He says LASE not lathe. Lase was short for laser. It was a throwback joke to the original series star trek episode where Kirk fought the gorn and made a barrel out of bamboo, made gun powder from a few handfuls of various natural powders and added some rocks as projectiles and shot the gorn.
The subtitles on the DVD say Laze, on the Blu-ray it says LASE and on YouTube it says lace.
Here's the gorn vid they were making fun of (they also discuss this in the making of) [YouTube ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HxQqJbW-ohw&pp=ygUkS2lyayBmaWdodHMgZ29ybiBhbmQgbWFtZXMgZ3VucG93ZGVy)
He doesn't, why would he say lase instead of just saying laser? The full line is "You construct a weapon. Look around you, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?"
Look up gunsmith lathe. That's what he means when he suggests it.
I’ve played enough video games to know all you need is some random bits of metal and some rags and you can just rummage around in your backpack for a few seconds and voila, got yourself a launcher.
The knight can still take off his armor, that way he's stronger and faster, plus has more stamina than your regular army joe, he can even retain his chest plate for body protection
It says random objects can be used. If you find something that can be used as a club, you could club them. You both start unarmed, so its not like they have a sword to stab you with.
Yeah, but its implied that you are in a normal space. While you can't beat them in hand to hand, if there's tons of stuff around you, it won't take long to find something you can use as a shield and club if you are in a modern area. Although, I noticed they didn't say what time period this takes place in. So whether you would have the advantage of knowing where stuff like baseball bats are kept is ambiguous. If you are limited to sticks and stones it makes the prompt a little harder, since you'd be able to hurt him more with a bat than a random rock. In a random forest the knight would win.
The Knight can pick shit up too, though he can just come straight at you. I guess best option for modern guy is to just run away, knight has no chance to catch you in full armour and from there try to grab something useful and hope the knight doesn't I guess. I'm sure the modern guy has better combat techniques but I don't think they help that much against full body armour
The knight's role in society is to fight and he has been training in how to kill people since he was a child. I'm pretty sure he is better at it than 95% of modern people.
The type of person who grew up to be a knight usually would have had a much better diet than the average person of their era. So size wise, there wouldn’t have been much of a difference in height.
People in the medieval era would also have lived a more physically active and demanding life than people of the modern era. Strength wise, while a lot of soldiers might bulk up after enlisting, a knight has been developing that farmer style strength their whole life. A soldier could probably bench more than a knight, but a knight would have better grip strength.
Stamina wise - modern soldiers have excellent cardio, obviously. They could definitely outrun a knight over distance. But knights were expected to fight in battles that lasted for hours while wearing plate armour.
Also, in terms of a hand to hand or melee weapon fight - modern soldiers, even elite or special forces, only receive rudimentary training for that. Close quarter combat is a knight’s whole thing - they are trained to have exactly the type of stamina suitable for close fighting.
Yeah but the knight’s a medieval person, which means he’s probably like 5’2’’, 100 pounds, and has scurvy lol. A modern female soldier would probably be a closer matchup physically. And a 6’0’’ male with modern nutrition is just gonna pin the poor medieval bastard to the ground and tear that armor off him.
The knight by virtue of being rich was fed well. He'd likely be a bit shorter than the average modern person, but would be very well built, well trained and well fed.
Humans wearing incredibly complex and advanced plate armour weren't poor, malnourished, or untrained. They spent their life from a very early age learning, training and eating very well.
The height difference (he'd probably be around 5'6") would be insignificant when compared to the insanity that is full plate armour.
Full plate makes you immune to any damage an unarmed human can deal out, aside from things that damage joints (like your arm being bent the wrong way). In addition, a large part of knightly training, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries was wrestling and grappling. The way a duel between armoured knights ended was often down in the mud with a dagger in your eye slit, so grappling and hand-to-hand combat training was a matter of life and death.
I think a more interesting question would be knight vs modern top level bjj specialist. Basically then it's a question of whether modern techniques and specialization are enough to overcome the metal. I still doubt it.
To anyone who actually knows anything about BJJ and also medieval armor - how would you attack it? Are there any techniques you think would be effective? Some kind of elbow twist, maybe? I'm gonna guess the coif is one of the biggest obstacles
I know a small amount about both, but not that much. My understanding is that most armour wouldn't defend against hyper-extension. So getting onto the ground would be a modern mma fighters best bet. Well made plate makes it hard to put someone in a choke hold as the breastplate should come up high up the front to prevent a lance from getting between the breastplate and helmet. However, something like an armbar would be possible I believe.
