Episode 745 - Is There Such a Thing as a Fair Fight
In this episode, Andrew and Jeremy try to answer the question if There is Such a Thing as a Fair Fight.
Is There Such a Thing as a Fair Fight - Episode 745
Is there such a thing as a fair fight? Where does the idea come from that fights should be fair, to begin with? In this episode, Andrew and Jeremy try to answer the question if There is Such a Thing as a Fair Fight. Listen to learn more!
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everyone, welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And in today's episode, Andrew and I are going to address the question. Is there such a thing as a fair fight? I'm sure you already have thoughts, but hang tight. We will get there. If you're new to the show. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I found whistlekick because I love traditional martial arts. And I'm joined by frequent co-host and all around great guy, Andrew Adams.
Andrew Adams:
Great. How are you doing, Jeremy?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good, thank you. And on Martial Arts Radio, we talk about all things traditional martial arts, because it's what we do. It's what we love. And it is what we are here in support of if you want to see all the things that we do go to whistlekick.com, or online home, our store. And if you use the code PODCAST15 it’s going to get you 15% off anything like a shirt or a hat, or I don't know what else we got, we got all kinds of stuff over there, there's flip flops, you just ordered a pair of flip flops. I saw that order come through, or perhaps some of the sparring gear currently sitting in a box pallet in my driveway right now.
I'm super excited that there's more gear here. I am not super excited about the way it was left. Very clandestinely. Anyway, moving on. In the middle of us recording a live episode, by the way, people. If you want to go deeper on this or other episodes of the show, you can go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. While you're over there, you can sign up for the newsletter, you could leave us a tip.
But there are lots of ways you can help us out. But we've also got a Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick as little as $2 a month gets you bonus content going up from there with lots of different tier options. And if you want the whole list, if you are in fact truly someone who values what we do, go to the family page, if you are part of the whistlekick family, go to whistlekick.com/family and read about all the things that you could do. Excuse me, Andrew, “fights”.
Andrew Adams:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We've often heard the words fair and fight together. That's not a fair fight. That's an unfair fight. He's not fighting fair. They're not fighting fair. That's an unfair fight. What do you think? Weird? Weird, is this idea that fighting should be fair come from even?
Andrew Adams:
I don't know definitively. I'm guessing it has something to do with the Victorian era, where it came from. And that, if we were going to duel each other it would be… we have to have this list of matched weapons because it would be unfair if you had a sword. And I had a pistol, for example. So instead, we both have pistols or we both have swords or whatever. I'm not sure that's the case. That's my guess that it comes from that type of therapy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It wouldn't surprise me. And I think whether it was the Victorian era or something else, I think there's an inherent recognition that if we are going to settle things through violence, right, a fight being a violent event, that it should be as fair as it can be. Right? When we think about the notion of settling a dispute via champions, right, like this is something that's happened over time. And actually, we've talked about this on the show, tribally like you know, each tribe picks a champion to fight your whole reason that that they do that is to try and settle this thing that has escalated to the point of violence, but in as far away as possible, and I'm using air quotes, because we're saying, “Alright, it's one on one. It's not a group. It's not any of this we're trying to make this as fair as possible”.
And part of the fairness comes down to not having a whole bunch of people hurt or killed unnecessarily. So there's a utilitarian perspective here. Because I think inherently we all want things to be fair. We generally route is societally we, most of us, like an underdog if we're watching a sport, sporting match of any sport, and it's unbalanced. People either tend to tune out or root for the underdog, because we want there to be a semblance of fairness, we want things to happen evenly. We hear this all the time in professional sports, you get a team that's loaded up with stars, and they play another team. It's not really fair, you know, and this is where things like the salary cap come in, etc.
Andrew Adams:
Well, and when you're watching a swim, if we take the analogy again of a sporting event, if it's very unbalanced as a viewer, it often becomes boring. It's not fun to watch. So I think that's one of the reasons why the underdog is often rooted for.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, anybody who's been to a live sports event, and it was unbalanced, you see people, maybe two thirds, three quarters of the way, even halfway through leave, they're like, You know what, I know the outcome. It's not fun anymore. I might as well beat traffic. Yep, I'm not going to sit around and sit in traffic, so I can watch my team get stomped on. So that being such a fundamental, inherent element of our humanity, it's only natural, we're going to bring that forward to a fight that we want to see if two people are going to settle their dispute with violence. I understand that sometimes disputes are initiated one sided, I'm not suggesting that this is trial by combat or anything. Yeah, it's not always conceptual, right?
