Hypothetically...

I have always wondered what would happen if you took two average males with no prior MA experience but a desire to learn to fight, put them in a room together with all of the appropriate fighting paraphanalia (heavy bags, mat, gloves etc) and told them to get to it. What would be the product after a period of time of just trying to learn how to fight with no guidance? Or to put it another way, are there some instinctive things about fighting that would just come out naturally?

With no instruction what would their fighting look like? Would it be mostly ground work or striking? And perhaps the most important question, would they learn to harness their chi and how many katas would they come up with?

What a coincidence, I’m locked in a room with another guy right now. We are working on the world’s first e-kata. It’s called, ‘How to start worthless threads on an internet message board’. Due to your obvious proficiency in this area, we are willing to cut you in on our deal, for a small fee, right now.

What do you say, grasshopper?

Systema. End of conversation.

They’d be brawlers, that’s all.

Just like when they started.

he said nothing about camo pants.

With that much time together with no supervision, they might even go Brokeback Mountin’.

I actually spar with such a person. You end up with crappy boxing and super weak leg kicks. There tends to be a stance where the arms kind of flail up and down, kind of like Keith Hackney. In fact, imagine Keith Hackney with crappier kicks.

So that’s two votes for Systema…

If they’re average (counting the world over), they won’t have TV. What’s boxing? What’s a Keith Hackney? etc, etc.

Yes, I’m pulling out the over-the-top-ridiculous-card.

Just trying to keep with the theme of the OP.

MAP throwdown?

It seems reasonable to believe that after a few period of time, they would slowly graps concept of grappling. Most likely, like most fights I’ve seen involving similar situations, the fight ends up on the ground with the person on top throwing punches, as neither recieved training in grappling. I believe one or both may eventually aquire knowledge in grappling techniques through trial and errors.

Hmm, Dr Fagbot should be summoned to fashion a theory of just what sort of hijinks may occur in this very curious imaginary matchup of would-be pugilists!

I don’t know what you mean by that.

Two guys who know nothing about fighting (even how to properly throw a punch) would definitely end up on the ground. Behaving on instinct, the two would struggle to be the one on the top, as it is logically more advantageous to be mounted on the opponent.

For example, when a person mounts on top of you, wouldn’t your basic instincts tempt you to push the opponent away? With that, different scenarios will form, and the “fighters” who received no formal training will slowly but gradually begin learning different techniques by their experience.

Another example, let’s say the person at the bottom eventually learned how to get into a guard position, begin acting desperately to escape, and wrapped their leg over the opponent’s head. This could lead to the accidental discovery of the triangle hold.

Ghey repost.

=Steve]With that much time together with no supervision, they might even go Brokeback Mountin’.

Pen()r.

Your “Unorthodox” Kungfu makes you stupid.

They’d be brawlers at best, _ing _un slap fighters at worst.

The original post was a much more sterilized question based off of what has started to happen (at least in my opinion) in the martial arts world. Due to the recent rise in popularity of mma there are now a countless numbers of kids/enthusiasts with little or no training strapping on gloves, grabbing a friend and basically mimicking what they see in the UFC. In fact, I’m fairly certain that never before has the MA had such a ‘do it yourself’ attitude. The original question and off shoot was what is going to happen with and to these people?

I have been likening it to guitar. A lot of people pick up guitar, some stick with it, others drop it, some get lessons, and some play for their whole lives never having recieved lessons or proper instruction. These people develop bad habits and eventually reach a peak (unless they are extraordinarily gifted) but they continue to play. So what is going to happen to these new ‘do it yourself’ MA-ists? What kind of style will they all develope and what, if any success can they have?

Perhaps we could, in this haphazard anthropology experiment see the emergence of what might be the beginnings of a primitive headlock.

DR. FAGBOT HAS MORE FULFILLING ENTHUSIASMS TO MONKEY WITH OTHER THAN THIS TYPE OF HOKUM - ENTHUSIASMS SUCH AS RATIONAL INTROSPECTION AND OTHER DEEPLY INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS - AND THEREFORE I, DR. FAGBOT Q. MACGILLICUDDY PHD, HAVE NOT READ THIS THREAD NOR EVEN ACTUALLY CLICKED ON THE LINK HARUMPH :icon_flow

Science has suffered a devastating blow on this tragic day, my friends.