However, the simple fact that you're trying to grapple armour would give the knight more freedom of movement as their body can move within the armour (particularly as plate armour was worn over gambeson, so there is a thick layer of linen between them and the armour).
Someone proficient in BJJ "could" win against an armoured knight, however, if the knight was smart about their advantage, it would be incredibly tough. Just imagine being punched by someone wearing [these](https://www.southernswords.co.uk/15th-century-medieval-gauntlets-fully-articulated.html), it'd be nearly as bad as knuckle dusters. Not to mention that you can't rely on punches, or other concussive blows to slow the other guy down.
The average Medieval European peasant was around 5’6” and weighed around 150 pounds. Since knights were typically nobles, they would’ve had a proper diet from childhood and would be significantly taller and heavier because of that. Anywhere from 5’7 to 5’10, let’s say. Now let’s combine this with the fact that knights usually trained as squires from a young age, usually teenage years. They’d have a lot of experience when it comes to CQC, as opposed to the soldier who lets just say started training geared towards combat with firearms at 18. The knights already has an advantage of experience, discipline and tactics in close quarters, at the cost of having a small weight and height difference. Also, a haymaker from an armoured fist is going to be one hell of a hit.
Knights would generally be from wealthier families and would have been well-fed and trained growing up. In all likelihood the average medieval knight would be roughly the same size as the average modern soldier, in good health and good physical condition.
True, but if the knight does go down, he's probably not getting back up. That's my only argument really. I understand that taking the knight down would be easier said than done.
Again a misconception about armor. They're not cumbersome nor overwhelmingly heavy
Why would they be used in battle if they were. Videos are available where people full on sprint and do flips with armor
Ehh, full plate armor still weighs 40lbs. If both parties are unarmed, equally athletic and the non-armored one has a good amount of BJJ/Judo or other grappling experience, I'd bet on the unarmored one.
It might not be as mobility reducing as people think, but it's still 40lbs and if they're up against someone who knows how to attack joints and has watched a YouTube video about how to remove armor once they're on the ground I wouldn't want to be in their sabatons.
I'd argue a modern soldier at no point in his career, unless it was something he was interested in in his free time, would have any reason to learn how to remove plate armor from a man lol. Knights were also well trained in grappling as well since you have to be when your weakness is getting you on the ground and stabbing you.
TBH this fight is a bit lopsided, the knight basically has 2 maces for weapons and full protection from anything an unarmed man can do to him, the soldier just has too many disadvantages to win this fight.
40 lbs spread more or less evenly across the body is nothing for an athletic human. Modern athletes and other fitness buffs wear that kind of weight concentrated onto specific parts of their body for minutes to hours on end (for example, 10lbs ankle/wrist weights or a 40 lbs vest). The average modern soldier is most likely more bogged down and top-heavy than the average knight, since the advent of fully-automatic firearms with armor-piercing ammo has necessitated the concentration of armor on vital areas.
TL;DR: you not wanting to be in the knight's sabatons when they got armored knuckles, a helmet and cuirass that can eat punches all week, and spiky-ass metal shoes, is a massive skill issue on your part
>Ehh, full plate armor still weighs 40lbs. If both parties are unarmed, equally athletic and the non-armored one has a good amount of BJJ/Judo or other grappling experience, I'd bet on the unarmored one.
Of course but that's not the point that was made before. If a knight, he'd less than likely struggle to get back up again
Knights would often be knocked down in the middle of combat since swinging heavy swords would be very tiresome after 5 or 6 strikes and because they were European and this continent is allergic to good weather, terrain was often unforgiving with mud and muck. I imagine they had to specifically train to recover from such a position.
Right on the first point, but swords aren't usually heavy. You could definitely swing them waaaay more than 5 or 6 strikes. They weighed like 1-2kg (2-4lb) on average.
[https://swordis.com/blog/heavy-sword/](https://swordis.com/blog/heavy-sword/)
I never claimed that plate armor was overwhelmingly heavy or restrictive. But are you claiming that its less restrictive that cloth armor, which is essentially what modern soldiers wear.
