suhieb

I think that a black belt shows the practitionsers commitment to the martial art as they wil have constantly train over a substantial time period to become "skilled" enough to recieve the "award". The Black belt also shows the experience as mentioed in an above post. The one thing i think that a black belt is not a symbol of is : overall fighting ability

This is because some martial arts practitioners may have recieved there black belt by learning froms (Kata's). These do teach how to fight but only from the forms perspective eg. you go into stance A if your opponent is in stance B.

I think that the only way to judge fighting ability is through sparring, competeions etc and also look at the techniques that a practitioner can perform

Suhieb