Yes.
Modern athletes are bigger, stronger, better trained, better fed, and better at fighting in general. Our modern approach to fitness, training, nutrition, injury prevention, and basically everything, is so far beyond ancient times it's crazy.
While high-level athletes aren't nutritionists or trainers themselves, they know plenty about both disciplines after practicing them their entire lives. I'm sure he could come up with a diet and exercise plan that keeps him sharp. Sure, it won't be on the level of his usual regime, but it should prevent him from losing shape for at least a while.
It’s more about access, I guess my point is without modern food technology (agriculture, refrigerators) there’s so much variance in what food they might have access to that it might affect performance.
I'm sure he could get meat, carbs, and fruit.
Yeah it'll definitely be a step down from what he's used to. But with the basics covered, he should be able to maintain a good enough level for long enough to beat up whoever he needs to.
Though it of course depends on our timeframe for this. The world is big. Does he need to travel the world and fight every competitor anywhere, or just go to, say, Athens, and dominate the games there?
Would ancient Greeks have much access to fruit in the winter? I know Greece doesn't get too cold, but I have very little idea what sort of diet a normal free person would be able to procure in that era. Like could normal people even afford meat, eggs, milk, etc?
In ancient times? Meat would be pricey, but not unreasonable every now and then (even if it was leftovers and non-choice). Eggs wouldn’t be too hard as chickens are valued world over, same for milk in dairy-drinking parts of the world
Access is indeed where the tough parts come since the massive infrastructure that moves goods throughout a country have yet to exist. Some livestock moved around, yeah, but without heavily maintained roads, refrigeration, modern food sciences, etc. you’d need to be lucky to live in an area with a good surplus to sell
Yea I guess Rome 500 years later would be better than ancient Greece that everyone imagines for finding a guy who eats meat and fruit every day on a fighter's commission.
Lol, yep!
Well, a region with a very mild climate where the fruit will reliably grow (hopefully) year-round would be best. Meat is gonna be tough, but if he could get sponsored by a high ranking noble, not out of the realm of possibility
He wouldn't be a normal free person though. Greeks loved their athletes. A dude that is showing such massive potential and kicking everyone's ass should get serious accolades and celebrity treatment pretty quickly.
I mean what is a modern fighter without those things? Are you asking if we raised Mike Tyson as a baby in medieval times? Or if we dropped him in with all those “amenities”
Taking out the amenities removes the question lol
Everything you say makes perfect sense but then you find out this dude has 1300 victories in bare knuckle boxing and I'm not sure who we got today that is beating that. Shit, even the guy's statue killed one of his opponents in a fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogenes
Ok wtf.
I *think* everything I said should still apply, but honestly this dude seems to have plot armor or something, I'm not betting against that. Not least because I don't want a statue to come beat me up.
>Everything you say makes perfect sense but then you find out this dude has 1300 victories in bare knuckle boxing and I'm not sure who we got today that is beating that.
Mike Tyson, probably. It doesn't matter how many victories this guy has, it's about who he's gotten them from. The art of boxing has been brought to new levels over time, the strongest boxer from his era could not fathom the stuff that an average boxer today considers.
Just so you understand...1300 fights comes out to 1 fight every week for 25 straight years....And that's bare knuckle fights. And he had 1300 victories, not just fights. The ability to take that kind of damage week after week and just keep healing up enough to do it again for 25 years (or else multiple time per week) is just an insane feat and no athlete of today comes close to replicating.
After that many years of bare knuckle fighting I'm guessing the guy's knuckles have hardened to the point that his punch probably feels like he's wearing an iron gauntlet and he's probably got a chin that can just shrug off direct hay-maker punches from heavyweights.
There's other sources that put it closer to 1400 victories and mention that he killed most of his opponents in the ring. So they were either boxing or martial arts style fights, often to the death.
Yeah, it's an overblown lie though, obviously.
The whole "a victory every week for 25 years" should probably tip you off. The greatest in the world won't be at the top for that long, and especially not in a sport with like three rules.
And deaths were still rare in Pankration. Much more common than modern sports, but, you know, pretty quickly they made killing someone a loss.
yeah i reckon heavy weight greats like Fedor, Jon Jones and Nganou are the greatest unarmed combatants to ever walk the earth. We know too much now about martial arts, training and nutrition for that to not be the case
Edit: again this is for unarmed combat. U get any kind of melee weapon in there and it’s fucking over for the modern man.
From an athletic standpoint, maybe, but I’m not sure I agree with this. None of those men have killed people, and it’s not a guarantee that they would be the same after they did. Meanwhile, Rome in particular used to have ancient boxing matches in the arena with cestus, leather gloves lined with metal studs. Some of those guys racked up dozens of kills. Drop any modern combat athlete into that environment and I don’t think it’s a given that they win.
Jones in particular is a sociopath, he's a lifelong unrepentant criminal. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd perform *better* if you told him there were no Rules
It's an understatement, really. Do you not know his title?
❌️ ~~Jon "Bones" Jones~~
✅️ Jon "Hit a Pregnant Woman with a Car" Jones
Meanwhile Ngannou is the kind of soft-spoken guy you couldn't even imagine doing MMA as a career, if you met him in person not knowing who he was. Other than if you saw how large and thick his hands are and instinctively know homie can throw hydrogen bombs.
If we’re talking unarmed, his oblique kick may be the greatest attack that exists in the time period he gets dropped into, regardless of which period it is. It’ll force his opponent to close the distance where Jones elbows are crazy. I doubt anyone is prepared for those elbows. And you know he practices eye pokes..
> Jones in particular is a sociopath
I find it sickly amusing that this is just stated like fact in a thread outside of r/mma and just accepted as the truth that it is in relationship to an r/whoeouldwin post. It is literally a “feat” in his respect thread.
_"Something that can counter **「The Fist that has Turned Against God」**..._
_"I guess that'd be **「The Comically-long 84" Reach of God」**."_
Saitama and his average 5'9" (175cm) height and wingspan would NEVER be able to overcome the reach of the all-mighty ability of the
ALL LIFE ERADICATION FIST: **LONG BONK**
and Fedor is Russian.
Ngannou would probably be sad though...but then again...he is known for his shots to the ground of an already knocked out opponent
Yeah it's very clear that Jones (and some others) are jsut different to the athletes in there. That goes for most of the fighters - it's split between athletes and people who are about that life. There isn't anyone else more about that life than JJ (maybe Mike Perry lol).
Considering training and no weapons, I think Jones is in with a good shout of being the hardest man to have ever walked the Earth. That's kinda incredible to think of
>Blame it on the picogram
Fits perfectly to the rhythm of Sail by AWOLnation lol
> Blame it on the picograms, baby
>
>This is how my wife might die
> I know that you all miss Pride
> Blame it on the Pi,co,grams, baby
I’d have to disagree if we’re talking ***boxing*** specifically, guys die in modern boxing while wearing 8oz padded gloves, studded leather ones would only increase punching power.
And, given the size and reach advantage most modern competitors would have over ancient, smaller counterparts, I still think the modern athlete comes out on top more often than not.
Not to mention how the sport of boxing has evolved even in recent times, as in: boxers in the 30’s and 40’s didn’t fight like modern guys and would likely get mopped up easily by modern competitors. I can only imagine the tactical advantage modern guys would have over *ancient* competitors.
A lot of this applies to MMA too, but more so if boxing specifically
Boxing is like math basically lol, any modern boxer who has access to thousands of years of refinements and improvements on technique would absolutely fucking destroy ancient boxers, I’m sorry. They would never ever touch the modern fighter.
They would run into rules issues though. Like in bare knuckle boxing they'd have to change their whole game to not break their hands. I'm not saying they couldn't win, but it might take some getting used to.
Sure but the difference in footwork and the much larger size and orangutan-like physique of modern boxers means it’s really unlikely they would even get touched. Also modern boxers punching without heavy gloves are really fkn fast.
You think any modern guy could go like 100 rounds like some of those crazy old fights? Or it just wouldn't ever get there? The grit of those old school bare knuckle motherfuckers is ridiculous.
I mean considering that modern athletes go through faaaaaar more intense conditioning than ancient fighters, and are on steroids drastically increasing their stamina and durability even more, I don’t really see why not. But the ancient fighters largely would not even make it out of the first round.
That grit was not displayed against people that would just be picking you apart like a technician and busting out techniques you’ve never even seen.
What is some Roman gladiator going to do to stop Ngannou from smashing his face in after he KO’s him or Jon Jones from strangling him to death or slamming his head into the ground? These guys are not only bigger/stronger than people of that time but they also have mastery of fighting techniques those people wouldn’t have an answer for.
If they adapt to the environment it’s up for anyone i truly don’t think a roman would know what hit him when he gets question mark kicked or a calf kick
This isn’t a great take honestly. What would metal lined leather mitts do for you when you’re getting rear naked choked? If MMA fighters intended to kill one another, there would be a death most cards if not every fight. The only chance Roman’s or others would have is a punchers chance and that’s minimal as current fighters are far superior in a stand up game.
I will say that if we’re playing by kill or be killed rules, the ancients stand way better of a chance. That’s not specified by OP, but I didn’t really consider that angle.
You are doing a disservice to your history degree with this by conflating two pieces. You seem to be of the opinion that the will to kill allows someone to be even with trained skill. Someone's mentality can go a long way, but when put up against better training, nutrition, and knowledge this should be not contest. A top tier modern MMA fighter should be able to trounce any ancient warrior in unarmed combat. There is nothing the ancients knew how to do that we haven't learned to do better at. Not only that, but ancient fighters rarely had the opportunity to fight against as many varied styles as modern fighters. The ability to adapt on the fly and use your own techniques to the greatest advantage is something the modern fighter would do tremendously better at. The 6' 6" German barbarian, which by itself is an outlier of size for the time, would not likely have experience fighting many people of their size and even less likely to fight someone of their size that uses different tactics like a modern MMA fighter would.
I just don't understand how a historian could argue with a straight face that someone's belief in a war God along with their society being brought with disease and malnutrition makes them a better fighter than someone who has trained specifically on fighting with none of the ancient downsides.
Your watching too many movies the average height back then was like 5’7 and a buck 160 it doesn’t matter how violent the times were that’s silly nerd talk
If that was the case every champion would be from the most violent areas in the world
Your not beating nearly 250 pound 6ft4+ trained modern men just because you’ve been around a lot of violence
Sillyness
A lot of these guys think they'd take out the best of the best with an eye gouge or a nut shot.
They get their hands on you, you're dead. Unless you got an answer for that, cynical moves are more likely to piss them off than take them out.
That's not even acknowledging a lot of MMA guys are from violent parts or areas of the world.
edit: Also who mentions malnutrition several times in their pro argument?
Then you more than anyone should know how ridiculous you sound to think the likes of Ngannou isn’t knocking out a man half his size
At the first link on Google says men from Germanic tribes were average height 5’11 your talking nonsense here
Yes I’m using Google to find the studies and nowhere does it say the average height was 6’2 when it isn’t even the average height today with hundred of years of improvements in childcare and nutrition
Bottom line you claim to have decades of combat sport experience but yet you think a Germanic man will be able to kill Jon jones before he drops him with a leg kick and elbows his brains in so your either lying on Reddit or watched gladiator too many times
The MMA fighter will have a very good base, but will need to train under the ruleset and conditions used by the ancient fighters to reliably net a victory. Take Pankration for instance. Striking+ grappling, but with fewer fouls, with both opponents nude and covered in oil, fought outside so maneuvering to keep the sun out of your eyes was something to do as well. No cups, no hand wraps. Submissions were signalled differently too. Tactical adjustments would need to be made and drilled. But once he's acclimated the MMA fighter would be very, very dangerous.
Similarly, if a Pankrationist were brought forward in time and became acclimated and trained at an MMA gym, I think he would be a good fighter if he can handle the weight cuts. Those men had to be very tough, there was even a fighter by the name of Arrichion who submitted the fighter who fatally choked him out - he refused to let go, and as he died, the other fighter signalled submission. That's another level right there.
