How To Tell If Someone Knows How To Fight By Simply Looking At Them

There is a saying in life that you should never judge a book by its cover. This is certainly true and has a lot of merits, however, there are some tell tale signs if someone knows how to fight or not by simply observing them.

In short, there is no foolproof way of simply looking at a man and seeing if he knows how to handle himself in a combat situation. Things can become complicated since there is always a stereotypical look surrounding fighters. One glance a Jeff Monson for example, and you would instantly know that this is a man who has wrestled at the very least. However, if you met Sage Northcutt, it’s likely that you would think he has spent a lot more time in the library rather than a cage.

So to briefly summarise, it’s best that you don’t pick fights with people if you don’t know who they are. But if you are ever in a must-fight or run scenario, there are some hints that can increase your chance of being right. Of course, you will never know if someone can fight for sure until you actually see them perform. Until then, you just have to make the best judgment you can with the information you have.

Calmness

If someone has been exposed to a lot of violence and fighting, a street altercation will likely not phase them. This does not mean that they are looking for trouble, or even want to fight. But it does mean that the thought of having to fight does not bother them at all.

Simply put, calmness is accumulated from years of sparring and training. Once you have been beaten up a few times in the gym, you no longer worry about would-be attackers or tough guys who want to start a fight in the street. Even though the gym is a controlled environment, people who train there are exceptionally conditioned and have been training for many years. Therefore if you are to fight against a person like this every day, they are much tougher than an angry guy in the street. As a result of this, a trained fighter is likely to remain calm.

Cauliflower Ears

Cauliflower ears are caused by the build up of dead blood cells and other fluids that got trapped in a specific part of the ear. There are many ways you can get cauliflower ear such as wrestling with a grinding pressure, having your head pushed into the mat repeatedly, and also simply taking hard blows to the head.

Some people seem to very genetically predisposed to cauliflower ear and can pick it up within a few months of training, whereas others train for decades with very minimal problems.

However, the core fact remains that it is very difficult to get cauliflower ear without training some sort of martial arts. Cauliflower ear is generally picked up over time and made progressively worse through training. The more cauliflower ear a person has, the longer they have trained.

As mentioned above, this is not a 100% accurate method to identify who can fight but does give you a small insight into who probably can.

Physical Build

It goes without saying that people who train martial arts are going to be physically stronger and fitter than the average man. There is no real distinction between the body of a professional fighter, sprinter, or gymnast, but all of these people would give an average man trouble in a fight due to their strength and athleticism.

Overall, it is very easy to pick out an athlete from an average couch potato – so this method is very basic. If someone has large and conditioned muscles, they would be much more difficult to fight against than a regular guy. Even if somebody is completely untrained in fighting, if they have a very large and athletic physique, they are no pushover at all.

Fighting Stance

If you are an experienced martial artist, you will already be able to tell if somebody is a legitimate fighter simply by the stance they take. For example, if a would-be attacker is trying to punch you, yet has poor footwork and keeps their hands by their sides, it’s likely that they’ve never taken a boxing class before and don’t know what they are going.

The same can be said for grappling martial arts. If an attacker is trying to engage in a clinch or takedown yet has their feet square and is positioning their head in the wrong places, it’s quite obvious that they don’t know how to fight.

If you’ve never trained martial arts before then it’s unlikely you would be able to pick up on these things as easily. But if you have experience in both striking and grappling, it is very easy to spot a complete novice.

Fingers & Knuckles

Training martial arts every day does not come without its drawbacks. Of course, you will become stronger and more skilled, but you will also pick up your fair share of injuries.

Even though having bent and gnarled hands is not really an injury, it is a by-product of consistent training. For example, a solid judoka or BJJ practitioner is much more likely to have strong fingers which are bent out of alignment. This will likely not be caused by a single incident, but instead decades of pulling and ripping.

The same can be said for strikers. Knuckles on the hands of a boxer are simply not the same as an untrained man. A boxer’s knuckles will appear larger since there is a calcium build up from repeatedly hitting bags and pads. The skin covering the knuckles will also be a lot harder and rugged from years of being cut and bruised.

These two details show why looking at a person’s hands can be a good indicator of whether they can fight or not.

False Indicators

Heavily Tattooed

Even though the pictured Jeff Monson has more tattoos than you can count, he did not get these from training martial arts.

In short, tattoos are a personal choice and are not awarded to people who win fights. Whilst many fighters choose to heavily tattoo their bodies, many others don’t. Anyone can walk into a tattoo parlor and choose a design to put on their skin.

This is very different from earning battle scars such as cauliflower ear from training hundreds of hours inside a martial arts gym and suffering both physical and mental pain.

Some men try to hide behind their tattoos and get them in very obvious places such as the face or neck. A seasoned fighter will not be bothered by this, since they know it doesn’t mean anything once a confrontation begins.

Loud & Aggressive

A quote by John Webster states “cowardly dogs bark loudest”. Although this may not be true 100% of the time, it certainly has an element of truth behind it. The psychology behind this is relatively simple since if someone is so confident in their fighting ability, they will not need to shout about how tough they are and what they can do. In essence, someone who is very loud and aggressive is simply creating an advertisement about themselves which is likely not true.

A fighter who is confident in their own ability to beat someone will not need to shout as loud as they can and get in the face of someone.

The exception to this rule is press conferences before professional fights. The key difference here is that fighters are being paid a lot of money to generate pay-per-view buys and get people interested in their fight. This does not mean they are bad fighters or scared of the opponent, but there is a very big financial incentive to act like this.

In a street fight, no money is awarded to the winner or loser, so it is almost always best to avoid one.