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Virtually any heavyweight MMA guy today would beat Muhammad Ali half to death if they weren't fighting under boxing rules.
They'd also beat virtually any gladiator, in an MMA fight. Give both guys a helmet, breastplate, shield and a mace and my money's on the gladiator though. Might as well compare a mixed martial artist to a Marine sniper.
So a 6 foot tall, 205 pound Roman gladiator trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, for example, would be defeated by a 6 foot tall, 205 pound modern day UFC fighter trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitzu?
I hope it is obvious that that is rhetorical.
That's why I said "in just about every case". There would be a few outliers among the gladiators in terms of physical size. Not likely they'd have access to much literature or training in martial arts though, as modern fighters do.
Virtually any heavyweight MMA guy today would beat Muhammad Ali half to death if they weren't fighting under boxing rules.
They'd also beat virtually any gladiator, in an MMA fight. Give both guys a helmet, breastplate, shield and a mace and my money's on the gladiator though. Might as well compare a mixed martial artist to a Marine sniper.
Was this thread created in order to demonstrate that there are worse topics that alternate history?
Because this is an order of magnitude more ridiculous.
Not really history, is it? More typical of the Sports forum where people always want to compare the best teams from way back when to the current champions.
Like the Gladiators from the Roman Empire or Knights in Medieval times, if they had hand-to-hand combat with the toughest UFC/MMA fighters today do you think they could still compete?
Well, what are the "rules of the game?" - unarmed hand to hand, armed with swords, knives, axes, mace, whatever?
I mean, a modern sniper with a Barrett could plink a gladiator who was out in the open over a mile away, and the gladiator would not know what hit him. Same with medieval knights.
But if you put a suit of armor on a modern soldier, with no prior training, probably an experienced knight could take him down pretty handily.
I think if the game is MMA, unarmed, yeah, modern fighters are in so much better condition, and again the gladiator or knight is forced to "play the other guy's game", so would not be surprised to find the modern MMA guys winning most matches.
BTW I don't think *reasonable* alternative history is necessarily bunk. F-35 against chariot is bunk. But if you imagine pitting the F-35 pilot against the chariot driver in a MMA match, I don't think that's necessarily bunk. Equipping the Confederate soldiers with AK-47 rifles is bunk (but it made up into an interesting book) - but speculating how the war would have gone if a certain battle, a fairly close battle, went the other way than how it actually did, is a good way to discuss and you get into not so much *what* happened, but *why* did things go down the way they did. And to me that's what makes history interesting, the why, not just the what, the endless memorization of facts and figures (dates) - all of which are available on your smart phone anyway. Just sayin'.
Like the Gladiators from the Roman Empire or Knights in Medieval times, if they had hand-to-hand combat with the toughest UFC/MMA fighters today do you think they could still compete?
It's been pointed out by others previously, that the gladiators fought with several kinds of very nasty hand weapons. I'm assuming that we're talking about the ones who were the best and had practiced a long time with them. Modern fighters mostly go bare-handed and would have no skill with those old weapons and would be devastated, if they had to defend against them. I'd bet on the old gladiators, if they were using those weapons, even if the modern fighters were also equipped with them. And being realistic, what modern fighter would be foolish enough to accept a challenge to go against someone who was experienced with such weapons? It would be comparable to them taking a knife to a gunfight.
Math Guy, I think I have heard of the book you mentioned. And it wasn't just bulls and horses and ponies they used to rape a victim to death.Understand they used other animals as well. Could roman gladiators, regardless of country of origin take on modern day soldiers ,MMA fighters, etc. yes. Don't know who would win, but there are various factors such as height ,weight, muscle mass etc.
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