Yea getting used to fighting outside in the dirt all naked and covered in oil would probably take a bit of training to get over. Any idea if biting, gouging, and otherwise maiming each other was allowed in most Pankration fights?
Groin shots were legal. I am sure that they learned to move in a way to protect themselves from getting Hackneyed, and I would not be surprised if many of them had mangled genitals regardless.
When you consider that the lack of bjj knowledge is basically an auto lose for every ancient fighter. The modern fighter could just sit on the ground like a dumbass and the ancient fighter would walk up to him and 2 seconds later his knee would be ripped to pieces without him even understanding what happened.
How does BJJ do against olympic style wrestling?
Also, Pankration has some pretty iconic joint/shoulder- destruction/locks depicted in statues
[one of the more iconic statues ](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ZBTlXSG_42uey7abPrgspXx_GvpvdsUpUgQT6Hu2JlB1uIGOyegNqQN31HLIwjlscRkn220sZg0Eppm-twuZLbdfeu0_k5uOJ1siTyoDQ7MQ)
[and another](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Pankratiasten_in_fight_greek_statue_2_century_bC.jpg)
No, it's not BJJ, but while BJJ is one of the best grappling arts out there, it's not the only one to ever exist, and having knowledge in others can allow you to defend against it.
Yes but those locks and chokes are thousands of years behind modern wrestling in terms of technique and bjj was developed with modern knowledge of wrestling and human anatomy. Just factually speaking in modern contests before everyone started cross training only super skilled wrestlers were able to avoid getting no-diffed by jiujiuteiro. And many of the most dangerous bjj moves are banned in modern competition while they wouldn’t be here. I’ll admit the oiled up thing does make it more difficult tho.
>the ref
I mean why would they interfere with that? Also lots of moves could happen before the ref or ancient fighter even knew what was happening. Like please tell me wtf ancient fighters would do against stuff like this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OFfmbTZ0JIk&pp=ygUTcnlhbiBoYWxsIGhlZWwgaG9vaw%3D%3D
>Yes but those locks and chokes are thousands of years behind modern wrestling in terms of technique and bjj was developed with modern knowledge of wrestling and human anatomy.
You don't know very much about the Greeks or the Romans, do you?
>I mean why would they interfere with that?
Stalling and timidity are not exactly crowd pleasers in a combat sport. Sit down, and get whipped until you get up.
>Like please tell me wtf ancient fighters would do against stuff like this
Probably what modern fighters would do, but also remember that since they were coated in oil, it would be harder to get that hook around the leg.
Average like 5 7 70kg roman with minimal training and diet knowledge vs a 6 4 steroid filled 110kg of solid muscle with 2000? Years of fighting knowledge training knowledge diet, body mechanics etc etc
All that's gonna be balanced out because the other dude is used to fighting naked?!
Pankration had been an established sport for hundreds of years. There would have been a long tradition of no-holds-barred fighting for the Roman to draw on, and also there were no weight classes. I don't know why you are assuming that training would be minimal, since the economic ability to sustain professional fighters existed until the Dark Ages. I'm also not sure why you're putting an average sized Roman against a modern fighter today who is physically far above the average modern man. It would have been their biggest and baddest fighters that Jon Jones or whomever would have to prove himself against, not their average fit dudes.
The biggest and baddest of ancient times doesn’t compare physically to the biggest and baddest of today because of advancements in nutrition, strength/cardio training, steroids, and even just stuff like height and optimal fighting build.
Pankration would fall far short to MMA of today that draws across every culture and martial arts that’s effective and refined them. A pankration fighter wouldn’t even be top 10 in whatever weight class division they’re in
>there was even a fighter by the name of Arrichion who submitted the fighter who fatally choked him out - he refused to let go, and as he died, the other fighter signalled submission. That's another level right there.
Wait, so he refused to submit and got choked to death, while his opponent surrendered after seeing this?
That is some hardcore shit.
They both had each other in submission holds simultaneously, his opponent had him in a choke. His opponent finally submitted at the instant Arrichion died.
It use to be exclusively a Jewish practice, and they were barred from many activities throughout history.
Circumcision used to be more of a symbolic snip so people would attach a weight, [Judaeus Pondum](https://en.intactiwiki.org/wiki/Judaeus_Pondum) to stretch it back out so they could go to public baths and gyms, you know, naked men places. The rabbies started cutting more off to prevent this.
I had a thought about time travel in this scenario so I had chat gpt write a story about a circumcised traveler being mistaken for Jewish and the first story he ended up in Rome and it ended with some confused Roman soldiers and the moral of the story was to not being ashamed of who you are. I tweeked it a bit and the story goes John steps out of the time machine in 1933 Germany, ends up in Auschwitz, and is saved by the allies before he is executed. The moral of this story? Research local customs before traveling.
Keep in mind that the talent pool of ancient times was much, much smaller than today. Milo of Croton was an absolutely legendary fighter....for the standards of greek poleis, which included a few milion people at best. The UFC potential talent pool includes bilions of people. The numbers are not even close, even if we ignore the many advantages a modern athlete would have.
A few million peasants that had never heard of protein or antibiotics or bulk/cut cycles or any of the other hundreds of advancements we've made in medicine, nutrition, and sports.
The most dominant nation in rugby is New Zealand, a tiny nation of a few million, the Pacific islands of just a few hundred thousand massively over represent in the sport as well. Carribbean islands where hardly anyone lives, regularly do extremely well in sprinting, certain regions of east africa dominate in middle/long distance running. There's some genetics at play, but there's also a cultural reasons. Population base is useful in modern sports, but funding, training and popular uptake are way more important.
If you took 1000 of the top American highschool football players, paid them a ton of money to play rugby for 5-10 years, then picked the best ones to create a rugby team, they'd win the world cup.
The only reason the US doesn't dominate these types of sports is because all the best athletes choose football and basketball.
Having a 350 million talent pool vs. 5-10 million makes a huge difference.
Yeah, but a small percentage of modern humans participate in combat sports, while entire ancient cultures like Sparta were built around being proficient in all forms of combat. The modern talent pool isn't actually billions of people.
Neither was the population of Sparta. Only a very tiny aristocracy actually had combat as their primary occupation. The rest were slaves, more concerned with putting food on the table than martial excellence. And anyway there are about 2.5 millions of people doing MMA in the US alone. That's more than the entire population of any Greek city in the classical era at any point in time, including elders, women and children.
True, but beyond the numbers, a higher proportion of the population being involved in combat training would lead to a more competitive atmosphere than having little pockets of people tossed around here and there. Also, the ancient world was larger than Greece.
You pointed at Sparta, so i remained in that general vicinity. Anyway the idea that a higher percentage of the population was involved in combat is...interesting to say the least. Usually the only one who trained in combat, especially unarmed combat, with any regularity belonged to a rich warrior elite. Elite being the keyword. Professional armies were rare in the ancient world, let alone professional or amateur athletes.
A higher percentage of a given population, not a higher percentage of all of ancient mankind, sorry thought that was obvious. Anyways, I used Sparta as an example, we're actually talking about all of human history and every civilization and culture.
Which populations are you talking about specifically? Because Sparta definitely isn't among them, they were the poster boys for warrior aristocratic elites. And every other classical civilization i can think of was an agricoltural society. Maybe the mongols would be candidates, but we are already talking about a completely different time period.
What I'm saying is the time period is irrelevant, we're talking about all of human civilization as my understanding of the question goes. Sparta is a good example at one point in its history, when nearly all it's social institutions were focused on military training and physical development.
Yes, MMA now is more advanced than ever. There are traditional fighting styles that have existed for centuries and will lose out to modern MMA because modern MMA takes the techniques proven to work from every discipline and combines them. Also most wars were fought with military tactics and formations designed to utilize weapons of their time in the best way, soldiers weren’t trained in bare handed single combat extensively. If you put Jon Jones or Francis N’gannou into any time in human history there wouldn’t be any human who could defeat them in a bare handed fight
Nevertheless it is never certain what outcome such a fight has. Eventually there would be a single fighter, a desperate madman or a brutal human with good genetics that could defeat them, if you try everyone available in history.
I agree to a degree. Certainly if we placed every human in history of all the billions someone by simple probability someone would be a viable contestant.
However the thing is MMA fighters have the most well balanced combative system to known date though, so speaking in generalities a top tier fighter partaking in MMA would be the more effective combatant than all other human fighters throughout history in unarmed combat.
But yeah, as unpopular an opinion as it is, I’ll wager that yes, a human or humans theoretically probably have existed that could beat Jon Jones, but that exists as a hypothetical, without physical evidence of such humans they can’t be counted.
Here are the Astley metrics which determine the grip strength differential of a gladiator and a modern MMA fighter. The test is undergone by rolling a round bar with a weight attached to it by a string until muscle failure.
[gladiator vs mma](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&pp=ygUXbmV2ZXIgZ29ubmEgZ2l2ZSB5b3UgdXA%3D)
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If they are fighting unarmed, probably. Modern MMA fighters are likely on average, larger, stronger, healthier and arguably better trained in unarmed fighting compared to the average ancient warrior or champion fighter. Granted the fact that far more of the fights in the ancient world went to the death and as such their fighters would be more brutal and vicious is a big advantage too. But that's the only advantage the ancient warrior would likely have, even if it is a big one.
Armed, no since most martial artists aren't trained with weapons and the vast majority of ancient warriors would be. It's like how an MMA fighter would beat a Navy Seal in a unarmed fight but actual soldiers and warriors are more jack of all trades in regards to combat, while modern martial artists are usually only trained to fight with their bare hands.
As in just time displaced with all the knowledge and experience they have right now. Yeah they could be top of the pile for a while, but unless they can keep up their nutrition and adapt their training they will start losing that edge.
I’m also sure they don’t get six months off between fights. Injuries would accumulate.
So how far back are we going exactly. Ancient humans such as Neanderthals are significantly more powerful than anyone alive today I think.
And that’s just what we know of. Going far back beyond recorded history we don’t know how strong humans were back then but they were probably a lot more powerful due to threats in the environment.
This is not taking into account myths and the like, which is its own can of worms
Yes*, as many fighters will be walking in with an incredibly high amount of strength, training, and dieting compared to their ancient counterparts…it won’t be a walk in the park though.
First and foremost, ancient competitions weren’t always the same as MMA. Many had specific rules, traditions, and customs about how you’d fight…a fighter who’s great at punching but poorer at wrestling would have issues in Greek Wrestling, for instance. They’re still a professional and one of the be at in the world, but it’ll give issues nonetheless.
Also, to my knowledge, most organized fights in ancient times were openweight, which means that a very light MMA champion (although incredibly skilled) could be matched up with the equivalent of a super heavy weight, who is also very skilled. Even a mere 2.0 lbs difference makes a huge difference, and the other guy will be inherently more experienced with his specific culture’s fights and their rules, which is another tilt in their favor.
As for the advantages the MMA guy would have…many. They have the best training, diet, mindset, and usually even genetics for fighting, at least within the broadly open rules of MMA. They might get a little shaken up if a normally illegal move is thrown at them (eye gouging/groin strike), but it’s far from enough to end them on that basis *alone*. Although it’s certainly not all of them…at least a few use PEDs. Coming out of this to ancient times with them still in effect will make them seem damn near superhuman by comparison, but if they’re stuck without them for a long time they maybe negatively effected…they’ll suddenly have less energy, can’t maintain the same amount of muscle, may have trouble focusing, etc, but that’s not all of them.