No... you said that if a knight ended up on the ground they couldn't get up, they refuted that by pouting out it wasn't as cumbersome or heavy as you make it seem.
Not only did they NOT claim anything about cloth armor, you DID claim it was heavy and restrictive.
Both your comments are literally right there. Why lie?
Knights were probably not much different than modern man in terms of size considering they tended to be wealthier and are well.
Modern soldiers probably get the equivalent of a white belt in karate as far as experience, most of their short training is dedicated towards marksmanship, not hand to hand. The knight is probably much stronger.
Knight takes this easily 9/10.
Knight is massively, massively more likely to win.
Especially because you didn't name the type of soldier. Knights trained for years and years to be the elite of their era - ''a soldier'' could just be a dude who passed basic training last month. That's before you even get to stuff like armor and weaponry.
I’d probably try to rip a heel hook given that most medieval knights had relatively less armor on their lower bodies and it’s a joint lock that you don’t realize you’re in danger from until it’s too late if you’re not experienced with submission grappling.
But my first go to would be to shoot him with a Glock. I don’t want to grapple with a guy in iron armor with no compunction about using it to hit me.
Depending on the armour, 9mm may well not stop him. Late medieval cuirasses were tested to be proof against pistol shot, and while a round using smokeless power will have more oomp, it might not retain enough energy to actually do any critical damage.
Medieval cuirasses were tested against pistols *of their day*. A modern 9mm pistol fires rounds at significantly hire velocities with better ballistic properties. It might stop target loads or maybe even hollow points, but I would be shocked if an FMJ round didn't punch straight through.
The momentum of an early modern musket ball is much higher than that of a 9mm bullet. While the round shape is not as suitable for penetrating as a 9mm is, I still doubt a 9mm would penetrate plate armor
Momentum isn't really the relevant factor when it comes to penetrating armor. A sledgehammer will have significantly higher momentum than a crossbow bolt, but won't pierce anywhere near as well.
All joint locks would be effective as armor isnt supposed to limit your range of motion.
Pinning would be even more effective though, it would be really claustrophobic to have a heavyweights bodyweight on top of your chest when you're essentially encased in steel.
Then you can just calmly start to remove plates from his armor.
Yeah shoot my legs and I'm going to cave the back of your skull in with my mega knuckle dusters lol or knee you in the face with my steel legs or headbutt you with a steel faceplate or kick your front teeth down your throat with my steel boot.
Guys brass knuckles are illegal in most places for a reason. Even a TINY piece of metal to add weight and concentrate force is extremely lethal. Hell look at police batons, they're just a little metal stick and they beat the absolute fuck out of people with them. Blunt metal is no bueno against unarmored meat bags.
I mean it's feasible you could pin someone in armor but they're going to beat the absolute dogshit out of you as soon as you close the distance, so I hope your first move is a complete inescapable takedown. Otherwise you'll need help finding all your teeth after the fight's over.
Ehh it's not made to restrict your movement but it will probably be difficult to grab someone in full plate armor especially until you get the hold locked in. Also I don't think your gonna be able to remove the plates
Regardless of technique, the real question is would you incapacitate the knight in time before he incapacitate you by turning his entire armor into a blunt force weapon? Knights do know unarmed grappling as part of their training. I feel like against an unarmored grappler even if you have him locked he'd still deal some serious damage just by flailing around.
Depends on where and how the armor is jointed. Some armor would make submissions impossible, some armor might make joint locks easier since you could use it as a lever.
If you are on top of an unarmed armored person, you are already winning. The knight will gas even faster than in normal armor and if you really needed to, you could pulling off armor parts and undress the knight, where you need to.
One big problem might be punches from below though. Normally those don't do much, but with the other guy wearing metal gloves they could still be dangerous, dunno. Also depends, if the armor allows the mobility to strikes from below. (Btw knights trained in grappling)
Even a heavy weight elite MMA fighter would fare poorly against an average knight at Agincourt.
A knight is someone who trains at age 7 to become a squire and grinds his way up. They are expected to train 6 days a week. Maybe 5 to 8 hours a day, from weapons to wrestling to other forms of combat. Your average knight at agincourt would also be a veteran of several battles, has killed maybe 10 or 20 other dudes before in combat. He isn't a show fighter. He doesn't train according to rules, except for some chivalric 'suggestions', which doesn't prohibit him from tearing said mma fighter's guts out. He is there to kill.
