Originally Posted by suhieb

I think that a black belt shows the practitioners commitment to the martial art as they Will have constantly train over a substantial time period to become "skilled" enough to receive the "award". The Black belt also shows the experience as mentioned 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 received there black belt by learning forms (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, competitions etc and also look at the techniques that a practitioner can perform

Suhieb