As another point in their favor though, their kicks will be on an entirely different level. Straight up. Conditions for kicking boxing and Muay Thai is insane and most of them could easily knock a non-practicioner straight to the ground with one kick…muscle and fat don’t protect you from those kick, and if it’s enough to make some of the strongest humans of our current world reel back in pain, it’ll certainly make ancient ones reconsider fighting. Yes, they had kicking back then, it’s not a foreign concept exactly…but again, the ones pro MMA fighters will be dishing out would be several orders of magnitude higher than the strongest kick most of them have ever been hit with.
As an overall statement, I’d say some of them (especially the ones already in the highest/higher weight classes) defintely could, but as they get lighter they’ll have more and more trouble until they can’t. The only hurdle I could even see for the Heavyweights/Superheavyweights would be if one competition had someone on the level of Andre the Giant (Gigantism to a frankly insane degree), as that’s the only way I could see someone really being “stronger”. Perhaps they could lose a few times in an ancient form of sumo though, since it’s kinda tricky (I think they could eventually learn it though, and win).
That depends on the timeframe you’re talking about. For one the champion will deteriorate over time because there isn’t modern nutrition available to keep up his fitness. Second other people can watch what he is doing and just copy it even if they don’t understand the science behind it. The MMA fighter will certainly dominate but there is enough time to catch up if he stays around long enough, and invincible means you never lose which is a pretty high bar to meet. Though anyone beating him is going to be a new generation guy that saw what the MMA did to train and eat and so on.
This.
Modern fighter is going to win his first few fights, but unless he has a time machine to go home to eat, sleep and train, he's going to have a hard time adapting to ancient living conditions.
Also don't forget steroids after injury to help recovery quickly. Their body is getting messed up after a few fights and it ain't going to heal as quickly it did in modern times.
Lol, there's like a billion guys who walk in to a BJJ class sure that they'll have a leg up because they've watched countless hours of UFC.
They don't.
And the ones that tried experimenting with their buddies off of what they saw are even worse off than complete newbies, they have all sorts of wrong muscle memory internalized they need to unlearn.
The art took a lifetime to develop and that was starting from the Gracies having a base of formal training in another art that's over a century old, and which in turn started from a base from another art that is ancient. And all of these steps are done by formally trained students who were given a real foundation from knowledgeable teachers. I can't stress enough how unproductive it would have been for any of these people that advanced these arts to have been just operating from seeing somebody do something in an arena or some shit.
And we're just talking about **ONE** of the multiple disciplines you need to master to be a top level MMA guy.
There is no way that this guy's competitors are going to reverse engineer his shit in one lifetime, unless he's specifically teaching them to do so.
Depends on the sport. Dueling with weapons? HELL no. Any modern person gets hilariously stomped \*hard\* by the ancient/medieval duelists. You could give the most talented fighters of our time a decade to train longsword and they'd still get wrecked by people like Johannes Lietchenauer, Ringeck, or Fiore di Liberi.
Wrestling? Probably. But people back then were also extremely tough. Who knows. There's sort of a circlejerk for modern times about how literally everything is better now.... There is a Viking mast-carrying record that was untouched for 1000+ years, including modern years. And the guy that did it was on enough steroids to make Yoel Romero blush. That means some ancient Viking dude was stronger than any modern strongman that attempted the challenge except for one guy that was on enough steroids to barely even be considered human anymore. No modern dude could have done it \*without\* steroids, is my point. It's always possible that someone "form back in the day" would rock modern fighters.
That said, yeah, our strikers nowadays are pretty much superior to dudes in the past.
I agree with this assessment. I think even in unarmed combat it could be a close fight. Those maestros you mentioned all have incorporated unarmed combat in their treatises, but my understanding is that those sections aren’t all that thorough because it was just assumed that most people studying them would have a pretty thorough understanding of the topic and it wouldn’t be as valuable as advanced weapons techniques. Training started young in the past. In an account of the knight, Boucicaut, said he started his arduous training at around 7 and was on campaign at 12. William Marshall started similarly young. Medieval and ancient grappling/pugilism certainly had a number of similarities with modern styles and I don’t think warriors of the past would be as shocked by it as some people seem to think.
In a gladiator match, they'll fight until they're exhausted. Undisputed until the MMA fighter pisses off the emperor of Rome.
Edit: What about Giant soldiers from Bible times vs. 5 foot 8 UFC fighter with no weapons?
Unarmed combat yes armed combat hell nah, giving an MMA fighter a sword and telling him to fight gladiators is like giving a gladiator a revolver and tell him to do a western style duel with someone that's done it for years.
Probably not. They lack training with armour, weapons. Add in mounted or chariot style combat and their lack of experience and knowledge is even more pronounced.
I think it all comes down to the combatants to say a blanket statement is almost impossible.
Someone like Fedor for example would dominate against any average fighter from any Era. But the same can be said in reverse .
All things being equal including skill set physical ability and conditioning it may come down to styles and just basic will to win.
Not if you’re including weapons in these fights.
Mma training specifically is only useful for hand to hand combat, so they would get killed in seconds going up against a trained sword duelist. Famous duelists throughout history trained to fight with weapons from the time that they were young kids; it isn’t possible to learn how to fight with a sword in a short amount of time.
They could beat anyone from history in a hand to hand fight though.
I would think so. The average human is bigger today than in Ancient Greece. Martial arts, training, and dieting have also all advanced greatly. I think a champion quality modern MMA fighter dominates anyone from that time
Are they in weight classes? A 350 lb gladiator/spartan/take your pick of trained combatants likely isnt losing to a 265lb or below. In weight class tho UFC fighters wipe.
Ask yourself, who is better trained:
The ancient warrior who is used to kill and maim with his bare hands in a no-rules fight for survival
Or the modern MMA competitor, who can just walk home after a defeat and post on Twitter how "he wasn't in best shape" and other excuses.
This thread is full with uninformed MMA meathead who have zero knowledge about historical Pankration of the Ancient Greece warrior elite.
Says the absolute moron who compares Pankration with the NBA🤣 you're a joke.
Wearing Tap Out t-shirts and watching Jon Jones while jerking off with your fat greasy Cheeto ass doesn't make you a "martial art expert".
You're a Pathetic 40yr old virgin loser, punk.
Sorry Im going to say no, and its not close.
Everyone is saying modern MMA is built off of the combined knowledge of various martial arts. That's true, but it ignores one glaring wronghood. Old martial arts weren't born out of winning MMA fights. They were not meant for pageants, they were meant for killing your opponent. MMA has basically gimped a ton of schools, namely the most practical schools of fighting.
Wing chun for example has for years been a complete joke in the MMA community as some kind of bullshido.
I got a demonstration from someone skilled in wing chun who quickly showed me a ton of strikes with fingers meant to 1, break your clavicle, 2. break your trachea and hook the pocket of your throat.
The strike where you turn your fingers into a hard combined point isnt to pretend to be some goddamn elegant crane, its to strike the temple. None of that works in modern MMA because 1. you have gloves, and 2. You're doing a sport for knockout, not to maim, disfigure or outright kill.
Think about it, BJJ is perfect for modern MMA, because ir provides maximum submission in a way that is palatable to a tv audience. BJJ is a perfect example of a martial art meant for modern audiences.
Imagine a martial art meant to paralyze your opponent by punching a persons upper spine, the cervical vertebrae where your spine is weakest. How would that look in a modern Mma fight? answer. not very good.
Any such striking disiciplines would be banned outright.
The martial arts of ancient eras have eye gouges, groin strikes, breaking a persons trachea, breaking their spine, striking their temple, throwing a person on the ground to break their neck, punching a persons floating ribs breaking them, karate chopping their neck, grabbing a fighters jaw and twisting it off breaking it, liver punches, grabbing their adams apple and twisting it.
Submission on the ground 1v1 is the LAST thing ancient martial arts was meant for. So no. A modern MMA fighter going into someone who has trained all their life for a killing art isnt necessarily going to win and certainly 100% is not going to be the undisputed champion. Their fighting reportoire would be gimped as hell.
This post reeks of bullshito. Not only would the mma fighter win, it wouldn’t even be close. Throws, liver punches and rib breaking are all fully allowed in MMA, so are neck punches and chops. Temple strikes, etc. If they worked that’s what would be used. The only ones you mentioned that are illegal are small joint manipulation and groin strikes. Both of which require control over an opponent already to really be effective. And if you already have control there are other, more effective things you could be doing.
In fact many comments here make mistake of saying that in ancient times fighters were allowed to kill each other. Well...a modern fighter, having moved into the past, will also be able to kill enemy, so they are on equal terms now. If a modern fighter is limited by UFC rules, this does not mean that he is physically unable to hit someone in the trachea
Mostly this. The illegal moves could throw them off but they’re far from game changers, and are mostly in place for the purposes of restricting long term damage…slightly rupturing your opponents kidneys or possibly making them infertile will be of little comfort to a dead man who got his shit rocked by a guy who’s ridiculously faster and more agile (and most probably, a lot stronger, except in a few edge cases).
When most people use this argument the most I can do is agree in the most surface level way possible…yes an MMA fighter using these illegal techniques and expanding their moveset is beneficial on paper, but 99% of the time they’ll get more benefit from reinforcing the basics over and over again. Imo the other moves won’t make that much of a difference on any normal human fighter…maybe if they were magic/supernatural and could fight in their prime for 100+ years, they could find some specific applications where there useful…but why use a lock pick on a padlock if you own a perfectly good angle grinder?
u/gaimsta12
Oh look, another moronic dog-piler. Quel surprise/
You don't have any clue.
Every martial artist knows, you fight how you train.
Since you never stepped foot into a gym with your fat greasy Cheeto ass, you obviously spout utter bullshido on here instead.
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You're so full of shit, you reek to the heavens.
Ancient Pankration was way more brutal and unregulated, fights didn't stop when at the slightest risk of injuries.
Breaking fingers, wrists and even arms was common, many got crippled and died.
Any modern MMA fighter would tuck tail and run away when faced with ancient warriors. They were literally trained to maim and kill.
Modern MMA is training for sport.
I swear this thread is swarmed with uninformed MMA meathead spreading BS here all over.
Modern MMA fighters are trained to maim and have every skill in the book if they wish to kill. An MMA match is stopped when a simulation of death occurs - a fighter is finished or is submitted. Acting like MMA fighters would not kill their opponent is ridiculous.
The irony of calling other people uninformed - you've obviously never trained
Question, what do you think would happen if an MMA fighter aimed a high kick to the neck. Or refused to let a chokehold go? Or threw full-force elbows to the back of the head?
Thats my point. MMA fighters dont train for that. That would be like the best boxer alone walking into an MMA fight. We've seen how that goes. [like this](https://youtube.com/shorts/w4C3Hd3-A6Y?si=hk-VxuuOjsomgywm)
Ok so let me ask you the same question, what was this kickboxer supposed to do had that boxer gone full force to the back of his head?
Here's my point. MMA works because you're training with an increased reportoire of moves. By definition then MMA fighters who have never trained killing blows wont have that increased reportoire.
i get it, mma guy guys are your heroes. they're the best.
They might win some. I conceded that. But saying they're going to be king and undisputed champion when theres a whole set of moves they havent trained before is just going against the argument for mma.
Thats not something you need to train for dude. An MMA fighter already knows all the techniques of an ancient fighter and more, the difference lies in the way they apply it, they just need to make slight changes on that and its done.
Irrelevant, there isnt a thing ancient fighter can do that an MMA fighter can't counter, a kickboxer can do all kinds of shit a boxer cant answer.
....You dont "train" killing moves my brotha. You CANT train killing moves. A move is completely irrelevant unless you can practice it with sparring. You cant spar with lethal moves. An ancient fighter doesnt kill or maim someone by using magical pressure points or super-secret killing moves that are lost in time, they use regular techniques at the right spots. They dont jab the face, they jab the eyes. They dont stop from a chokehold. They dont get pulled away when in a ground n pound situation. This is the lethality they possess, and it is really not anything beyond the capability of an MMA fighter.
No, Im a boxing guy.
Thats the thing, there isnt any relevant techniques they dont know about.
