Heavyweight UFC Fighter vs Half Dozen Guys?

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

I was watching the Expendables basketball court scene (where Jason Statham easily beats down 6 guys). It’s obviously just an exagerated movie scene. But what if it was one of the larger UFC heavyweights instead of Jason Statham? Like say Dave Herman. A buddy and I were debating this. He says the crowd wins because they could just swarm the heavyweight, drag him to the ground, and clobber him on the ground. I thought the heavyweight would take it. (And this is assuming no weapons since Statham doesn’t bust out the knife until after the fight is over)

With boxing footwork/handspeed and greater reach, it wouldn’t be very hard to take out 1-2 guys right off the bat. Then when the remaining guys get close, uppercuts/hooks/knees would be devastating. The average dudes would probably eat elbows to the back of the head if they went for his legs (I’m presuming they wouldn’t be able to floor the heavyweight with a fast, wrestling-style takedown that avoids the elbows).

This is just a dorky hypothetical but it’ll be fun to get feedback!

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[quote]Heroic Wolf wrote:
I was watching the Expendables basketball court scene (where Jason Statham easily beats down 6 guys). It’s obviously just an exagerated movie scene. But what if it was one of the larger UFC heavyweights instead of Jason Statham? Like say Dave Herman. A buddy and I were debating this. He says the crowd wins because they could just swarm the heavyweight, drag him to the ground, and clobber him on the ground. I thought the heavyweight would take it. (And this is assuming no weapons since Statham doesn’t bust out the knife until after the fight is over)

With boxing footwork/handspeed and greater reach, it wouldn’t be very hard to take out 1-2 guys right off the bat. Then when the remaining guys get close, uppercuts/hooks/knees would be devastating. The average dudes would probably eat elbows to the back of the head if they went for his legs (I’m presuming they wouldn’t be able to floor the heavyweight with a fast, wrestling-style takedown that avoids the elbows).

This is just a dorky hypothetical but it’ll be fun to get feedback![/quote]

3

This question is so broad its rediculous. And these types of questions keep popping up, I know its just a fun hypothetical but they’re almost impossible to answer with any certainty. I guess your main question that you have ask does your MMA fighter have enough situational awareness? MMA is a sport where one competitor versus another, no multiple opponents. So does your heavyweight get caught up with one guy and end up being flanked by the rest of the mob? Or is he smart enough to work the whole group, picking them off one by one? A lot of videos on youtube are testitmant to martial sport competitors being able to handle themselves against multiple opponents (the turkish boxer for instance), that being said it is not the guy in front of you that you have to worry about, its the one that’s going to king hit you while your distracted…

4

[quote]sardines12 wrote:

[/quote]

Most of those guys are just standing around. The ones that do come forward are coming one at a time.

What I have seen is that when a group of guys knows each other, they circle the opponent while the confrontation builds. There’s no maintaining a safe distance, no elbows to the back of the head, etc. What there is is a shot to the back of the head, a pile on, and the lone fighter gets stomped.

I am certainly no expert, but even in the movies they don’t have people fighting multiple attackers at once. There may be a dozen bad guys but only one comes forward at a time; if it’s so difficult to time WITH choreography, what happens without?

5

It is intensely difficult to fight more than one person at a time. I have done it, and not very successfully.

Unlike in the movies, guys don’t wait and take you one on one giving you time to set up and attack - they swarm you all at once. It’s nearly impossible to act “offensive” in these situations - I did, and got three or four times from literally four different directions before being pulled down to the ground.

The only reason I didn’t get stomped (or worse) was because I have good friends.

The reason that the boxer above is successful is because he does the only thing you can do when fighting more than one person - retreat while striking, don’t get caught up in the group or surrounded, and try and move so that the guys end up coming at you one-on-one, evening the odds for the moment.

Had he slowed down, or they’d cornered him, they’d have fucked him up.

Movies are movies. UFC fighter or not, three (or more guys) will fuck one person up badly. Movies are just movies.

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[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
It is intensely difficult to fight more than one person at a time. I have done it, and not very successfully.