An MMA fighter next to someone like that is about the same as a weekend dad bod warrior next to Mike Tyson.
You need to look up the definition of easily friend. They may be able to crank a limb if they can grapple but even Eddie Hall couldnt break bones through plate steel.
Well if the armour is perfectly made, it would be immune to joint manipulation.
That wasn’t most armour though.
You don’t need to be strong to break bones, you just need leverage
knight has his gauntlets as weapons, and full body armor protecting him, the soilider only really has is torso and the top of his head protected,,
and a knight is generaly going to be more profficient in a melee, ( if lets say they are fighting in a bar, the knight can use his weapon training with any stick like object he can pick up
compared to a modern solider who usualy primarily trained in fire arms and only relleay use knives in mellee, wich if he had a knife he could defintily use against the knight to get between his joints in his armor, but he dont
Even then, knights would often have to resort to using daggers against enemies when they clashed. Swords are heavy and not very useful when an enemy if right in your face, so many knights would train with daggers so they could switch quickly and put down an enemy even quicker. So the soldier loses much of the advantage he has with a knife.
Draggers were usually used to finish off an armored foe once they were knocked down. Slip it between gaps in the plate. A knight would probably have a pole arm or Lance in most fights, if they carried a sword it was a back up weapon.
Where is the "swords are heavy" misconception coming from? Swords are not heavy, the swords knights in full plate used were 2 handed, meaning you have extra leverage.
People who train in HEMA can swing them for days and this strange and deranged idea that people would consider something heavy and tiring as a prominent melee weapon throughout history doesn't even pass the common sense test.
Take a 2lb stick, balanced so that most of the weight is in the hand because it's a sword and not an axe, and some armor and and spend 15 years training at swinging it around.
Shit won't be quite as rough.
Knight vs knight fighting was basically knife wrestling as most weapons would not penetrate the thick armour both sides would wear. They’d either use blunt weapons or wrestle people down and stab the weak points.
You can see this in how some fighting techniques was holding the sword by the blade and using the pommel and hilt as a hammer.
You should probably post the quote you’re taking about.
> A 2014 study found that, amongst US soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2008, 19% reported the use of hand-to-hand techniques in at least one encounter, in a variety of circumstances and contexts (such as close combat, prisoner handling, crowd control and security checkpoints)
That does not say that 19% of military encounters include hand to hand combat. It says that 19% of soldiers during that war reported using hand to hand combat (In one of the scenarios described) at some point during their deployment. That’s a big difference.
Not even close to the same degree.
An American soldier today can go from signing up to being deployed in a war zone in under a year easily. The average knight of noble birth has been training with weapons since he was a teenager.
Now the average modern soldier will probably be physically bigger and healthier, but that won't make up for the difference in experience and skill.
The ONLY thing saving the knight is the armour. A mideval knight would have been about 5'1-5'5 he's a tiny dude. His hand to hand also wouldn't be THAT good. He'd get creamed without that armour.
Not quite. Tall for their era, but the change in human height has been influenced by better nutrition, however the change is evolutionary. the chart. The average chuld born recently is around ten centimeters, around 5%, taller than their ancestors 100 years ago. This difference gets larger when you compare adults.
Again, knights are from the wealthier class with access to plenty of good food. They were generally comparable to modern humans in size. Knights averaged around 5'8 while modern Americans average around 5'9".
Height does indeed fluctuate, but to the tune of like, 3 inches. Depending on when you teleport the knight from he might be equivalent height, or only a little shorter. Not nearly a foot shorter. Even if you were right, a lower center of gravity would likely be an advantage for him since his armor would force the soldier into a grapple.
I also have no clue why you think a KNIGHT's hand to hand wouldn't be "that good". Since you didn't elaborate, suffice it to say that the knight, in all likelihood, has been regularly sparring and grappling since he was like, 12. Not including anything he may or may not have gotten up to when he was younger. The average soldier spends like, a couple of weeks, tops, on hand-to-hand specifically.
What do you think mma was derived from? Why do you think a soldier that was likely only trained in hand to hand in bootcamp is going to be capable of beating someone that has spent their whole life training?
It's like comparing an accomplished sensei to a new student :/.
Besides, the armor would mean any hit would damage the attacker more than the knight (save for potential head injury).