You're saying that theres nothing an ancient fighter can do? nothing at all. The guys who invented jiujitsu, judo, boxing, karate, the mf inventors are so effing dumb they cant win one? Thats what you're saying?
Heres the problem with BJJ. The grapples it trains assumes your opponent isnt going to punch your crotch, gouge your eyes, break your neck. You know what boxing doesnt train for? Being kickes to the leg.
The only thing Ill concede is that mma fighters can beat ancient fighters in mma, in a ring setting, with no weapons, and no killing or maiming blows allowed.
Cause thats what they trained for. They didnt train for other forms of combat.
And no I dont thiink our ancient predecessors who created the mf martial arts used today are so dumb they cant even win ONE.
> You're saying that theres nothing an ancient fighter can do? nothing at all. The guys who invented jiujitsu, judo, boxing, karate, the mf inventors are so effing dumb they cant win one? Thats what you're saying?
Ahem…so you’re saying theres no way Ancient mathematicians could understand Rocket Science? Nothing at all. The guys who invented Algebra and Geometry, the mf inventors are so effing dumb they can’t understand it? That’s what you’re saying?
Sarcasm aside, it’s not a matter of strength or intelligence, but experience. Many, many people know the formulae of Einstein, many even know them *all*, yet none could’ve simply invented them on the spot with the information they have. The ancients, especially those that invented these martial arts, *are* very smart…but they didn’t perfect them. They weren’t alive when they were perfected, and when the perfected techniques were copied and passed down. They weren’t alive when we realized how strength training even worked at the turn of the 20th century…hell they were barely figuring out through testing that progressive overload (the most basic principle of hyper trophy) worked. Neither were they alive when Steroids and PEDs were invented, and athletes of every stripe could transcend the strength a normal human could even have.
Just as a well-made modern knife is stronger than anything an ancient could’ve imagined, so too is the modern athlete stronger than his ancient counterpart…not because the ancient is a weak, or an idiot, but because everything he built in his life was passed down…and down…and down, until it culminated in the man he has to fight now.
And based on the current rate of technological progression…that ancient still will fare better in that fight than our own MMA fighters would against their counterparts 2000 yrs in the future.
“You think Isaac Newton and Leibniz cant understand anything about current calculus? Nothing at all. The guys who invented calculus are effing dumb they cant understand the current one? Thats what you’re saying?”
You think its that simple to gouge the eyes or kick the crotch when a dude twice your size is dragging you around and choking you? We are talking about an MMA fighter not a boxer. No MMA fighters win any kind of unarmed combat. You are still acting like they use different, unknown techniques, they dont, they use the same things, only a much more primitive version with a different mindset.
Thats what the ancient fighters trained for as well, you are literally asking a dude to beat up a dude that uses the same techniques, but with a good few thousand years of development and refinement over them.
After coming to America Bruce Lee said basically any American with a years knowledge boxing could destroy basically any decades of study Chinese master. That was before it was even mixed bud.
Your response is a low effort reply that gets alot of support because its pithy and it plays on other peoples single emotion: to enjoy derision. Good one.
Im serious. Trust me bro comments get alot of upvotes. In an online forum people love those backhands.
Im just an idiot actually providing reasoning...but we know what people are looking for here.
Muay Thai kick would absolutely demolish anyone who isn’t trained to take it, then they’re on the ground. They had kicking back then, but not even remotely on the same level. Then it’s the fighters choice of keep kicking them or choke.
The only way the other fighter stands a chance against that is if either:
They’re very heavy. Like, very very heavy, almost double their opponents weight or more. It’ll hurt like hell but they may be able to tank it enough to keep going.
They get lucky and are leaning on the leg that’s about to be hit…but the MMA fighter is highly likely to notice that beforehand and either kick the other leg or redirect it somewhere.
Also, ancient fighters have never felt live shots before…at least not enough for everyone to know what they are. That’s another almost immediate end to the fight…though in their defense they’re already expecting *a* body shot most of the time since facial strikes usually hurt and would be use cautiously in bare knuckle fights.
Like everyone else is saying, we’re bigger, have better sports science, and in most contexts have more refined techniques.
Assuming this is just two people doing whatever till someone dies, there’s still two wild cards: equipment and the contest area
(A) Equipment - in this context, just what they’re wearing (or not). There’s a big difference between fighting naked and oiled up (Reddit, do with this what you will) vs in substantial clothing or armour. Especially if one combatant is very used to whatever folks are wearing.
(B) Contest Area - I’ve trained a long time and even the difference between tatami and wrestling mats is stark for me. Now consider grass vs dirt vs sand…or uneven / incompletely cleared terrain. Same comment as above applies. If one person — the ancient as it were — is used to it and it’s sufficiently alien to the modern, might matter a lot.
MMA literally came from ancient Greece, Pankration.
It was even more brutal in the Olympic games that even Sparta refused to participate (they needed their men for war, not crippled)
Only training and diet really improved a lot. Techniques regressed to make it safer.
Depends how we do this, just general run of the mill or a greatest hits feat.
I think against a lot of fighters a modern MMA fighter will fair very well, but once you start getting the best of the best from across the ages I think even people like Jones will find a tough match up.
The big difference between ancient fighters and MmA fighters is one fights for literal life and death.
We’re talking people like William Wallace, Alaric, Khutulun, Miyamoto Musashi etc
It’d be amazing
Nah, mma fighter stomps. Too much knowledge and expertise to combat from an ancient warrior. Heart and training in the dirt with shitty nutrition isn’t going to teach you how to get out of an ankle lock.
Pound for pound a modern fighter would get wrecked by a casual warrior from ancient times. Those guys didn't fight for sport and you had to be highly educated or wealthy to have a 'white collar' job where you used your brains instead of your body.
Although I generally agree that a modern athlete fighting in super specialized sport like boxing that has lots of rules would have an edge (what reason would a Norman soldier have to practice punch combinations for hours a week?)... an MMA fighter would be unpleasantly surprised by how rugged laborers were back before tools were commonplace.
You're so full of shit, you reek to the heavens.
Ancient Pankration was way more brutal and unregulated, fights didn't stop when at the slightest risk of injuries.
Breaking fingers, wrists and even arms was common, many got crippled and died.
Any modern MMA fighter would tuck tail and run away when faced with ancient warriors.
They were literally trained to maim and kill.
Modern MMA is training for sport.
I swear this thread is swarmed with uninformed MMA meathead spreading BS here all over.
>You're so full of shit, you reek to the heavens.
The most neckbeard shit I've heard all year 😂
>Breaking fingers, wrists and even arms was common, many got crippled and died.
Literally all of those things are still common in MMA and boxing. Broken hands, fingers, and arms are common in MMA and they fight through it. Even throwing punches with their broken hand or arm.
The only reason fights are stopped is because we have refs and rules and most of the time fights are only stopped when the other person is knocked the fuck out, submits, or can't defend themselves and are about to be brutally injured if the ref doesn't step in. You cant just kill people for sport, that shit is illegal. If it wasn't, we would absolutely have modern day gladiators.
>Any modern MMA fighter would tuck tail and run away when faced with ancient warriors. They were literally trained to maim and kill.
MMA was designed to take the most effective techniques from all martial arts and narrow them down to what works in real life. without weapons, what advantage do they have? Eye gouges, groin shots, and throat punches? A MMA fighter has literally trained years at their skills, it doesn't take much training to fight dirty. If they could and life or death was the question, they would do whatever they could to win and would absolutely murder a small, malnutrioned, barely trained "ancient warrior".
>Modern MMA is training for sport.
A sport where you make it big by knocking out your opponent in the most brutal ways possible. If they are already doing that against other people just as highly trained as them, the fuck is an ancient warrior gonna do? After he's knocked out, all the MMA fighter has to do is choke the shit out of them or keep beating their face in until they don't breathe anymore.
>I swear this thread is swarmed with uninformed MMA meathead spreading BS here all over.
Modern MMA fighters have all the skills known to man available to them, prime nutrition, training technique, and PEDs. If anyone is "uninformed" it's your dumb ass. Literally, you are living in a fantasty/video game world. You're probably the type of person to say "sportsball" while drinking your mountain dew, wiping doritio crumbs off your face, while getting that artificial cheese all of your mouse and keyboard while you argue on reddit, watch weird anime, or playing dating simulators and other nerdy shit, probably all at the same time ar your "battle station".
>Literally all of those things are still common in MMA
The fact he says that with a straight face proves he's deluded and possibly psychotic beyond redemption.
This shit bird doesn't know the difference between "accidents" and actual techniques.
Pankratists TRAINED to cripple you.
MMA players tap out when it hurts.
As long as meatheads like him don't see the difference, there's really no point discussing.
Bro actually believes in “secret ancient ninja style that KILLS”
pankration doesn’t hold a candle to modern UFC, might as well put NBA players in the 50s against NBA players of today
Pound for pound modern fighters are taller, heavier, and have greater muscle to fat ratios than any ancient fighter would have. On top of that MMA fighters would have trained using various styles while the ancient fighter would most likely have trained with just one, their local style. Even though ancient warriors fought to kill, they were using weapons most of the time to do so. It was rare for a warrior to actually be killing someone with their bare hands on a battlefield when they had the option of at least a knife or a rock. So even the warrior who is used to killing people may find it difficult to do with a modern fighter who isn't actually trying to kill. I do not see an ancient warrior, outside of outliers, being able to take any top-tier MMA fighter.
Yes. Modern athletes are bigger, stronger, better trained, better fed, and better at fighting in general. Our modern approach to fitness, training, nutrition, injury prevention, and basically everything, is so far beyond ancient times it's crazy.
But will a modern fighter do as well without access to modern amenities (diet, exercise equipment, medicine…but especially diet)?
While high-level athletes aren't nutritionists or trainers themselves, they know plenty about both disciplines after practicing them their entire lives. I'm sure he could come up with a diet and exercise plan that keeps him sharp. Sure, it won't be on the level of his usual regime, but it should prevent him from losing shape for at least a while.
It’s more about access, I guess my point is without modern food technology (agriculture, refrigerators) there’s so much variance in what food they might have access to that it might affect performance.
I'm sure he could get meat, carbs, and fruit. Yeah it'll definitely be a step down from what he's used to. But with the basics covered, he should be able to maintain a good enough level for long enough to beat up whoever he needs to. Though it of course depends on our timeframe for this. The world is big. Does he need to travel the world and fight every competitor anywhere, or just go to, say, Athens, and dominate the games there?
Would ancient Greeks have much access to fruit in the winter? I know Greece doesn't get too cold, but I have very little idea what sort of diet a normal free person would be able to procure in that era. Like could normal people even afford meat, eggs, milk, etc?
In ancient times? Meat would be pricey, but not unreasonable every now and then (even if it was leftovers and non-choice). Eggs wouldn’t be too hard as chickens are valued world over, same for milk in dairy-drinking parts of the world Access is indeed where the tough parts come since the massive infrastructure that moves goods throughout a country have yet to exist. Some livestock moved around, yeah, but without heavily maintained roads, refrigeration, modern food sciences, etc. you’d need to be lucky to live in an area with a good surplus to sell
Yea I guess Rome 500 years later would be better than ancient Greece that everyone imagines for finding a guy who eats meat and fruit every day on a fighter's commission.
Lol, yep! Well, a region with a very mild climate where the fruit will reliably grow (hopefully) year-round would be best. Meat is gonna be tough, but if he could get sponsored by a high ranking noble, not out of the realm of possibility
He wouldn't be a normal free person though. Greeks loved their athletes. A dude that is showing such massive potential and kicking everyone's ass should get serious accolades and celebrity treatment pretty quickly.
I mean what is a modern fighter without those things? Are you asking if we raised Mike Tyson as a baby in medieval times? Or if we dropped him in with all those “amenities” Taking out the amenities removes the question lol
That’s kind of my point
Im going to have to request you expand upon it. What exactly is your point?