Unlike in the movies, guys don’t wait and take you one on one giving you time to set up and attack - they swarm you all at once. It’s nearly impossible to act “offensive” in these situations - I did, and got three or four times from literally four different directions before being pulled down to the ground.

The only reason I didn’t get stomped (or worse) was because I have good friends.

The reason that the boxer above is successful is because he does the only thing you can do when fighting more than one person - retreat while striking, don’t get caught up in the group or surrounded, and try and move so that the guys end up coming at you one-on-one, evening the odds for the moment.

Had he slowed down, or they’d cornered him, they’d have fucked him up.

Movies are movies. UFC fighter or not, three (or more guys) will fuck one person up badly. Movies are just movies.[/quote]

Hmmm, I guess I can’t argue with you if you’ve actually tried taking on 4 guys at once before in real life. However, you’re an experienced amateur boxer but you’re probably not like 6-5, 265lbs. Wouldn’t a well-trained fighter that huge be hard to drag down to the ground and be able to one-hit any of the average guys?

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I’ve trained for and helped to train students to defend against multiple attackers. 3 instructors in a 3 minute drill usually spent a good 2:30 of it pounding the daylights out of the trainee. It never took more than 5 guys 3 minutes to “kill” a trainee, no matter how big a badass he was, and these trainees knew when they walked into the room that they were in a multiple attacker drill. 6 guys, maybe with weapons, by surprise, in the street? Hope you brought a shotgun.

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5 martial arts instructors is probably a lot worse than 6 normal guys though. I originally said 6 average guys vs 1 of the larger UFC heavyweights. Here’s the link from that movie scene in case it wasn’t clear lol: - YouTube.

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:frowning: The YouTube link didn’t post properly. But just search “Expendables basketball fight” on YouTube.

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UFC fighter…6’5 265lbs…doesn’t matter. Numbers are a serious equalizer for obvious reasons. You say this is hypothetical question…but are carrying on as if you believe the “huge” HW would just walk through a crowd of people like the movies. Unless he’s on bath salts…he gets fucked up,imo. Those situations shouldn’t even be an option unless you’re cornered.

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[quote]Heroic Wolf wrote:

Hmmm, I guess I can’t argue with you if you’ve actually tried taking on 4 guys at once before in real life. However, you’re an experienced amateur boxer but you’re probably not like 6-5, 265lbs. Wouldn’t a well-trained fighter that huge be hard to drag down to the ground and be able to one-hit any of the average guys?[/quote]

You’re getting into that 27 ninjas with machine guns territory here.

“Well, he’s a pro fighter, but he’s also HUGEEEEE, and REALLY strong, and blah blah blah.”

Well yea, a big guy is harder to get down. A big guy who is a fighter is a dangerous guy, absolutely. But against more than one guy, his advantages get cut exponentially.

I once heard it explained like this - you get in a fight, you and the other dude are both going 100 percent at each other. Fairly even. You fight two guys, now you’ve got two guys going 100 percent at you, but all you’ve got is still that 100 percent to give. Three - same thing, now you got three guys with a total of three times as much strength, three times as much energy, and three times as many limbs coming at you.

A really good fighter can beat up on two guys if he hits first, hardest, and knows how to fight against a couple guys. Tyson did that as I recall to a couple guys in a casino a few years back. Even then he’s only one punch - literally, one hard punch - away from being stomped to death. Or one broken bone in your hand, or one knife, or whatever.

Arturo Gatti got in a fight in Miami or NJ, I don’t remember which, and got stabbed in the back. Ask Dicky Eklund how good fighting cops works, even if you’re a boxer. I mean, if you’re just talking strictly a hypothetical in the ring of a Paul Bunyan sized MMA fighter going against a bunch of guys, than maybe he’s got a better shot (but prob not).

In the street, all bets are off. If you got a dude that’s that big and he’s a fighter and I know that, I’m not going to even bother “fighting” him. I’m going to catch him at night when he’s walking to his car after leaving a bar, and I’m gonna hit him in the legs with a bat and then stomp his face in. Dude won’t even see it coming.

Basically, if you put a fighter - and I don’t give a fuck how big he is - against multiple opponents, if he doesn’t do what that boxer did and keep space and range, strike while moving, and not get cornered, he’s gonna get beat down.