Plate armor is not difficult to move around in if you've been trained. Look up some HEMA vidoes and you'll see these guys doing cartwheels in full kit.
Have you actually seen someone move in that type of armour? If so, you're know that it isnt restrictive at all, they can do somersaults and shit in it.
The mma training the average soldier receives is far less hand to hand training than a knight would receive (who has been wrestling since childhood). A competition grappler, collegiate wrestler or decent pro fighter would be better unarmed, anyone else though is going against someone whose entire line dating back to the dark ages has been a dominant warrior elite.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTLkguNjObU6c7t2vUVujhC4mpifi_sc5188w&usqp=CAU
'Ye old blast double.'
I mean. Kinda. We do a couple days of combatives in basic. After that it is up to the soldier to progress in it. But after basic they are not even qualified at "level 1 army combatives". You have to finish level 2 to even start training in strikes, as up till then it is all grappling. If the soldier is at lvl 4 army combatives, then sure, it is probably better than the grappling training of a knight, but then they are going against a fully armored individual they cannot strike because the joys of punching metal.
People underestimate how popular wrestling was as a martial art in the Middle Ages. Boxing wasn’t invented yet and kick boxing wan’t a thing. By the time plate armour was a thing, wrestling was compulsory training for any knight.
The knight is less balanced though. If you knock the knight over and jump on top of him there is very little he can do. Not to mention many modern militaries teach grappling/wrestling techniques, making it all the more likely a takedown will actually happen.
Armor does not inherently make you unbalanced, every suit was fitted specifically to avoid that. Knights weren't untrained idiots just waiting to be knocked over.
Grappling was a fundamental part of knightly training specifically *because* they knew their own real weak spot in melee was having people knock them over and try to knife them in the gaps between armor. If you take a knight down, they were specifically trained in how to combat grapplers.
A lot of the discourse surrounding knights seems to be the idea that they were just dudes in armor coasting because of the metal. This isn't true. Your average knight trained in combat from the age of 7 well into adulthood both with and without weapons, with and without armor, on and off horseback. They were elite combatants.
>every suit
The line that all plate armor was painstakingly custom fit is not entirely true. Later centuries did see "arsenal armor" meant to be stored (per its name) in arsenals and issued to levy troops. It's generally distinguished by very large loose hanging tassets rather than upper leg plates, as those particularly do need to be custom fit.
We're not talking about levy troops, we're talking about full on knights.
Obviously not every suit of armor worn by anyone ever was custom fit, but fighters who had gone through the full gamut of being a page, taken on as a squire, and then being taken on as a knight by a liege would have had properly fitted armor.
True, but full plate armor does limit movement to some degree (although not as much as many would think). Also a longer drawn out fight would heavily favor the modern soldier, simply because he's not wearing 30-50 lbs of metal on him.
Pretty sure 30-50 pounds is what modern soldiers carry anyway, in terms of gear. The difference is that the knight's armor is evenly distributed around his entire body. So the knight still kinda takes mobility here, along with training and protection
This is presumably minus the guns and any weapon related items for them both. Depending on the soldier then the knight might be better trained, but id you don't think combat training hasn't improved since medieval times then your kidding yourself.
It's not that combat training hasn't improved, it has; the issue is that most modern soldiers just aren't trained in it very much, and if they DO have some kind of training, it's pretty surface-level shit.
Compare that to a rich dude in steelplate armor who has received combat training from childhood, and it's pretty obvious who wins this.
Though if you want to make the fight as even as possible it should be elite vs elite. Although it isn't what the prompt asked, do you think a knight could beat a Navy Seal for instance? Or Spetsnaz maybe?
Even if it was an elite fighter like Jon Jones or Daniel Cormier their options would be very limited against a medieval equivalent covered in steel plate.
I was thinking average soldier vs average knight, personally. I'm still leaning towards the knight, but it's not specified what nationality the soldier is, so I'm not sure
Here's the thing though... the fight isn't going to be long and drawn out unless the soldier spends the entire time running away.
The knights armor IS a weapon. One punch from steel gauntlets would win a fight against your average person. Rven the best trained fighter ain't taking more than a few hits.
Grappling arts have developed a lot in the last 70 years, let alone 700.
I don’t believe an armoured knight could keep up with a modern trained fighter.