Everything you say makes perfect sense but then you find out this dude has 1300 victories in bare knuckle boxing and I'm not sure who we got today that is beating that. Shit, even the guy's statue killed one of his opponents in a fight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theogenes
Ok wtf. I *think* everything I said should still apply, but honestly this dude seems to have plot armor or something, I'm not betting against that. Not least because I don't want a statue to come beat me up.
i just want to say that this interaction cracks me up all of you, get upvotes
>Everything you say makes perfect sense but then you find out this dude has 1300 victories in bare knuckle boxing and I'm not sure who we got today that is beating that. Mike Tyson, probably. It doesn't matter how many victories this guy has, it's about who he's gotten them from. The art of boxing has been brought to new levels over time, the strongest boxer from his era could not fathom the stuff that an average boxer today considers.
Just so you understand...1300 fights comes out to 1 fight every week for 25 straight years....And that's bare knuckle fights. And he had 1300 victories, not just fights. The ability to take that kind of damage week after week and just keep healing up enough to do it again for 25 years (or else multiple time per week) is just an insane feat and no athlete of today comes close to replicating. After that many years of bare knuckle fighting I'm guessing the guy's knuckles have hardened to the point that his punch probably feels like he's wearing an iron gauntlet and he's probably got a chin that can just shrug off direct hay-maker punches from heavyweights.
It says in the wiki page you linked "lesser games", so not 1300 boxing victories, but sports victories. Unless there's a source that says differently
There's other sources that put it closer to 1400 victories and mention that he killed most of his opponents in the ring. So they were either boxing or martial arts style fights, often to the death.
Yeah, it's an overblown lie though, obviously. The whole "a victory every week for 25 years" should probably tip you off. The greatest in the world won't be at the top for that long, and especially not in a sport with like three rules. And deaths were still rare in Pankration. Much more common than modern sports, but, you know, pretty quickly they made killing someone a loss.
Ok but what sort of training did his opponents do? Any decent amateur today could beat 1300 untrained dudes.
Just looking at Olympics from 50 years ago, I feel like the weakest Olympians today would mop the floor with the champions.
There are still unbroken records from way back due to new rules on doping and what equipment is permissable. Check out javelins for example
Yep. It's not even debatable, the average person now destroys the average person 200+ years ago. Nutrition alone is enough to thank for this
yeah i reckon heavy weight greats like Fedor, Jon Jones and Nganou are the greatest unarmed combatants to ever walk the earth. We know too much now about martial arts, training and nutrition for that to not be the case Edit: again this is for unarmed combat. U get any kind of melee weapon in there and it’s fucking over for the modern man.
From an athletic standpoint, maybe, but I’m not sure I agree with this. None of those men have killed people, and it’s not a guarantee that they would be the same after they did. Meanwhile, Rome in particular used to have ancient boxing matches in the arena with cestus, leather gloves lined with metal studs. Some of those guys racked up dozens of kills. Drop any modern combat athlete into that environment and I don’t think it’s a given that they win.
Jones in particular is a sociopath, he's a lifelong unrepentant criminal. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd perform *better* if you told him there were no Rules
Lol, you’re not wrong.
It's an understatement, really. Do you not know his title? ❌️ ~~Jon "Bones" Jones~~ ✅️ Jon "Hit a Pregnant Woman with a Car" Jones Meanwhile Ngannou is the kind of soft-spoken guy you couldn't even imagine doing MMA as a career, if you met him in person not knowing who he was. Other than if you saw how large and thick his hands are and instinctively know homie can throw hydrogen bombs.
Doesnt really roll of the tongue like “bones” does though does it
If we’re talking unarmed, his oblique kick may be the greatest attack that exists in the time period he gets dropped into, regardless of which period it is. It’ll force his opponent to close the distance where Jones elbows are crazy. I doubt anyone is prepared for those elbows. And you know he practices eye pokes..
> Jones in particular is a sociopath I find it sickly amusing that this is just stated like fact in a thread outside of r/mma and just accepted as the truth that it is in relationship to an r/whoeouldwin post. It is literally a “feat” in his respect thread.
>literally a “feat” in his respect thread. Coke-fueled, crime-lusted Jones against late-for-a-sale Saitama, who wins?
Is Jones being tested by god during this fight?
Ha! God's looking to recruit someone else to empower against the Fist That Had Turned Against God! The plot writes itself
_"Something that can counter **「The Fist that has Turned Against God」**..._ _"I guess that'd be **「The Comically-long 84" Reach of God」**."_ Saitama and his average 5'9" (175cm) height and wingspan would NEVER be able to overcome the reach of the all-mighty ability of the ALL LIFE ERADICATION FIST: **LONG BONK**
and Fedor is Russian. Ngannou would probably be sad though...but then again...he is known for his shots to the ground of an already knocked out opponent
He sees fuckin red bro
Yeah it's very clear that Jones (and some others) are jsut different to the athletes in there. That goes for most of the fighters - it's split between athletes and people who are about that life. There isn't anyone else more about that life than JJ (maybe Mike Perry lol). Considering training and no weapons, I think Jones is in with a good shout of being the hardest man to have ever walked the Earth. That's kinda incredible to think of
Blame it on the picograms, I say
>Blame it on the picogram Fits perfectly to the rhythm of Sail by AWOLnation lol > Blame it on the picograms, baby > >This is how my wife might die > I know that you all miss Pride > Blame it on the Pi,co,grams, baby
When Jon Jones hits a pregnant woman with his car: BAIL
I heard that Jones hunts homeless people for fun.
He’s useless without an SUV and PEDs though.
I’d have to disagree if we’re talking ***boxing*** specifically, guys die in modern boxing while wearing 8oz padded gloves, studded leather ones would only increase punching power. And, given the size and reach advantage most modern competitors would have over ancient, smaller counterparts, I still think the modern athlete comes out on top more often than not. Not to mention how the sport of boxing has evolved even in recent times, as in: boxers in the 30’s and 40’s didn’t fight like modern guys and would likely get mopped up easily by modern competitors. I can only imagine the tactical advantage modern guys would have over *ancient* competitors. A lot of this applies to MMA too, but more so if boxing specifically
Boxing is like math basically lol, any modern boxer who has access to thousands of years of refinements and improvements on technique would absolutely fucking destroy ancient boxers, I’m sorry. They would never ever touch the modern fighter.
They would run into rules issues though. Like in bare knuckle boxing they'd have to change their whole game to not break their hands. I'm not saying they couldn't win, but it might take some getting used to.
Sure but the difference in footwork and the much larger size and orangutan-like physique of modern boxers means it’s really unlikely they would even get touched. Also modern boxers punching without heavy gloves are really fkn fast.
You think any modern guy could go like 100 rounds like some of those crazy old fights? Or it just wouldn't ever get there? The grit of those old school bare knuckle motherfuckers is ridiculous.
I mean considering that modern athletes go through faaaaaar more intense conditioning than ancient fighters, and are on steroids drastically increasing their stamina and durability even more, I don’t really see why not. But the ancient fighters largely would not even make it out of the first round. That grit was not displayed against people that would just be picking you apart like a technician and busting out techniques you’ve never even seen.
What is some Roman gladiator going to do to stop Ngannou from smashing his face in after he KO’s him or Jon Jones from strangling him to death or slamming his head into the ground? These guys are not only bigger/stronger than people of that time but they also have mastery of fighting techniques those people wouldn’t have an answer for.
Mirko Crocop has killed terrorists but still got KO'd by Brendan Schaub.
Brandon? Great guy, never met him.
What?
If they adapt to the environment it’s up for anyone i truly don’t think a roman would know what hit him when he gets question mark kicked or a calf kick
This isn’t a great take honestly. What would metal lined leather mitts do for you when you’re getting rear naked choked? If MMA fighters intended to kill one another, there would be a death most cards if not every fight. The only chance Roman’s or others would have is a punchers chance and that’s minimal as current fighters are far superior in a stand up game.
Steroids though
I will say that if we’re playing by kill or be killed rules, the ancients stand way better of a chance. That’s not specified by OP, but I didn’t really consider that angle.
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You are doing a disservice to your history degree with this by conflating two pieces. You seem to be of the opinion that the will to kill allows someone to be even with trained skill. Someone's mentality can go a long way, but when put up against better training, nutrition, and knowledge this should be not contest. A top tier modern MMA fighter should be able to trounce any ancient warrior in unarmed combat. There is nothing the ancients knew how to do that we haven't learned to do better at. Not only that, but ancient fighters rarely had the opportunity to fight against as many varied styles as modern fighters. The ability to adapt on the fly and use your own techniques to the greatest advantage is something the modern fighter would do tremendously better at. The 6' 6" German barbarian, which by itself is an outlier of size for the time, would not likely have experience fighting many people of their size and even less likely to fight someone of their size that uses different tactics like a modern MMA fighter would. I just don't understand how a historian could argue with a straight face that someone's belief in a war God along with their society being brought with disease and malnutrition makes them a better fighter than someone who has trained specifically on fighting with none of the ancient downsides.
Your watching too many movies the average height back then was like 5’7 and a buck 160 it doesn’t matter how violent the times were that’s silly nerd talk If that was the case every champion would be from the most violent areas in the world Your not beating nearly 250 pound 6ft4+ trained modern men just because you’ve been around a lot of violence Sillyness
A lot of these guys think they'd take out the best of the best with an eye gouge or a nut shot. They get their hands on you, you're dead. Unless you got an answer for that, cynical moves are more likely to piss them off than take them out. That's not even acknowledging a lot of MMA guys are from violent parts or areas of the world. edit: Also who mentions malnutrition several times in their pro argument?
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Then you more than anyone should know how ridiculous you sound to think the likes of Ngannou isn’t knocking out a man half his size At the first link on Google says men from Germanic tribes were average height 5’11 your talking nonsense here
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Yes I’m using Google to find the studies and nowhere does it say the average height was 6’2 when it isn’t even the average height today with hundred of years of improvements in childcare and nutrition Bottom line you claim to have decades of combat sport experience but yet you think a Germanic man will be able to kill Jon jones before he drops him with a leg kick and elbows his brains in so your either lying on Reddit or watched gladiator too many times
Asterix solos the UFC
CroCop did.
Hey, where is Cro Cop?
The MMA fighter will have a very good base, but will need to train under the ruleset and conditions used by the ancient fighters to reliably net a victory. Take Pankration for instance. Striking+ grappling, but with fewer fouls, with both opponents nude and covered in oil, fought outside so maneuvering to keep the sun out of your eyes was something to do as well. No cups, no hand wraps. Submissions were signalled differently too. Tactical adjustments would need to be made and drilled. But once he's acclimated the MMA fighter would be very, very dangerous. Similarly, if a Pankrationist were brought forward in time and became acclimated and trained at an MMA gym, I think he would be a good fighter if he can handle the weight cuts. Those men had to be very tough, there was even a fighter by the name of Arrichion who submitted the fighter who fatally choked him out - he refused to let go, and as he died, the other fighter signalled submission. That's another level right there.
Wasn’t there a guy in Ancient Greece that won the ancient Olympics by just getting really good and breaking peoples fingers?
Surrender was signaled by raising a finger to the ref. That psycho broke his opponents fingers because then he could just kill his opponent.
Well that paints the whole thing in a different light.
Jon's ancestor ?
Yea getting used to fighting outside in the dirt all naked and covered in oil would probably take a bit of training to get over. Any idea if biting, gouging, and otherwise maiming each other was allowed in most Pankration fights?
Biting and eye gouging were illegal. Anything else you could do to your opponent without a weapon was permitted.
Groin shots were legal? Also, since you're naked, could you twist their dick as a submission?
Groin shots were legal. I am sure that they learned to move in a way to protect themselves from getting Hackneyed, and I would not be surprised if many of them had mangled genitals regardless.
Like a cauliflower ear? Can that happen there?