But if it's going to go there, we're going to generally want people to follow the rules. And we all have slightly different versions of the rules. But I'm sure we can come up with plenty of examples. I'm thinking of a fight that happened in high school that was much discussed, it was two people who were friends. And somehow they decided that they were in an argument about who would win in a fight. And it escalated to the point where the fight ended up in the sandpit off campus. And one of them kicked the other in the groin, as their opening move, and ended the fight.
And there was much discussion about whether or not that's fair, because on the one hand, no one had determined that is off limits. But others said, it is generally understood that men don't kick other men in the groin as part of an orchestrated fight, a conceptual fight, a consensual fight, right? So it's there, and it threads itself through everything, but you hit I think, a really important point, when you use the word conceptual, because that's where things become completely different.
Andrew Adams:
And even when you do get into the conceptual fight, like, you know, the story you just mentioned, of these two kids that went off and fought one end of this fight by kicking the other one in the groin. The other one could have done that. He had every opportunity to choose not to even still, was that a fair fight? I don't know these two people.
Were they exactly the same? Wait? Did they have exactly the same training and background experiences? So I don't know who would have been the winner. I don't know which one was the winner. But who can? How can we determine it was a fair fight, even if they said, Let's not kick each other in the groin?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. And then I think that's a great point that the idea of fairness, within the context of combat is so incredibly subjective. The only thing that determines fairness is equity in the rules. And this is where I think MMA becomes really interesting as an illustration, because you're in the same space.
There's a referee that says, Go. And it's all about you, your training, your preparation. And the only points in time that I really see people get upset about outcomes comes from a perception of the referee, applying rules in a way that they believe to be unfair.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. And I would make the argument that MMA, having weight categories and having a predetermined set of rules of things that are and are not allowed, helps to get them fair. But I don't personally think there's ever such a thing as a fair fight. Let's say Jeremy, you and I are the same weight. We decided to get involved in MMA and we're gonna step into the ring. We're in the same weight class, we're in the same category. One of us has been training longer. And I'm not even set.
I'm not gonna say who likes but like doesn't matter. In general. Someone has been training longer, someone has been training harder, someone has more experience than the other person. There's no way it can be fair. You know that there were just too many variables this week. and try to eliminate as many as possible. But the reality is, someone is going to have more training and have a better chance of winning.
I'm 5’10, 260 pounds, I'm at a bar, and a 6’4 guy, 300 pounds picks a fight with me, and I am unable to extricate myself from the situation, which would be my first goal. But if I can't, and I have to defend myself, he has no training whatsoever. He's just a really tall guy that is big. Is that a fair fight? He's bigger than me. So is he going to win? I have lots of training, he has no training. How can you determine it's a fair fight? It's all totally different.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And this is where I think a lot of people because you know, we've talked about this on the show, this idea that people need to remain the hero in their own story, people, so somebody like me, my instinct, as someone who is 5’7 and 165. I look at that example that you give. And I inherently want to discount the advantage that that taller larger person has over you. And I want to hone in on experience, because I have experience and lots of experience. And I want to apply greater value to that in that situation.
Because I want to believe that if I'm in a situation that is similar, that I have a better chance of winning than the person picking the fight with me. Yeah. And thus, I think what really comes down to this notion of fairness is us attempting to apply subjectivity to the situation in a way that makes us feel confident about the outcome. One of the things we've seen kicked around on social media over the last year really, is this idea that fighting is the only thing that people with no experience think they have a good chance at.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, very true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
People who have never been in a fight in their lives will say, Yeah, but if push came to shove, you know, I, I could do this. Nobody says that about stepping into the NBA, or driving Formula One, or building a house or building a house? Or? Well, it depends on where you are in the building house. Right? I know plenty of people who think they can build a house. Painting, right, like we understand, these are things that require skill and experience. But because fighting is so primal, because it is not that far off, right for us to feel a connection to it, when we observe it, or how to implement it ourselves. Partner, we got it. We believe that we have a more direct connection to implementing it in a skilled way than we really do.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I would agree. And, you know, you brought up something that when I brought up this topic, as an episode, I was coming at it more from the MMA side of things like weight classes, they try and make it fair. But the reality is someone stepped in there with 15 fights under their belt. Even though they're in the same weight class, they're fighting someone who has two fights under their belt, there's a lot of experience that a fair fight, but you brought up something that I hadn't even thought of which is society's expectation of fair fight. of you know, the classic example is not kicking a guy in the groin. You know, if I am in an altercation, and I have to defend myself, there's no rules, like nothing is off limits for me, as far as I can. Even though society says I should not kick a guy in the groin, You can darn well bet I've got it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The thing that is most likely going to let me get home safely. You better believe it?
