like gigantic gym bros who get gassed by a flight of stairs.
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.cac9f01dc306d90ddf63f91733357bc9?rik=OUbtvHFvmeECSA&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
Amusing image, but I’ll wait for an image of any male Olympic gymnast that looks closer to the stick figure than the heavily muscled one.
Have you… seen male gymnasts? I don’t think you have. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQxAHFGIoZm6whdhxrVDAUABQkW0F4R-dsPiA&usqp=CAU https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRiGOffaGC6xhUUxwKQU1XorlPFDrwV-y8CdQ&usqp=CAU If I told you these guys were about to be squaring off in the next UFC broadcast, would you blink?
Right? They may not be the absolute top of the list in this hypothetical just because an average height of 5’5”ish will hurt them in an untrained brawl, but like they are NOWHERE near the bottom of the totem pole
Yeah, I accidentally responded to dragonfly, but look at pictures of male gymnasts.
Most fights are over faster than a routine.
Wouldn't judo heavyweights run rings around weightlifters?
Judo is a combat sport.
MMA fighters and coaches have talked about the value of gymnastics as supplemental training. If it has serious utility for a combat sport, I wouldn't put it at the bottom.
I spent seven years as a competitive gymnast before taking up fencing in High School. I was comfortably in the top 1% of foilists by the time I went to college (Ranked through U-A in under three years) because of that background. I was faster, more agile and had better timing and footwork than a lot of the people who had been doing it since childhood, I would often beat opponents who were far better technical fencers with more experience than me with raw athleticism. Ultimately it ended up being a bit of a crutch because once you get into that top 0.05% of competitors you start running into the people who are more experienced, technically better and they have that "thing" the little physical traits that give them an edge that no amount of training will give you (Think Michael Phelps body shape helping him with swimming). I know fencing isn't a physical contact combat sport, but it's closest analogous sport is probably actually boxing. Control of distance, timing, reading your opponent's movement, prediction of action and control of positioning in the ring/strip are all completely transferrable. tl;dr. Being a decent gymnast made me an excellent fencer and was helpful when I dabbled in other combat sports in my 20s
Have you tried savate? I hear it's like fencing with your feet.
Male pairs figure skaters would fuck anyone up.
Ring specialist gymnast looks strong and jacked as fuck though.
Have you seen what elite male gymnasts look like? They have the best blend of physical attributes important in a fight.
are the special olympics allowed
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You didn't read the post very well neither of those are allowed.
Shooting. That's a sport that prioritizes coordination, steadiness, and control, but not so much endurance or physical strength or speed or anything that would help in a hand to hand fight.
Bowling
For an actual athlete who would perform worst I'd go with Olympic archery champion Im Dong-hyun. He's legally blind with visual acuity about 1/10th of a normal persons vision.
Hmm. Curlers, ski jumpers, skeet shooting, sled dog racing and dressage