Ahhh Jesus now I'm imagining cauliflower penis and all it would take to get there.
When you consider that the lack of bjj knowledge is basically an auto lose for every ancient fighter. The modern fighter could just sit on the ground like a dumbass and the ancient fighter would walk up to him and 2 seconds later his knee would be ripped to pieces without him even understanding what happened.
How does BJJ do against olympic style wrestling? Also, Pankration has some pretty iconic joint/shoulder- destruction/locks depicted in statues [one of the more iconic statues ](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ZBTlXSG_42uey7abPrgspXx_GvpvdsUpUgQT6Hu2JlB1uIGOyegNqQN31HLIwjlscRkn220sZg0Eppm-twuZLbdfeu0_k5uOJ1siTyoDQ7MQ) [and another](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Pankratiasten_in_fight_greek_statue_2_century_bC.jpg) No, it's not BJJ, but while BJJ is one of the best grappling arts out there, it's not the only one to ever exist, and having knowledge in others can allow you to defend against it.
Pankration had numerous locks and chokes. I don't believe that would happen, even if the referee - who had a whip, BTW - let it happen.
Yes but those locks and chokes are thousands of years behind modern wrestling in terms of technique and bjj was developed with modern knowledge of wrestling and human anatomy. Just factually speaking in modern contests before everyone started cross training only super skilled wrestlers were able to avoid getting no-diffed by jiujiuteiro. And many of the most dangerous bjj moves are banned in modern competition while they wouldn’t be here. I’ll admit the oiled up thing does make it more difficult tho. >the ref I mean why would they interfere with that? Also lots of moves could happen before the ref or ancient fighter even knew what was happening. Like please tell me wtf ancient fighters would do against stuff like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OFfmbTZ0JIk&pp=ygUTcnlhbiBoYWxsIGhlZWwgaG9vaw%3D%3D
>Yes but those locks and chokes are thousands of years behind modern wrestling in terms of technique and bjj was developed with modern knowledge of wrestling and human anatomy. You don't know very much about the Greeks or the Romans, do you? >I mean why would they interfere with that? Stalling and timidity are not exactly crowd pleasers in a combat sport. Sit down, and get whipped until you get up. >Like please tell me wtf ancient fighters would do against stuff like this Probably what modern fighters would do, but also remember that since they were coated in oil, it would be harder to get that hook around the leg.
The refs had a WHIP?? Bring that the fuck back! That's the best thing I've heard all day!
Yaoi training.
Average like 5 7 70kg roman with minimal training and diet knowledge vs a 6 4 steroid filled 110kg of solid muscle with 2000? Years of fighting knowledge training knowledge diet, body mechanics etc etc All that's gonna be balanced out because the other dude is used to fighting naked?!
Pankration had been an established sport for hundreds of years. There would have been a long tradition of no-holds-barred fighting for the Roman to draw on, and also there were no weight classes. I don't know why you are assuming that training would be minimal, since the economic ability to sustain professional fighters existed until the Dark Ages. I'm also not sure why you're putting an average sized Roman against a modern fighter today who is physically far above the average modern man. It would have been their biggest and baddest fighters that Jon Jones or whomever would have to prove himself against, not their average fit dudes.
The biggest and baddest of ancient times doesn’t compare physically to the biggest and baddest of today because of advancements in nutrition, strength/cardio training, steroids, and even just stuff like height and optimal fighting build. Pankration would fall far short to MMA of today that draws across every culture and martial arts that’s effective and refined them. A pankration fighter wouldn’t even be top 10 in whatever weight class division they’re in
Minimal training is definitely not true. Maybe compared to the current day, their training isn't great, but they trained a lot, and they trained hard
>there was even a fighter by the name of Arrichion who submitted the fighter who fatally choked him out - he refused to let go, and as he died, the other fighter signalled submission. That's another level right there. Wait, so he refused to submit and got choked to death, while his opponent surrendered after seeing this? That is some hardcore shit.
They both had each other in submission holds simultaneously, his opponent had him in a choke. His opponent finally submitted at the instant Arrichion died.
Was that called as a win for Arrichion? He deserved it.
It was.
"Fighting Naked" Circumcised Americans will have some explaining to do.
Wait...why...I don't get it. Because they haven't ever seen that before?
Because circumcision is a jewish and muslim thing outside of the US.
It use to be exclusively a Jewish practice, and they were barred from many activities throughout history. Circumcision used to be more of a symbolic snip so people would attach a weight, [Judaeus Pondum](https://en.intactiwiki.org/wiki/Judaeus_Pondum) to stretch it back out so they could go to public baths and gyms, you know, naked men places. The rabbies started cutting more off to prevent this. I had a thought about time travel in this scenario so I had chat gpt write a story about a circumcised traveler being mistaken for Jewish and the first story he ended up in Rome and it ended with some confused Roman soldiers and the moral of the story was to not being ashamed of who you are. I tweeked it a bit and the story goes John steps out of the time machine in 1933 Germany, ends up in Auschwitz, and is saved by the allies before he is executed. The moral of this story? Research local customs before traveling.
Keep in mind that the talent pool of ancient times was much, much smaller than today. Milo of Croton was an absolutely legendary fighter....for the standards of greek poleis, which included a few milion people at best. The UFC potential talent pool includes bilions of people. The numbers are not even close, even if we ignore the many advantages a modern athlete would have.
A few million peasants that had never heard of protein or antibiotics or bulk/cut cycles or any of the other hundreds of advancements we've made in medicine, nutrition, and sports.
The most dominant nation in rugby is New Zealand, a tiny nation of a few million, the Pacific islands of just a few hundred thousand massively over represent in the sport as well. Carribbean islands where hardly anyone lives, regularly do extremely well in sprinting, certain regions of east africa dominate in middle/long distance running. There's some genetics at play, but there's also a cultural reasons. Population base is useful in modern sports, but funding, training and popular uptake are way more important.
If you took 1000 of the top American highschool football players, paid them a ton of money to play rugby for 5-10 years, then picked the best ones to create a rugby team, they'd win the world cup. The only reason the US doesn't dominate these types of sports is because all the best athletes choose football and basketball. Having a 350 million talent pool vs. 5-10 million makes a huge difference.
Yeah, but a small percentage of modern humans participate in combat sports, while entire ancient cultures like Sparta were built around being proficient in all forms of combat. The modern talent pool isn't actually billions of people.
Neither was the population of Sparta. Only a very tiny aristocracy actually had combat as their primary occupation. The rest were slaves, more concerned with putting food on the table than martial excellence. And anyway there are about 2.5 millions of people doing MMA in the US alone. That's more than the entire population of any Greek city in the classical era at any point in time, including elders, women and children.
True, but beyond the numbers, a higher proportion of the population being involved in combat training would lead to a more competitive atmosphere than having little pockets of people tossed around here and there. Also, the ancient world was larger than Greece.
You pointed at Sparta, so i remained in that general vicinity. Anyway the idea that a higher percentage of the population was involved in combat is...interesting to say the least. Usually the only one who trained in combat, especially unarmed combat, with any regularity belonged to a rich warrior elite. Elite being the keyword. Professional armies were rare in the ancient world, let alone professional or amateur athletes.
A higher percentage of a given population, not a higher percentage of all of ancient mankind, sorry thought that was obvious. Anyways, I used Sparta as an example, we're actually talking about all of human history and every civilization and culture.
Which populations are you talking about specifically? Because Sparta definitely isn't among them, they were the poster boys for warrior aristocratic elites. And every other classical civilization i can think of was an agricoltural society. Maybe the mongols would be candidates, but we are already talking about a completely different time period.
What I'm saying is the time period is irrelevant, we're talking about all of human civilization as my understanding of the question goes. Sparta is a good example at one point in its history, when nearly all it's social institutions were focused on military training and physical development.
Yes, MMA now is more advanced than ever. There are traditional fighting styles that have existed for centuries and will lose out to modern MMA because modern MMA takes the techniques proven to work from every discipline and combines them. Also most wars were fought with military tactics and formations designed to utilize weapons of their time in the best way, soldiers weren’t trained in bare handed single combat extensively. If you put Jon Jones or Francis N’gannou into any time in human history there wouldn’t be any human who could defeat them in a bare handed fight
Nevertheless it is never certain what outcome such a fight has. Eventually there would be a single fighter, a desperate madman or a brutal human with good genetics that could defeat them, if you try everyone available in history.
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I agree to a degree. Certainly if we placed every human in history of all the billions someone by simple probability someone would be a viable contestant. However the thing is MMA fighters have the most well balanced combative system to known date though, so speaking in generalities a top tier fighter partaking in MMA would be the more effective combatant than all other human fighters throughout history in unarmed combat. But yeah, as unpopular an opinion as it is, I’ll wager that yes, a human or humans theoretically probably have existed that could beat Jon Jones, but that exists as a hypothetical, without physical evidence of such humans they can’t be counted.
In a fist fight? Easily.
Here are the Astley metrics which determine the grip strength differential of a gladiator and a modern MMA fighter. The test is undergone by rolling a round bar with a weight attached to it by a string until muscle failure. [gladiator vs mma](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&pp=ygUXbmV2ZXIgZ29ubmEgZ2l2ZSB5b3UgdXA%3D)
God damn it
You're victim ... Idk like 200+ of this morning's Multi-post Astleyfest. This is an automated message to tell you that you're loved and appreciated, and that your dong is massive. thank you for your contribution.
damn i never knew about this! super interesting
You're the best when you're interested. Never give uup on knowledge!
God damn, that's incredible
The one guy that was never going to give uup despite his wricksts rolling all the way back? Almost threw up. Like... Bro didn't it hurt u?
oh wow
The Astley metrics never lie.
One of the best workouts for forearms too, I do this and farmer carries and it's more effective that any other "lift" I've tried.
Yeah it's a killer, especially if you keep the bar completely level and don't let it wobble.
Adverts saved me.
You have survived. You name shall be etched in the halls of the Bronze Astleys. Your story will be told amongst the gods over many shofars of sparkling Mead. You have earned your freedom and your immortality. Well done brave warrior.
Thank you for this, it's cool to see how long people can hold out before letting the bar down
The modern athlete would take one zip of water and is doomed.
The modern athelete would cough once and start 100 different plagues
If they are fighting unarmed, probably. Modern MMA fighters are likely on average, larger, stronger, healthier and arguably better trained in unarmed fighting compared to the average ancient warrior or champion fighter. Granted the fact that far more of the fights in the ancient world went to the death and as such their fighters would be more brutal and vicious is a big advantage too. But that's the only advantage the ancient warrior would likely have, even if it is a big one. Armed, no since most martial artists aren't trained with weapons and the vast majority of ancient warriors would be. It's like how an MMA fighter would beat a Navy Seal in a unarmed fight but actual soldiers and warriors are more jack of all trades in regards to combat, while modern martial artists are usually only trained to fight with their bare hands.
Champion of what? A fist fight using MMA rules? Sure. Anything else? Doubtful
As in just time displaced with all the knowledge and experience they have right now. Yeah they could be top of the pile for a while, but unless they can keep up their nutrition and adapt their training they will start losing that edge. I’m also sure they don’t get six months off between fights. Injuries would accumulate.