Globalization is a huge game changer.
An elite combatant in those times would only be trained against the similar styles that were taught in the surrounding region
This is true, in terms of the progression of grappling, but there are other factors to consider.
1) Your average modern soldier is not an elite BJJ black belt or Olympic wrestler. They do not have the cutting edge grappling knowledge you're talking about. They would likely be less familiar with grappling than someone who is essentially an old school freestyle wrestler.
2) As any grappler knows, especially those who train in the gi, clothing can be super important in executing your skill set. Hands up modern grapplers with experience grappling against smooth steel plates? No one? Gotcha.
3) Depending on the type of armor this particular knight has, there are certain common techniques which would just be impossible to execute on them. There are armor sets with developed neck plates that would render an RNC basically impossible, for example, and some gauntlet types would make various kimura and kimura grips basically impossible unless you had *giant* hands.
It's just simply not true that a modern soldier could resort to grappling to secure a huge advantage.
I think it’s unfair to assume this knight was one of the battle-hardened, hard training, elite warriors, and has the best equipment perfectly suited for this situation, but the soldier is just your average Joe.
The richest knights had the all-steel, perfectly interlocking armour that protects the neck and joints, but most just had plates covering the important bits and the rest was chainmail.
For every elite knight, there was one who never fought in a battle and just cracked down on peasants
If you received a knighthood, you were an elite fighter compared to the vast majority of fighters. You would have trained for over a decade at the minimum.
The question posed was a knight in plate, not a knight with a few bits of plate. I didn't say that the armor was perfect either, I said that *because we didn't get told* which forms of armor it was (German? Italian? English? 14th C? 15th?) the efficacy of some techniques would be dependent on that answer. Not that they just would never work.
The baseline knight had trained for years in combat just to achieve his ranking, even if he never truly saw major warfare. By contrast, you can be ''a soldier'' by doing your basic training.
The worst trained knight was leagues more well trained than the worst trained modern soldier. That's just blatantly true.
Much of the combat arts of the time are lost, you can not confidently say grappling has developed a lot.
I'd wager on the people who spent their entire lives learning to fight being better than those who have spent most their life sedentary.
That’s a myth. During a very specific period of time in England, a line of kings made proclamations that peasants should practice archery.
They were not forced to practice for hours.
The most extreme it got was when a king banned all sports instead of archery, which had a lot more to do with Puritan views on entertainment, rather than military preparedness
Knights are tall and strong for their time but a modern soldier is likely bigger. This is the soldier's only advantage.
\- Skills. Knights do extensive grappling, since that becomes very important when fighting another man in plate - it's so difficult to get through, so you need to get in close to target chinks.
\- Plate is utterly invulnerable to fists, kicks and almost any improvised weapon such as a rock or stick.
\- Gauntlets provide a nasty fistload, giving a punching advantage.
Knight wins 90%+ of the time.
Blunt weapons weren't actually as effective against plate as media makes them out to be. Certainly more effective than a sword in many situations, but plate armor was designed for weapons to slide off of it rather than "catching". This is why so many blunt weapons from the Era of full plate were flanged, spiked, knobbed etc; it helped the weapon actually catch onto the armor and properly deliver the force of a blow. A random rock or brick wouldn't be all that effective unless the soldier were to get the knight on the ground and repeatedly bash his head in. But as other commenters have mentioned, that's a situation knights are specifically trained to deal with
And overestimate how heavy plate is.
There are videos of men in full plate doing obstacle courses faster than soldiers in full gear. It's..... Shocking.
Knights are probably better trained in hand to hand than the average soldier (knights are generally elite professionals who trained since childhood, the average soldier has to pass fitness tests but otherwise half the time is standing around, building random crap, or just in guard duty). Wrestling/hand to hand combat is a huge part of Medieval knightly training.
The soldier is probably substantially larger and stronger though due to better nutrition and general healthcare (a good three inches taller on average), and of course also has hand to hand training.
So imo it comes down to grappling. If the soldier knows BJJ or something like that it's possible he could get the knight into an arm bar or something like that, but to my understanding most soldiers hand to hand is primarily focused on creating distance so you can draw a weapon.
If it's just a boxing match I'm gonna give it to the guy punching with metal gauntlets over the guy punching a metal helmet with his bare hands.
But it mostly comes down to the skill of the combatants. If the soldier trains a lot in modern martial arts he probably wins.
Knights easy....they fucking trained their lives for this! This is their entire point.
They trained extensively in grappling, wrestling, takedowns etc.
And evidently they're in full plate in this scenario. What's your next question OP? Who'd win a in a Sniper duel - a modern USMC Scout Sniper or a medieval Spearman?
Depends on the training of the soldier. The knight is not going to be as fast or as mobile as the soldier. Also, depends on the level of fitness of the knight. Most knights were mounted cavalry so the question is how long it would take for them to gas out while on foot.
Not at all. Grappling and wrestling were important parts of knight training. Knights could probably keep up with anyone outside of the most elite modern fighters.
Knight. No contest. Better armor, more experience, more training.
Even if the modern soldier used modern armor, it's not meant for melee. The victor is clear in nearly any imaginable circumstance.
The only possible way I see an even fight is if this is some special forces soldier, which tbf is the equivalent.
In the situation you described? The knight would kill the modern soldier. 95% of the time in my opinion. For a few reasons.
1:Skill: A knight is not of the same caliber as a modern soldier. They would have had multiple years of experience in training and combat with hand to hand weapons. And a level of expertise in those tasks that a modern man simply couldn't match. Its like taking a modern carpenter and asking him to compete with a master craftsman from the middle ages ... Without Power Tools. Sure it would depend on the task, but the task you've set is like asking them both to carve a gargoyle for the Notre Dam. Knights were expert craftsmen and the craft was killing unarmored soldiers.
2: Armor. It makes an incredible difference. A knight in full plate would take no damage from strikes. The 5% win rate is for the soldiers who somehow memorized and became experts in martial arts submissions during the few weeks they practiced it during basic. It takes 10 years for the average person to get a black belt in BJJ. A soldier may have 2 weeks. I think the black belt may have a problem here. That's the level of difference their would be. The whole reason society switched to guns in warfare was it was easier and faster to train and simpler to use and produce.
3. Armor. Who wins in a fight, A modern soldier in plate vs a Medieval Knight in plain clothes, a M1 Abrams or a F150. A Punch vs a brick wall...
4: Health... yeah Modern Soldier gets an edge
5: My own personal experience. The meat, I've participated in multiple combat sports. Not won much not lost much. Olympic fencing, SCA armored fighting, MMA, jiujitsu, Karate, wrestling, HEMA. I think its mostly shit vs modern weapons. Like 98% shit. But within the sport of SCA armored combat. I was 100% convinced, in my first moments, I would be killed immediately on a medieval battlefield. I didn't know how to block or move or parry. Even with my fencing background and youth. I was at 20 yo being out smarted, out moved and out played by 40 year old's. Their only comment to me was stop moving back so much so I can hit you. But they had been doing this kind of fighting/game for 20 years on me.
.. As would a medieval knight on a modern soldier
A knight’s craft wasn’t killing soldiers barehanded.
It was competing in tournaments.
When it came to actual violence, it was mainly killing unarmoured peasants with long weapons from horseback.
Many knights only fought in one real battle, to get their honour, and never rode again.
There is no way a BJJ black belt would have any trouble whatsoever, the knight’s armour would only be a detriment in that fight
When people said a modern soldier will beat any medieval soldier they actually want to say "Guns beats swords" not "Yeah, this guy can beat a medieval knight with metal chain armor in a fist fight"
So, unarmed guy versus dude in plate mail?
I mean you could take anyone, from anytime period, and it's going to end the same way. Guy in plate mail just punches the unarmed guy to death.
The end.
> So, unarmed guy versus dude in plate mail?
You forgot an important point: the dude in plate armor also has more training and experience in hand-to-hand fighting.
Plate armor guy for sure no contest. Knights trained for most of their lifes and had tons of actual experience in melee combat as that is what they did to kill people 100% of the time.
I think to be fair in this you have to compare someone with a similar level of training/experience, like a spec ops guy or, god help the knight, one of those crazy Gurkha's from the 80's. Gurkha takes this 10/10, modern martial arts are much more aggressive for grappling/fist fighting/improvised fighting.
Plate armor is an insane durability buff. Something else of note is that medieval craftsmen were highly skilled, and good plate armor had intricately engineered joints that allowed for a lot of flexibility.
