x There is, on average, a major advantage for the male frame in terms of physical strength and striking power. One study indicates that the average woman has 52% of the upper body strength of the average man. And too there are of course exceptions, like Gabi Garcia, shown below with little friend Wanderlei Silva.
However, cases like Garcia’s are basically the exception that proves the rule. Therefore, with no controversy, in the interests of athlete health and safety, the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts prohibit males from fighting females, and vice versa.
In the US military, that is not the case, and the reason is important. US Army military combatives tournaments look like amateur MMA in really long camo shorts and terrible rash guards. It is critical to understand though that combatives is not MMA. Matt Larsen, who wrote the Army’s combatives field manual in 2002, explains the difference.
“Combatives is not a sport. It’s a training method to teach soldiers not only hand-to-hand combat but teach them how to be warriors,” explained Larsen to SI. “It’s more about inculcating an ethos and a skill set than anything else. In MMA, the arena is the point. But for us, the arena is only a training ground. The real fight is a real fight down range. The only value the arena has for us is that it’s motivational to get people training.”
So while males are prohibited from fighting females in MMA, the US Army has more important considerations than sports.
“We can’t go to the Taliban and tell them we’re looking for a 140-pound female to fight our female,” said Kris Perkins, former director of combatives for III Corps and Fort Hood. Thus it is rational that in the US Military, sometimes men and women fight.
The video below is from the Combatives Finals for All-American Week 2017, held on May 24, 2017, at Fort Bragg, N.C. In it, a female combatant fights a male opponent. She gets top position after he lands a straight and pulls Guard, but is reversed, her back is eventually taken, and she taps to a rear naked choke.
Many will see a woman being punched by a man, and feel uncomfortable. However, Larsen explains that this is what actual equality looks like.
“Imagine what it’s like whenever a female gets in the arena with a man and she starts to lose,” says Larsen. “It’s a fight. He’s on top of her, punching her in the face. You have to be hardened to the idea – you have to really believe – that women can be treated equally to be able to put up with that. To accept that as the cost of equality.”
And the man doesn’t always win. In the video below, Elisha “Knuckles” Helsper (1-0 amateur, 0-3 pro) wins via rear naked choke. The rules were open-hand strikes to the face, closed-fist strikes to the body.
In this third video below, from the finals of an event at Fort Hood, Texas Army Staff Sgt. Jackelyn Walker fights Pfc. Greg Langarica. The contest went back and forth, with Langarica eventually winning, and Walker leaving on a stretcher.
“We can be just as tough as the guys,” said Walker after release from the hospital. “We can do it.”
For his part, Langarica, who had smirked after defeating a woman the day before, said he was humbled by the experience. He hadn’t beaten a woman; instead, his opponent simply “was a warrior,” he said.
Again though, winning and losing in sports is not the purpose of the Army Combatives program. The goal is to create a warrior ethos, and win or lose, male or female, that is happening.