12

I am going to agree with FightinIrish(Big surprise I know), Jim, and BigBoss here.

The only addendum I have is that a lot of the survivability depends on the “Half Dozen Guys”.

Are they:

Dedicated to hurting the “one guy”?

Are they willing to suffer/risk injury and death to do it?

Trained?

Etc.

One against six if the six are untrained, inexperienced, and lack commitment is actually possible. If any of the six could give the one guy a tough time one on one, then it could be a murder scene.

This sort of plays into Jim’s “hope you brought a shotgun” statement.

Six guys could probably rush and tear appart even an armed single combatant, but often enough they are less than willing to risk death to do it. If you have a shotgun, or even a handgun, centerpunching the closest may make the others decide to re-locate.

“27 Ninjas with Machine Guns” is untenable. One “Ninja” with a belt fed is too fucking many.

6 guys who aren’t used working through pain and have zero teamwork? If you can stay mobile and thinking you have a chance, though still not a great one.

Regards,

Robert A

13

It definitely matters who the 6 guys are, but only in how long it takes and whether their motivation falters before they win. If a guy is going to participate in a mob assault on someone, chances are he is at least physically average and he is motivated to do violence. Plus, 6 guys at 150 lbs each is 900 lbs. Can your badass squat 900 lbs of flailing limbs explosively enough to remove them? I doubt it. They all jump on you, you fall sooner or later.

Also, no matter how big you are the human head, knee, and other vulnerable points can sustain only so much damage before they cease to function. You can be chopped down, and it’s a lot easier to chop you down when you can’t see the guy who’s hitting you. 6 guys of even below average skill who surround you and throw wild kicks and punches will hit you from angles you can’t see all at once, and faster than you’ve ever been hit before. You truly don’t know what it feels like until you’re getting beat down. I’ve seen students panic and beg for their life in a training situation, in a safe room they’ve trained in for months, with instructors they know and trust. Grown men crying on the floor, even though they know going in that the drill is only 3 minutes long. Extrapolate to a situation with real bad guys, who don’t stop and aren’t wearing gloves. Most people literally never know what hit them.

Are there coping strategies for dealing with this “oh shit” kind of situation? Sure. As Irish said: you keep moving, you keep them coming one at a time. You get a weapon. You break their morale. You get some help. You get the fuck out of there. You shoot them. It sounds simple, until the guy you thought you put down lands a good solid shot to your temple and you’re cut and seeing stars. Then you could be fighting 6 gimpy midgets, and I wouldn’t bet against the midgets. Hell you could even have a gun, and I’m not going to lay money that you’ll be able to draw and fire the damn thing, let alone hit someone while they’re applying a boot to your head.

Bottom line: mob assaults will ruin your day even if you’ve trained for them. And most people haven’t.

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Edited - Nevermind

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As a CQB instructor for Federal LEO/ Military SRT’s, I usually read this forum when i am lucky enough to have a signal. Along with several unit members, we usually train a random group of students/ operators about three times a week. Nothing two structured: MT/Boxing/JJ/ KM/ CQB handgun-knife drills/ etc, whatever you bring to the table , our motto is “This is a combat dojo, bring your own style”.

Having said all that, and being privileged to have worked and trained under some remarkable operators,thinking that you could survive againist numerous attackers (pick a number) is a mental handjob. Anyone with even a LITTLE EXPERIENCE,would know the only to win a SERIOUS attack, is weapons and backup.

There is a reason operators spend so much time on weapons skills, in real life it works. A personal request for the regulars on this board: how about we stick to topics that we all can benefit from, regardless of experience levels? examples being the recent padwork from Irish, the thread about combat handgunning from Robert A., comments posed from Sento guy and Miss Parker, just to name a few. This kind of speculation on multiple attackers will just get some rookie killed.

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[quote]idaho wrote:
A personal request for the regulars on this board: how about we stick to topics that we all can benefit from, regardless of experience levels? examples being the recent padwork from Irish, the thread about combat handgunning from Robert A., comments posed from Sento guy and Miss Parker, just to name a few. This kind of speculation on multiple attackers will just get some rookie killed. [/quote]

THIS. You’re not the only person with that request. We try…but the “brotard” swarm keeps growing…lol. Excellent post by the way…from someone with real-world credentials on the matter.

