Five Fight Factors

Martial Artists success in fights is multi-dimensional, and doesn't come down to any one attribute:


There are 5 factors I look at in a martial artist to gauge their probably success in a conflict; skill, strategy, size, stamina and spite:

• Skill is where martial artists excel. There are two considerations here: variety of skill and depth of skill. Keep in mind there's no such thing as a technique mastered outside of full contact sparring, so when considering the variety of techniques someone has, consider their sparring practices and what variety of techniques they often spar with. How perfected a technique is depends on how strong of opponents they are sparring and how much resistance can their technique overcome consistently.
• Strategy covers those techniques not normally practiced in sparring, such as eye gouges and groin kicks, but also running away, using the environment to full advantage, situational awareness and so on. Non martial arts related activities such as team sports, study and gaming can build strategic thinking. If a nerd waits for you to use the urinal and comes out of the stall with a mechanical pencil between your shoulder blades, you just got outsmarted through strategy.
• Spite is having an aggressive mental mind set that will assist you in doing what has to be done to win. Some call this "will to win," but there are many motivations and reasons to lack empathy that can increase spite in a conflict. Spite means you can't let yourself lose, there is too much on the line for you to let up on your opponent for any reason. Spite is your mental mindset beyond skill and strategy
• Size matters a great deal in self defense. The two sizes mentioned in professional fighting are the two dimensions to pay attention to: body weight and reach. People who are larger than you are harder for you to hurt, and it is easier for you to be hurt by them, just because of simple physics. However superior reach gives your opponent options you simply don't have: this is obvious at striking range where you can easily be "out reached," but even on the ground grappling they have a wider variety of places they can grasp you than your grasping options, and often can land submissions on you that you can't do on them.
• Stamina or in other words physical conditioning also plays a key factor, for two reasons. Most obviously the longer a fight goes on, the more stamina comes into play, and can completely determine the outcome of a fight if one fighter has poor conditioning. Less obviously and more importantly, the more stamina a fighter has, the more they can train and spar, and the more rapidly they can build skill.

Age can take its toll on all of the above, as less techniques become safe to spar with, strategic options decrese, wisdom overcomes mental brutality, bone and muscle density decay, and effectiveness of working out in the gym declines. Keep this in mind:

However some martial artists age faster as fighters than others, and that mostly comes down to how serious and frequently they are injured. One fighter might retire from MMA competition because of permanent injury in his late twenties, while another might not start competing until his early thirties. It is important to spar full contact, but it is also important to spar safely.

Let's take Brock Lesnar for example. With a background in real wrestling and money for the best private coaches around, Lesnar had formidable technical skill in the ring. Strategically he focused on exactly what was likely to win against each individual opponent, maximizing his personal advantages. He maintained a bully like fearless attitude that enraged critics and dominated in the ring. At six foot three and 286 pounds, he had superior body weight and reach. His stamina and conditioning is the stuff of legend, considered extreme even in the world of professional fighting.

From 2008 to 2010 he was the MMA fighter to beat, but then his health soured and he went back to professional wrestling after a few less impressive fights. The following is pure fiction portrayed by Lesnar, but illustrates the five fight factors: