Yesterday I was working my shadow stick at the dojo where I coach boxing when Mister Marshall, a karate student, respectfully approached me and said, “I’d like to ask you a question. A friend of mine—he is a boxing fan—says that a boxer would always beat a karate man in a fight. What is your opinion of that?”
I gave Mister Marshall a condensed version of the response below, which represents my method for discussing combat arts, and is a large part of the reason why I have been welcomed into various martial arts schools when I could not afford to rent space for myself. The proprietors know they can trust me not to defame their art at the expense of what I practice.
First off, I disagree with the boxing fan’s assertion. There are five ways I like to consider this question.
1. Nature: Take two twins; one is beating people up throughout his childhood, and the other avoids fights, but would like to be able to defend his self on his way to college when his psycho brother is not there to do it. The psycho kid lacks adult approval for beating up people, so he gets into boxing as a way of fulfillment. The other kid just wants to keep his teeth in his mouth. You can’t pit these two types against each other regardless of skill set and expect the academic to beat the psycho. So, at low levels, in their teens and twenties when young men are likely to get into fights, the kind of guy that takes up boxing has a huge advantage over the self defense student.
2. Rules: In the 1970s boxers slaughtered kick boxers in open competition because the kickers had to abide by boxing rules and kick above the waist. In the 1990s, with the inception of K-1 boxers got slaughtered by leg-kicking fighters.
3. Tools: At a young age the karate fighter is at a disadvantage against the boxer and in similar situations because his tool kit is too big to be mastered and instinctualized until his prime. He tends to get caught thinking, where the boxer has a relatively tiny tool selection, and hence has more hours per a tool in training and has been conditioned to use these tools during and after contact. Karate people are trained to avoid being hit, not to hit back while or after they are having their nose broken by a sneak attack.
4. Hours: Since boxing is a sport with a high conditioning requirement the boxer logs more hours training, with the typical amateur boxer logging 10 hours per week to the karate fighter’s 2-6 hours.
5. Evolution: When a man who just boxes meets an MMA or kickboxing fighter he does poorly, because these are also sports with a high conditioning requirement, and conditioning is the big dog. At this level the larger tool kit becomes an advantage not a hindrance. For instance, a pro boxer will only box 2 hours per day and then do conditioning work to avoid overworking his punching muscles. A pro MMA fighter will do the exact same thing—and then go and wrestle, kick, work on submissions. Again, conditioning wins out.
Summary
The combat arts themselves agree to this scheme—making the young boxer more effective than the young karate man and the old karate man more effective than the old boxer. Old school karate men did not want to produce a really deadly fighter until he was essentially too old for competition—and such foolishness as street fights. Boxing coaches are in a rush to get a boy conditioned and effective so he can accomplish to his potential before age robs him of the ability. So, you see boxers declining in effectiveness and aggression in their mid 30s just as you see karate men maturing at that time.
In some cases these are one in the same person. For instance Mister Frederick, the man whose school I answered this question in, boxed at Mack Lewis’ Eager Street Jim as a boy. If swung on by a couple of knuckleheads he will—and has—just used boxing to quickly end the encounter. On the other hand, when he has been attacked by women and armed men, he has used his karate and jiu jitsu tool kits to develop a more appropriate solution.
In the end the question is how does the boxer and the karate man deal with the criminal, not each other.
Letters from Planet Meathead
For those interested in such combat arts discussions try this link for my print book on the subject of training as a fighter at the end of masculine time.
Scenario: An older experienced kickboxer and a younger boxer meet in the street for a good old fashioned hand to hand battle to the death.
Who wins?
Given same weight classes it comes down to the kickboxer's power and killer instinct [the latter more often owned by boxers]. The young active boxer will have the stamina and kicks cost a lot of gas. The kicker needs to score power kicks early on, or, in the long run, the young guy—assuming these guys are both tough—will be able to gain control over the combat space.
As a fighter in your late 20s Sean, you are about to hit your prime, which should run until about 33. Somewhere in that span its going to dawn on you, if it has not already, that fighting is essentially about dominating the combat space. You can get there via many skill sets and physical gifts. But, the thing that hangs over the entire episode like the reaper's scythe, is stamina. As an old dude, I can tell you, that losing that is a crushing blow to the ego, and the answer to it is large doses of kinetic energy sunk into that young buck! As a small guy I attempt to accomplish this with timing.
So, if the kicker pursues a strategy of walking the punk down and literally kicking his ass right out of the gate I say it goes his way most of the time. If he instead tries to stay on the outside and score, I pick the younger boxer.
Also, as this is a hypothetical death match, the kicker gets the edge there for two reasons:
1. he is wearing shoes [weapons] and the boxer has forgotten his ancient boxing gauntlets
2. if someone goes down, the kicker has the best finishing options from the top and the best desperation strikes from the bottom
So the answer as to who wins—all things considered equal—comes down to the approach of the kicker, which hinges on his psychology. If he is the right kind of guy it goes his way.
It was BOXER vs Karate man......
Not boxer vs kickboxing or MMA... this guy went off topic......
Sorry Peter, but most karate men who face a boxer do so via their journey into kickboxing or, more recently, MMA, which is where my relevant coaching experience has been, so served as my reference point.
If we are talking strip mall karate versus boxer: boxer.
If we are talking traditional karate versus boxer, if all things are equal, boxer. If the traditional karate man has other advantages like being better at karate than the boxer is at boxing, bigger, tougher, faster, etc., then we would have to call it for the karate man.
Interestingly, I know a number of karate black belts who have become boxers and they tend to call this hypothetical matchup for the boxer.
In any case, this is a huge—and currently largely mute, due karate losing its appeal to young men—can of worms and I tried to address it more from experience then theory, which led me to the approach you object to.
Take care, Peter.
James