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usually u have to keep moving and don’t let a group surround u. there a better chance of surviving a group encounter. once u knock the freak out of the first 2 guys the rest hesitates. i got into a couple situations like that and survived and seen others fights likewise.

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I have some experience with this.

Who you are is irrelevant. One thing I’ve learned about fighting is that it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about how much you’d have to sacrifice to win. Nobody actually wins in a street fight, one guy just loses a little less than the other guy. I’ll give you an example; I have a friend who got into a fight and managed a one punch knock out. Basically, this is the best you can hope for, but even in this situation he broke two of his own knuckles and they’re now pushed back a good half an inch permanently. Sure, he won the fight, but did he actually win anything? Fuck no. His hand may as well be made of glass now.

A more personal example I have is similar the 1v6 situation you’ve mentioned above, but with knives. Even though we all had knives and I was outnumbered, nothing happened. Why? Because even though they could’ve easily turned my ass into pumice, whoever ‘took the first stab at it’ was almost guaranteed to get stabbed himself, which is an enormous deterrent for someone in their right mind. Also, I had nothing to lose, legally speaking. I could go for the throat on all of them and get off on self-defence, meaning they would literally have to kill me to diffuse the situation once things got started, and if they killed me, they’d be flushing their own futures down the toilet. Luckily for me, I wasn’t worth ruining their lives over.

My point is, you don’t have to beat all six guys to end the fight, you just have to make their sacrifice worth more than the prospect of beating you, and they’ll back down. When they swarm you, odds are you’ll be able to grab hold of at least one finger. Break it. Do whatever it is you have to do to get the message across that beating you has a high price. As far as I’m concerned, all seven of you walking away from the situation a little bloodied up is more of a win than knocking out all six of them at the price of a concussion and several broken bones (which is a much, MUCH smaller price than you’re likely to pay).

A little disclaimer, because if I don’t say this someone else will anyway, this isn’t something you can bank on. Some people really would rather fuck you up than live a long, healthy life, and you absolutely can ‘trash-talk’ someone into this mindset, so keep your own temper under control. Don’t go picking fights with groups of people with the expectation that you can just ‘out-crazy’ them. There’s nothing ‘cool’ about street fighting other than your stiff, lifeless body after meeting one of these ‘actually crazy’ people.

That’s my two cents on the issue.

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[quote]Big_Boss wrote:

[quote]idaho wrote:
A personal request for the regulars on this board: how about we stick to topics that we all can benefit from, regardless of experience levels? examples being the recent padwork from Irish, the thread about combat handgunning from Robert A., comments posed from Sento guy and Miss Parker, just to name a few. This kind of speculation on multiple attackers will just get some rookie killed. [/quote]

THIS. You’re not the only person with that request. We try…but the “brotard” swarm keeps growing…lol. Excellent post by the way…from someone with real-world credentials on the matter. [/quote]

Agreed. You’ll notice Idaho that the regulars don’t start threads like this one and when we do comment it’s usually pretty unanimously agreed that the thread topic is just fantasizing and that the original poster should get some actual experience training (which will likely give them the answer they were looking for).

In regards to the original topic, I also agree with Irish, DDJ, Robert, and everyone else who said that if the 6 average guys are motivated, even semi organized, and the environment is even semi enclosed, then the HW UFC fighter is screwed. Even if those criteria aren’t met the best anyone can hope for in a multiple attacker scenario is to survive it; you don’t “win” against those types of odds.

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Been a doorman I have experienced this and witnessed it from afar and can tell you anything can happen.Personally I would try and talk my way out of it by trying to convince them I’m crazy lol.But if it does kick off the one thing you hope for is just to not get too beat up or worse.I’ve been jumped by guys with bars and planks of wood and lived through that to see them running once I got a weapon off them.But also seen someone get jumped by a group of football hooligans who are obviously experienced in gutless attacks like this and I can safely say not many would stand a chance as they circle you and take pot shots when your looking in the opposite direction.

Best advice in a situation like this is run.