Having an argument with a friend - would the likes of McGregor win against a professional rugby player (imagine 6’5 and 110kg) if they stepped in the cage right now?
The potential for the rugby player to be left with life-changing injuries/damage is immense. It's not a question of if McGregor would win, rather, how much punishment the untrained man would receive.
People that don't know how to fight make so many literal elementary mistakes it's frightening to think of the damage someone who can fight can do to them, then you're talking about a world class fighter who is renowned, in
his sport, for knocking people out with a single shot. People who position themselves better, can roll with a punch, don't expose their chin in the same way the untrained do. Weight and size aren't going to help you there, they can make things even worse as that weight and size is used against them and the shot lands multiple times heavier on someone, invariably walking into it - in the same way a heavy bag is used to develop power, the rugby man's body and size would be with all that force and trauma going straight through him.
I see a lot of talk about takedowns and grappling, but small people are never going to do that against bigger people because the element of risk and the variables of just being mauled increase exponentially - why even give the bigger man a chance when you can stay on the outside and pick them off at will?
I don't know what part of rugby your friend thinks translates to MMA outside of spearing someone Goldberg style? Adopting martial art principles, negates all the generative power of the aforementioned sport - you don't scrum/crunch; you don't barrel into an opponent in a ring/octagon, and you don't get the run up to attempt tackles to the lower body, besides which, it would be a suicidal thing to attempt in a fight, so apart from being big and an athlete, rugby gives no transferable benefits, and you've just got a larger man with no fighting skill or experience against someone constantly refining his striking, movement and timing to what are incomprehensible levels for a layman, which is what the rugby player is in an octagon.
There's also the sheer shock, to the brain and body, of being hit, and I mean hit, not barged or tackled - more an actual shin to shin strike, or a shin to the calf; an oblique kick; any strike to the soft tissue on the back of the entire leg area or the inside of the knee, a punch to the liver; to the stomach; to the jaw; to the nose; to the temples. You're likely to have a scenario where the rugby guy's brain simply shuts down after one or two leg kicks - this even happens to trained boxers who venture into full contact or MMA, it's also a primary reason why Muay Thai is suggested as a quick method to get yourself a solid level of self defence against normal people who like causing trouble - a couple of kicks to the leg alters most people's path of resistance and stops their intent dead in its tracks. Conor's kicks are superb against professionals in his sport - he wouldn't even have to throw a punch if he didn't want to.
You really need to understand the gulf between a world class fighter and even a fighter, let alone someone with no experience. Conor would easily end a untrained big guy in any number of ways he selects from, like I said, the biggest issue here is just how much damage he ends up inflicting, not whether he would win.
Exactly. Told ya
@Arbitrium.
If size mattered that little then Mighty Mouse could have been facing off against the lesser UFC heavyweights too as his skillset is far beyond theirs.
Basic body mechanics surely dictate that there's a limit to the amount of strength and power a smaller body can produce? In which case even a supremely skilled tiny fighter will struggle to produce the power needed to hurt a much, much larger man.
People talk about fighters having insufficient power when they hop up one division ffs, let alone when they face people literally twice their size.
The UFC is [supposedly] a professional organisation; you won't see freakshows like the bolded in it again - go back to its inception and you get to see comedic bouts like sumos' vs 140lb men etc.
I bet MM and pals in camp who are much heavier than he is have a lot of mess about sessions as happens practically everywhere.
This concept that a little guy cannot hurt a big guy with no training is really out there. The study of basic body mechanics and soft spots (weak points) teach how to cause the maximum amount of damage per strike - Conor, due to being bigger, would chop the untrained tree down in less time, but MM, with his own strikes will topple it too through accumulative strikes to the exact same spots. He'll deaden that calf, thigh or hyper-extend that knee eventually - if the untrained guy hasn't quit by then.
I have the impression when you talk about 'power' you're talking about MM chinning a giant? The reality is more likely to be MM doesn't even attempt to do that, but let me ask you how many strikes an unconditioned to striking body can take to the liver or solar plexus in your opinion? Also the generative power of legs is multiple times higher than that of a hand or elbow - the untrained guy would be an absolute moron to think he couldn't be KO'd by a footstrike to the body.
Your last point about division hopping is wholly different to the rest of what you've written because relativity plays a hand here and it then becomes extremely dangerous for the smaller man to be taking accumulative, or even single strike damage from a fighter who may well be equally skilled as he, a bit slower, but a lot more powerful. TJ vs. MM is treacherous ground for MM, and a risk-free fight for TJ, for example. There are countless examples of smaller guys being destroyed by bigger guys because their skill level does not make them immune to the damage via shot absorption from a heavier framed man. This is opposed to 'twice their size with no skill in combat whatsoever and highly unlikely to be able to land a single hit let alone cause accumulative damage.'
By 5'2 MM?
He's almost a dwarf, does he trip him up? If the big man closes the distance I can't see how MM can fend him off to get the space for a takedown.
Especially if the man is a 6'8 A grade athlete himself.
In any open space, an octagon, in this instance, that 6'8 untrained man isn't going to land anything on MM - I would even put money on that being the case for actual lower level UFC HW's who will slow, and gas inside of five minutes trying to chase MM. You need someone with ring generalship to corner him and get a grapple on; MM's speed, stamina, movement and reflexes are all off the charts - he makes people in his own weight class look slow and it takes elite fighters to even hang with him. Everything HW's do would look like slow motion to him, obviously the skilled grapplers can just walk him down and once they lay hands on him, it's over and done with, but most of the HW division are not skilled (relative to MM) or have the stamina and mental acuity to keep up or impede MM's movement and options.
Explosiveness is relative, a 6'8 grade A athlete with no training, is slow beyond belief in MM's world:
everything he does is telegraphed and he has zero ring smarts or awareness of what he is being set up for. It doesn't matter what his stamina level is, by default it isn't a patch on MM's. Mighty Mouse could work on their knees, calves and thighs, as well as his liver all fight long with no rebuttal whatsoever - there's no way for this untrained guy to do anything - he's an oaf moving in slow motion as far as MM is concerned. You would need to massively condense the size of the fighting area to reduce these disparities and make this a hypothetical contest.