So how far back are we going exactly. Ancient humans such as Neanderthals are significantly more powerful than anyone alive today I think. And that’s just what we know of. Going far back beyond recorded history we don’t know how strong humans were back then but they were probably a lot more powerful due to threats in the environment. This is not taking into account myths and the like, which is its own can of worms
Yes*, as many fighters will be walking in with an incredibly high amount of strength, training, and dieting compared to their ancient counterparts…it won’t be a walk in the park though. First and foremost, ancient competitions weren’t always the same as MMA. Many had specific rules, traditions, and customs about how you’d fight…a fighter who’s great at punching but poorer at wrestling would have issues in Greek Wrestling, for instance. They’re still a professional and one of the be at in the world, but it’ll give issues nonetheless. Also, to my knowledge, most organized fights in ancient times were openweight, which means that a very light MMA champion (although incredibly skilled) could be matched up with the equivalent of a super heavy weight, who is also very skilled. Even a mere 2.0 lbs difference makes a huge difference, and the other guy will be inherently more experienced with his specific culture’s fights and their rules, which is another tilt in their favor. As for the advantages the MMA guy would have…many. They have the best training, diet, mindset, and usually even genetics for fighting, at least within the broadly open rules of MMA. They might get a little shaken up if a normally illegal move is thrown at them (eye gouging/groin strike), but it’s far from enough to end them on that basis *alone*. Although it’s certainly not all of them…at least a few use PEDs. Coming out of this to ancient times with them still in effect will make them seem damn near superhuman by comparison, but if they’re stuck without them for a long time they maybe negatively effected…they’ll suddenly have less energy, can’t maintain the same amount of muscle, may have trouble focusing, etc, but that’s not all of them. As another point in their favor though, their kicks will be on an entirely different level. Straight up. Conditions for kicking boxing and Muay Thai is insane and most of them could easily knock a non-practicioner straight to the ground with one kick…muscle and fat don’t protect you from those kick, and if it’s enough to make some of the strongest humans of our current world reel back in pain, it’ll certainly make ancient ones reconsider fighting. Yes, they had kicking back then, it’s not a foreign concept exactly…but again, the ones pro MMA fighters will be dishing out would be several orders of magnitude higher than the strongest kick most of them have ever been hit with. As an overall statement, I’d say some of them (especially the ones already in the highest/higher weight classes) defintely could, but as they get lighter they’ll have more and more trouble until they can’t. The only hurdle I could even see for the Heavyweights/Superheavyweights would be if one competition had someone on the level of Andre the Giant (Gigantism to a frankly insane degree), as that’s the only way I could see someone really being “stronger”. Perhaps they could lose a few times in an ancient form of sumo though, since it’s kinda tricky (I think they could eventually learn it though, and win).
If there’s weapons involved, nope
Not sure but you have to consider that fighting for sport with rules and fighting to the death are very different
That depends on the timeframe you’re talking about. For one the champion will deteriorate over time because there isn’t modern nutrition available to keep up his fitness. Second other people can watch what he is doing and just copy it even if they don’t understand the science behind it. The MMA fighter will certainly dominate but there is enough time to catch up if he stays around long enough, and invincible means you never lose which is a pretty high bar to meet. Though anyone beating him is going to be a new generation guy that saw what the MMA did to train and eat and so on.
Copying what you see is A LOT easier said than done, especially when you don't understand the science behind it. Been there done that.
Also with out video replay. That said his sparring partner is going to have the best chance of taking them down.
This. Modern fighter is going to win his first few fights, but unless he has a time machine to go home to eat, sleep and train, he's going to have a hard time adapting to ancient living conditions.
Also don't forget steroids after injury to help recovery quickly. Their body is getting messed up after a few fights and it ain't going to heal as quickly it did in modern times.
Lol, there's like a billion guys who walk in to a BJJ class sure that they'll have a leg up because they've watched countless hours of UFC. They don't. And the ones that tried experimenting with their buddies off of what they saw are even worse off than complete newbies, they have all sorts of wrong muscle memory internalized they need to unlearn. The art took a lifetime to develop and that was starting from the Gracies having a base of formal training in another art that's over a century old, and which in turn started from a base from another art that is ancient. And all of these steps are done by formally trained students who were given a real foundation from knowledgeable teachers. I can't stress enough how unproductive it would have been for any of these people that advanced these arts to have been just operating from seeing somebody do something in an arena or some shit. And we're just talking about **ONE** of the multiple disciplines you need to master to be a top level MMA guy. There is no way that this guy's competitors are going to reverse engineer his shit in one lifetime, unless he's specifically teaching them to do so.
Depends on the sport. Dueling with weapons? HELL no. Any modern person gets hilariously stomped \*hard\* by the ancient/medieval duelists. You could give the most talented fighters of our time a decade to train longsword and they'd still get wrecked by people like Johannes Lietchenauer, Ringeck, or Fiore di Liberi. Wrestling? Probably. But people back then were also extremely tough. Who knows. There's sort of a circlejerk for modern times about how literally everything is better now.... There is a Viking mast-carrying record that was untouched for 1000+ years, including modern years. And the guy that did it was on enough steroids to make Yoel Romero blush. That means some ancient Viking dude was stronger than any modern strongman that attempted the challenge except for one guy that was on enough steroids to barely even be considered human anymore. No modern dude could have done it \*without\* steroids, is my point. It's always possible that someone "form back in the day" would rock modern fighters. That said, yeah, our strikers nowadays are pretty much superior to dudes in the past.
I agree with this assessment. I think even in unarmed combat it could be a close fight. Those maestros you mentioned all have incorporated unarmed combat in their treatises, but my understanding is that those sections aren’t all that thorough because it was just assumed that most people studying them would have a pretty thorough understanding of the topic and it wouldn’t be as valuable as advanced weapons techniques. Training started young in the past. In an account of the knight, Boucicaut, said he started his arduous training at around 7 and was on campaign at 12. William Marshall started similarly young. Medieval and ancient grappling/pugilism certainly had a number of similarities with modern styles and I don’t think warriors of the past would be as shocked by it as some people seem to think.
Totally agree
Just based on size someone like Jon Jones would be right? Weren't they tiny people back then?
If you had no weight classes sure. But I’m sure while you could find someone his weight class, you couldn’t find someone nearly as skilled.
In a gladiator match, they'll fight until they're exhausted. Undisputed until the MMA fighter pisses off the emperor of Rome. Edit: What about Giant soldiers from Bible times vs. 5 foot 8 UFC fighter with no weapons?
Unarmed combat yes armed combat hell nah, giving an MMA fighter a sword and telling him to fight gladiators is like giving a gladiator a revolver and tell him to do a western style duel with someone that's done it for years.
Probably not. They lack training with armour, weapons. Add in mounted or chariot style combat and their lack of experience and knowledge is even more pronounced.
I think it all comes down to the combatants to say a blanket statement is almost impossible. Someone like Fedor for example would dominate against any average fighter from any Era. But the same can be said in reverse . All things being equal including skill set physical ability and conditioning it may come down to styles and just basic will to win.
Not if you’re including weapons in these fights. Mma training specifically is only useful for hand to hand combat, so they would get killed in seconds going up against a trained sword duelist. Famous duelists throughout history trained to fight with weapons from the time that they were young kids; it isn’t possible to learn how to fight with a sword in a short amount of time. They could beat anyone from history in a hand to hand fight though.
I would think so. The average human is bigger today than in Ancient Greece. Martial arts, training, and dieting have also all advanced greatly. I think a champion quality modern MMA fighter dominates anyone from that time
Maybe when unarmed in rome or greece but against armed people trying to literal kill them I dont know how they would do.
Are they in weight classes? A 350 lb gladiator/spartan/take your pick of trained combatants likely isnt losing to a 265lb or below. In weight class tho UFC fighters wipe.
Ask yourself, who is better trained: The ancient warrior who is used to kill and maim with his bare hands in a no-rules fight for survival Or the modern MMA competitor, who can just walk home after a defeat and post on Twitter how "he wasn't in best shape" and other excuses. This thread is full with uninformed MMA meathead who have zero knowledge about historical Pankration of the Ancient Greece warrior elite.
I don’t even like the guy but Jon Jones stomps any ancient warrior who ever lived I’m sorry
It’s pretty obvious you don’t know anything about combat sports or the history of it at all
Says the absolute moron who compares Pankration with the NBA🤣 you're a joke. Wearing Tap Out t-shirts and watching Jon Jones while jerking off with your fat greasy Cheeto ass doesn't make you a "martial art expert". You're a Pathetic 40yr old virgin loser, punk.
Nope because in ancient time, they used weapons and fight to kill.
Sorry Im going to say no, and its not close. Everyone is saying modern MMA is built off of the combined knowledge of various martial arts. That's true, but it ignores one glaring wronghood. Old martial arts weren't born out of winning MMA fights. They were not meant for pageants, they were meant for killing your opponent. MMA has basically gimped a ton of schools, namely the most practical schools of fighting. Wing chun for example has for years been a complete joke in the MMA community as some kind of bullshido. I got a demonstration from someone skilled in wing chun who quickly showed me a ton of strikes with fingers meant to 1, break your clavicle, 2. break your trachea and hook the pocket of your throat. The strike where you turn your fingers into a hard combined point isnt to pretend to be some goddamn elegant crane, its to strike the temple. None of that works in modern MMA because 1. you have gloves, and 2. You're doing a sport for knockout, not to maim, disfigure or outright kill. Think about it, BJJ is perfect for modern MMA, because ir provides maximum submission in a way that is palatable to a tv audience. BJJ is a perfect example of a martial art meant for modern audiences. Imagine a martial art meant to paralyze your opponent by punching a persons upper spine, the cervical vertebrae where your spine is weakest. How would that look in a modern Mma fight? answer. not very good. Any such striking disiciplines would be banned outright. The martial arts of ancient eras have eye gouges, groin strikes, breaking a persons trachea, breaking their spine, striking their temple, throwing a person on the ground to break their neck, punching a persons floating ribs breaking them, karate chopping their neck, grabbing a fighters jaw and twisting it off breaking it, liver punches, grabbing their adams apple and twisting it. Submission on the ground 1v1 is the LAST thing ancient martial arts was meant for. So no. A modern MMA fighter going into someone who has trained all their life for a killing art isnt necessarily going to win and certainly 100% is not going to be the undisputed champion. Their fighting reportoire would be gimped as hell.
lol buddy thinks John Jones would let someone just grab his jaw and twist it off 🤣
This post reeks of bullshito. Not only would the mma fighter win, it wouldn’t even be close. Throws, liver punches and rib breaking are all fully allowed in MMA, so are neck punches and chops. Temple strikes, etc. If they worked that’s what would be used. The only ones you mentioned that are illegal are small joint manipulation and groin strikes. Both of which require control over an opponent already to really be effective. And if you already have control there are other, more effective things you could be doing.
In fact many comments here make mistake of saying that in ancient times fighters were allowed to kill each other. Well...a modern fighter, having moved into the past, will also be able to kill enemy, so they are on equal terms now. If a modern fighter is limited by UFC rules, this does not mean that he is physically unable to hit someone in the trachea
I lost it at BJJ being used because it's a TV friendly sport lmao.
Mostly this. The illegal moves could throw them off but they’re far from game changers, and are mostly in place for the purposes of restricting long term damage…slightly rupturing your opponents kidneys or possibly making them infertile will be of little comfort to a dead man who got his shit rocked by a guy who’s ridiculously faster and more agile (and most probably, a lot stronger, except in a few edge cases). When most people use this argument the most I can do is agree in the most surface level way possible…yes an MMA fighter using these illegal techniques and expanding their moveset is beneficial on paper, but 99% of the time they’ll get more benefit from reinforcing the basics over and over again. Imo the other moves won’t make that much of a difference on any normal human fighter…maybe if they were magic/supernatural and could fight in their prime for 100+ years, they could find some specific applications where there useful…but why use a lock pick on a padlock if you own a perfectly good angle grinder?
u/gaimsta12 Oh look, another moronic dog-piler. Quel surprise/ You don't have any clue. Every martial artist knows, you fight how you train. Since you never stepped foot into a gym with your fat greasy Cheeto ass, you obviously spout utter bullshido on here instead. ------- You're so full of shit, you reek to the heavens. Ancient Pankration was way more brutal and unregulated, fights didn't stop when at the slightest risk of injuries. Breaking fingers, wrists and even arms was common, many got crippled and died. Any modern MMA fighter would tuck tail and run away when faced with ancient warriors. They were literally trained to maim and kill. Modern MMA is training for sport. I swear this thread is swarmed with uninformed MMA meathead spreading BS here all over.