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And so that's a good lead in that subject and. I think the reality and I think it's how we both feel. You do what you have to do to go home, that there is no fairness and a fight. I can say, with all those certainty. I'm not going to be the bad guy in a fight. I'm not going to be the one picking the fight. I'm not going to be the one mugging someone I'm not an instigator. That's not my nature. So I'll say with all that 100% certainty that I will be quite the good guy in the fight. Which means I feel absolutely no compulsion to use any sort of rule set that the person attacking me bystanders or society may want to place at my feet. I will bite, I will kick, I will scratch, I will pull ears, I will throw rocks at groins. I do not care what needs to be done.
And I am the first to admit no If there will be no fairness and what I will do, because, to me, the moment a fight occurs, and I think this is a this is we use the word fight in very different ways. Right we can describe fighting two point sparring people call them fighters. Yep, they are fighting in a certain way we can talk about in terms of MMA, those folks are fighting. But I think when you get really down to the definition of what a fight is, it is something that does not exist within a rule set. Yeah. And if we are going to talk about fighting in that way, if somebody is going to initiate a fight against me, I'm going to end it as quickly, definitively as possible. And that couldn't be running away.
Because if I'm not there, they can't fight with me, right? I and there are people who would say, well, that's not fair, you ran away, right? That is not fair. I have zero interest. In fairness. If someone picks a fight with me, and I have a baseball bat that they do not see, I will hit them with the bat. If someone comes up to me while I'm in my car, and they are trying to fight with me through my car, I have the option to run over their foot and drive away. I will do that. Because I have zero interest in fairness.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, and anything you need to do to extricate yourself from the situation. My friend, Angela, and I taught a self protection seminar to the young professionals group in the area. And, you know, we had a discussion about what, what is fair and what isn't fair in terms of how much aggression or force you use. And, I don't want to relive we've done episodes on, the use of force and stuff. But one of the things that Angela brought up is, she is an older woman with bad knees, and a backpack that will not be able to run away.
So she is going to absolutely do anything she can, even if someone thinks it's unfair to put the person down, because she will not be able to run away. Whereas for me, I don't have that, that limitation that she has. And so, I'm not worried about fairness whatsoever. But you know, those sorts of things can come into it as well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For sure. Is there more for us to say on this?
Andrew Adams:
I don't think so. I think there's just, you know, again, with the MMA thing, someone's going to be faster than the other, you know, if we're getting into sparring, even not even a man, we're sparring, same weight class, one of us is going to be faster than the other. Back to seventh advantage. It's not fair.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I think that in the case of something being arranged in that way, the entire purpose of the rule set is to determine who is better, who is who has the advantage with in the unfairness that, as you're saying, he was in trouble. I think that that is that's the whole purpose. You know, in sports examples, I often go back to the Michael Jordan era, you know, the bulls dynasty when they won the title three times, because there were plenty of times people would look at who they were playing and say, this just isn't fair. It's not meant to be fair, they've played the game. Yep. The team has collected these players in this certain way. And they've done these things. It's not fair. If we look at business, it is often not fair. Lots of things in the world are not fair. And while we all want fairness, I think in the context of things where there is a clearly defined rule set, I'm talking sports, I'm not necessarily talking business. The outcome is not necessarily going to look fair, even if the conditions are, yeah. When we look at violence, fairness is irrelevant.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, that's a great, great win. And I agree. Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, if you're watching or listening and you have feedback on this, if you have a different take on it, if you want us to go deeper because we opened the doors on a few subjects hear this idea of of fairness and what are our inherent perception of what is and is not fair, etcetera. We would love to hear about it. You can email Andrew, Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com You can get to me directly Jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media all over the places @whistlekick, our primary website, whistlekick.com are you getting the pattern here?
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