Conditioning or Skill

[SmackieChanRet]

Alright, let's say that circumstances stick two equal weight, age, etc... men in the ring, fighting in NHB.

One is amazingly conditioned, phenomonally strong, but lacks in the skill department.

The other can send out submissions while wiping his ass clean after a satisfying crap...but lacks in the conditioning department.

Basically, the real question behind this scenario is...what, overall, do you think is more important? Conditioning or skill?

[YeLLa-TiGeR]

If the conditioned man has a passing knowledge in sub defence, then he will always have the "punchers" chance.


On the other hand, the submission man must be PATIENT and relaxed and he will most certainly find an opening to capitalize on.


All in all, the smarter man with the better plan will win!

[Rubbaneck]

This being totally hypothetical, I would have to say skill is more important than conditioning, but not by much. If each guy is to their respective extreme, than the conditioned guy would get submitted pretty quickly, wouldn't he?

[SweepEm]

As stated, this will be a hypothetcal debate like "if a tree falls in the forrest, does it make a sound?"

There are many more parameters that are needed.
Is there a time limit or rounds?
This is very important since one guy is in condition, the other isn't.
As you can see, with no time limits or rounds, the guy without cardio is at a severe disadvantage. If there are rounds, then the no cardio guy can hold on until the bell rings and the rest period inbetween.

Either way, my opinibn is the well conditioned guy.
If you look at a lot of NHB/MMA fights the favored superior fighter that didn't have good cardio lost.

[JaredExtreme]

I think skill is wayyyy more important. Let's look at Extremes. If you take some Iron Man triathalon dood and pit him against say, Helio, I'm puttin money on Helio. If you have enough skill, you can end the fight as easily as you desire!

[mushinmaster]

I think will power is underestimated.

All in all, I would have to go with the conditioned athlete. Like SweepEm said, there are too many more parameters that must be considered. No one attribute will determine a fight.

If you isolate these two factors and consider the "skilled" fighter to be a karate kid (the martial arts figure of America - all it takes is some kiai and the nerd can beat up the bully), while the "conditioned" fighter is the Ivan Drago super-juicin' roid-ragin' beast from the east, well, squash the poor karate kid!

The conditioned athlete will be:
quicker
faster
stronger
more powerful
able to take more abuse

It doesn't take a genius to learn how to fight.

[soho]

You can't really seperate the two. If someone is a skilled fighter (say in bjitz) that means they have spent a ton of time wrestling and will have therefor built up good conditioning. If a guy has not trained in so long that he has no conditioning then chances are his speed and timeing have also lapsed some.

[mushinmaster]

True that.

I was thinking about that when one post I read used a Gracie as an example of skill - i was thinking to myself, the've gotta be in good condition, fighting in the UFC.

Now that I think about it, I don't think there really is an answer to this question.

The only thing I know is you can increase you physicall condition in a relativly short period of time, whereas skill is accumulated over many years of practice. BUT, many people, especially in American martial arts, who aquire skill are in terrible shape, and usually don't fare to well in a ring environment - if that's the environment we're discussing.

The debate goes on and on...

I know I won't be the underconditioned fighter!