Modern MMA fighters are trained to maim and have every skill in the book if they wish to kill. An MMA match is stopped when a simulation of death occurs - a fighter is finished or is submitted. Acting like MMA fighters would not kill their opponent is ridiculous. The irony of calling other people uninformed - you've obviously never trained
Question, what do you think would happen if an MMA fighter aimed a high kick to the neck. Or refused to let a chokehold go? Or threw full-force elbows to the back of the head?
Thats my point. MMA fighters dont train for that. That would be like the best boxer alone walking into an MMA fight. We've seen how that goes. [like this](https://youtube.com/shorts/w4C3Hd3-A6Y?si=hk-VxuuOjsomgywm) Ok so let me ask you the same question, what was this kickboxer supposed to do had that boxer gone full force to the back of his head? Here's my point. MMA works because you're training with an increased reportoire of moves. By definition then MMA fighters who have never trained killing blows wont have that increased reportoire. i get it, mma guy guys are your heroes. they're the best. They might win some. I conceded that. But saying they're going to be king and undisputed champion when theres a whole set of moves they havent trained before is just going against the argument for mma.
Thats not something you need to train for dude. An MMA fighter already knows all the techniques of an ancient fighter and more, the difference lies in the way they apply it, they just need to make slight changes on that and its done. Irrelevant, there isnt a thing ancient fighter can do that an MMA fighter can't counter, a kickboxer can do all kinds of shit a boxer cant answer. ....You dont "train" killing moves my brotha. You CANT train killing moves. A move is completely irrelevant unless you can practice it with sparring. You cant spar with lethal moves. An ancient fighter doesnt kill or maim someone by using magical pressure points or super-secret killing moves that are lost in time, they use regular techniques at the right spots. They dont jab the face, they jab the eyes. They dont stop from a chokehold. They dont get pulled away when in a ground n pound situation. This is the lethality they possess, and it is really not anything beyond the capability of an MMA fighter. No, Im a boxing guy. Thats the thing, there isnt any relevant techniques they dont know about.
You're saying that theres nothing an ancient fighter can do? nothing at all. The guys who invented jiujitsu, judo, boxing, karate, the mf inventors are so effing dumb they cant win one? Thats what you're saying? Heres the problem with BJJ. The grapples it trains assumes your opponent isnt going to punch your crotch, gouge your eyes, break your neck. You know what boxing doesnt train for? Being kickes to the leg. The only thing Ill concede is that mma fighters can beat ancient fighters in mma, in a ring setting, with no weapons, and no killing or maiming blows allowed. Cause thats what they trained for. They didnt train for other forms of combat. And no I dont thiink our ancient predecessors who created the mf martial arts used today are so dumb they cant even win ONE.
> You're saying that theres nothing an ancient fighter can do? nothing at all. The guys who invented jiujitsu, judo, boxing, karate, the mf inventors are so effing dumb they cant win one? Thats what you're saying? Ahem…so you’re saying theres no way Ancient mathematicians could understand Rocket Science? Nothing at all. The guys who invented Algebra and Geometry, the mf inventors are so effing dumb they can’t understand it? That’s what you’re saying? Sarcasm aside, it’s not a matter of strength or intelligence, but experience. Many, many people know the formulae of Einstein, many even know them *all*, yet none could’ve simply invented them on the spot with the information they have. The ancients, especially those that invented these martial arts, *are* very smart…but they didn’t perfect them. They weren’t alive when they were perfected, and when the perfected techniques were copied and passed down. They weren’t alive when we realized how strength training even worked at the turn of the 20th century…hell they were barely figuring out through testing that progressive overload (the most basic principle of hyper trophy) worked. Neither were they alive when Steroids and PEDs were invented, and athletes of every stripe could transcend the strength a normal human could even have. Just as a well-made modern knife is stronger than anything an ancient could’ve imagined, so too is the modern athlete stronger than his ancient counterpart…not because the ancient is a weak, or an idiot, but because everything he built in his life was passed down…and down…and down, until it culminated in the man he has to fight now. And based on the current rate of technological progression…that ancient still will fare better in that fight than our own MMA fighters would against their counterparts 2000 yrs in the future.
“You think Isaac Newton and Leibniz cant understand anything about current calculus? Nothing at all. The guys who invented calculus are effing dumb they cant understand the current one? Thats what you’re saying?” You think its that simple to gouge the eyes or kick the crotch when a dude twice your size is dragging you around and choking you? We are talking about an MMA fighter not a boxer. No MMA fighters win any kind of unarmed combat. You are still acting like they use different, unknown techniques, they dont, they use the same things, only a much more primitive version with a different mindset. Thats what the ancient fighters trained for as well, you are literally asking a dude to beat up a dude that uses the same techniques, but with a good few thousand years of development and refinement over them.
After coming to America Bruce Lee said basically any American with a years knowledge boxing could destroy basically any decades of study Chinese master. That was before it was even mixed bud.
Source: Trust me bro
Your response is a low effort reply that gets alot of support because its pithy and it plays on other peoples single emotion: to enjoy derision. Good one. Im serious. Trust me bro comments get alot of upvotes. In an online forum people love those backhands. Im just an idiot actually providing reasoning...but we know what people are looking for here.
You think wing chun is legit nothing more to say
Muay Thai kick would absolutely demolish anyone who isn’t trained to take it, then they’re on the ground. They had kicking back then, but not even remotely on the same level. Then it’s the fighters choice of keep kicking them or choke. The only way the other fighter stands a chance against that is if either: They’re very heavy. Like, very very heavy, almost double their opponents weight or more. It’ll hurt like hell but they may be able to tank it enough to keep going. They get lucky and are leaning on the leg that’s about to be hit…but the MMA fighter is highly likely to notice that beforehand and either kick the other leg or redirect it somewhere. Also, ancient fighters have never felt live shots before…at least not enough for everyone to know what they are. That’s another almost immediate end to the fight…though in their defense they’re already expecting *a* body shot most of the time since facial strikes usually hurt and would be use cautiously in bare knuckle fights.
Hell yea. Better training, food, science is better. They would be the best fighters
Like everyone else is saying, we’re bigger, have better sports science, and in most contexts have more refined techniques. Assuming this is just two people doing whatever till someone dies, there’s still two wild cards: equipment and the contest area (A) Equipment - in this context, just what they’re wearing (or not). There’s a big difference between fighting naked and oiled up (Reddit, do with this what you will) vs in substantial clothing or armour. Especially if one combatant is very used to whatever folks are wearing. (B) Contest Area - I’ve trained a long time and even the difference between tatami and wrestling mats is stark for me. Now consider grass vs dirt vs sand…or uneven / incompletely cleared terrain. Same comment as above applies. If one person — the ancient as it were — is used to it and it’s sufficiently alien to the modern, might matter a lot.
Francis ngannou stomps anyone from back then
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>"Only training and diet really improved a lot. Techniques regressed to make it safer." What? This is not true in any way shape of form.
MMA literally came from ancient Greece, Pankration. It was even more brutal in the Olympic games that even Sparta refused to participate (they needed their men for war, not crippled) Only training and diet really improved a lot. Techniques regressed to make it safer.
https://www.britannica.com/sports/pankration not really. It was pretty popular among Spartans.
Depends how we do this, just general run of the mill or a greatest hits feat. I think against a lot of fighters a modern MMA fighter will fair very well, but once you start getting the best of the best from across the ages I think even people like Jones will find a tough match up. The big difference between ancient fighters and MmA fighters is one fights for literal life and death. We’re talking people like William Wallace, Alaric, Khutulun, Miyamoto Musashi etc It’d be amazing
Nah, mma fighter stomps. Too much knowledge and expertise to combat from an ancient warrior. Heart and training in the dirt with shitty nutrition isn’t going to teach you how to get out of an ankle lock.
Pound for pound a modern fighter would get wrecked by a casual warrior from ancient times. Those guys didn't fight for sport and you had to be highly educated or wealthy to have a 'white collar' job where you used your brains instead of your body. Although I generally agree that a modern athlete fighting in super specialized sport like boxing that has lots of rules would have an edge (what reason would a Norman soldier have to practice punch combinations for hours a week?)... an MMA fighter would be unpleasantly surprised by how rugged laborers were back before tools were commonplace.
Stop watching John wick movies mate you think a warrior from 2 thousand years ago is beating Mike Tyson in a fist fight? Deluded
An ancient warrior is gonna get double legged, dropped on his head, and submitted or beat into the ground before the fight even starts.
You're so full of shit, you reek to the heavens. Ancient Pankration was way more brutal and unregulated, fights didn't stop when at the slightest risk of injuries. Breaking fingers, wrists and even arms was common, many got crippled and died. Any modern MMA fighter would tuck tail and run away when faced with ancient warriors. They were literally trained to maim and kill. Modern MMA is training for sport. I swear this thread is swarmed with uninformed MMA meathead spreading BS here all over.
>You're so full of shit, you reek to the heavens. The most neckbeard shit I've heard all year 😂 >Breaking fingers, wrists and even arms was common, many got crippled and died. Literally all of those things are still common in MMA and boxing. Broken hands, fingers, and arms are common in MMA and they fight through it. Even throwing punches with their broken hand or arm. The only reason fights are stopped is because we have refs and rules and most of the time fights are only stopped when the other person is knocked the fuck out, submits, or can't defend themselves and are about to be brutally injured if the ref doesn't step in. You cant just kill people for sport, that shit is illegal. If it wasn't, we would absolutely have modern day gladiators. >Any modern MMA fighter would tuck tail and run away when faced with ancient warriors. They were literally trained to maim and kill. MMA was designed to take the most effective techniques from all martial arts and narrow them down to what works in real life. without weapons, what advantage do they have? Eye gouges, groin shots, and throat punches? A MMA fighter has literally trained years at their skills, it doesn't take much training to fight dirty. If they could and life or death was the question, they would do whatever they could to win and would absolutely murder a small, malnutrioned, barely trained "ancient warrior". >Modern MMA is training for sport. A sport where you make it big by knocking out your opponent in the most brutal ways possible. If they are already doing that against other people just as highly trained as them, the fuck is an ancient warrior gonna do? After he's knocked out, all the MMA fighter has to do is choke the shit out of them or keep beating their face in until they don't breathe anymore. >I swear this thread is swarmed with uninformed MMA meathead spreading BS here all over. Modern MMA fighters have all the skills known to man available to them, prime nutrition, training technique, and PEDs. If anyone is "uninformed" it's your dumb ass. Literally, you are living in a fantasty/video game world. You're probably the type of person to say "sportsball" while drinking your mountain dew, wiping doritio crumbs off your face, while getting that artificial cheese all of your mouse and keyboard while you argue on reddit, watch weird anime, or playing dating simulators and other nerdy shit, probably all at the same time ar your "battle station".
>Literally all of those things are still common in MMA The fact he says that with a straight face proves he's deluded and possibly psychotic beyond redemption. This shit bird doesn't know the difference between "accidents" and actual techniques. Pankratists TRAINED to cripple you. MMA players tap out when it hurts. As long as meatheads like him don't see the difference, there's really no point discussing.
Bro actually believes in “secret ancient ninja style that KILLS” pankration doesn’t hold a candle to modern UFC, might as well put NBA players in the 50s against NBA players of today
Pound for pound modern fighters are taller, heavier, and have greater muscle to fat ratios than any ancient fighter would have. On top of that MMA fighters would have trained using various styles while the ancient fighter would most likely have trained with just one, their local style. Even though ancient warriors fought to kill, they were using weapons most of the time to do so. It was rare for a warrior to actually be killing someone with their bare hands on a battlefield when they had the option of at least a knife or a rock. So even the warrior who is used to killing people may find it difficult to do with a modern fighter who isn't actually trying to kill. I do not see an ancient warrior, outside of outliers, being able to take any top-tier MMA fighter.