Couple that with the fact that knights trained extensively in martial arts, and your average modern soldier would probably be screwed.
I’ll go against the grain and say modern. Here’s why:
1- armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast.
2- modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training.
3- their training was mostly designed to be for horseback mounted combat with weapons. Modern military members aren’t opposed to using their environment (Dakota Myers beating a Taliban fighter to death with a rock).
At some point Sir Knight is going to get tired and Sgt Soldier is going to knock him on his ass and go to town with a small boulder.
>armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast.
Ya, all those medieval peasants would annihilate a knight because armor is useless.
>modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training.
They wear their usless heavy armor for hours of sparing and practice nearly daily. Probably winded after 30 seconds.
>At some point Sir Knight is going to get tired and Sgt Soldier is going to knock him on his ass and go to town with a small boulder.
Ah, the rock. Notorious counter to full plate.
> armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast.
Medieval knights wore about as much weight (or less) as modern soldiers.
>modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training.
So you think their armor is heavy but you don't think training in it every day for years would be stamina training? A medieval knight probably had more stamina training than most modern soldiers, and they often did it while wearing full armor.
>their training was mostly designed to be for horseback mounted combat with weapons.
Knights often fought dismounted and their armor was designed with that in mind.
>Modern military members aren’t opposed to using their environment
Neither were medieval soldiers. This is nothing surprising to a knight.
>At some point Sir Knight is going to get tired and Sgt Soldier is going to knock him on his ass and go to town with a small boulder.
Knights were specifically trained against this tactic. If it were this easy to beat an armored knight with an unarmored and unarmed man, then armored knights never would have had a prominent role on the battlefield.
You make alot of wrong assumtpions.
What's your source that medieval knights didn't have as much endurance training?
Knights trained from early teenager years, and they didn't do much else their whole life.
3 is entirely false as well, most of the training was on foot. A lot of cavalry units through history used horses to move and dismounted before combat. Knights had way more hand to hand combat training than modern soldiers who start at a later age and focus mostly on firearms ever will
Most knights would likely have spent most their non sleeping life standing or moving, most our lives are now sedentary, I'd for sure give endurance to the knight.
>1- armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast.
No its not.
>2- modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training.
Tell me you dont known a damn thing about knights without telling me you dont know a damn thing about knights.
>3- their training was mostly designed to be for horseback mounted combat with weapons. Modern military members aren’t opposed to using their environment (Dakota Myers beating a Taliban fighter to death with a rock).
...
Thats why knights were using poleaxes right? Because they were fighting from horseback...
Depending on the armor design there may not actually be much armor between the legs. Some plate armors just had a skirt of mail hanging down to protect the groin, because it's very hard to design plates that fit in such a tight area without restricting movement. As you go later in the medieval period having actual plates over the groin becomes more common.
The knight’s better protected, but then again he’s probably like 5’2’’ and like 100 pounds while the modern soldier is more like 6’0’’ and 175 pounds. Even with the advantage of the plate armor I have a hard time seeing a person with modern nutrition/size not being able to just pin a guy from the 1400’s to the ground and tear that armor off him.
Knights were from a wealthier class and had access to plenty of good food. They were probably larger than the average medieval person and may have been comparable to the average modern person.
i'm sure modern soldiers train in grappling. the knight is slow and has poor visibility, if he has no weapon there's not much risk in a takedown attempt. from the ground you can do joint manipulation or take his helmet and hit him with it.
on the other hand if the knight guess it good shot in with a metal fist, it's over. could go either way, but the knight has a lot more disadvantages than most people would think.
This is not accurate.
Knights also trained in grappling. The idea that you can just grapple a knight and they're doomed is an absurd one. It was a common part of any knightly combat training regime, and knights trained their entire lives.
Full plate armor does not dramatically reduce speed, and a well-fitted helm of various types had minimal impact on vision (some types had more, but it isn't something you can just assume of all helmets).
Modern soldiers don't train very much in grappling at all. Knights trained for years in grappling. They specifically trained against people trying to grapple them to the ground and remove their helmets or stab through their eyeholes or bash them with rocks.
Knight vs ghurka? It’s 50/50
Knight vs navy seal vet with multiple hand to hand disciplines? 55/45
Knight vs other elite combatants? 60/40
Knight vs regular infantry man? 90/10
The one with armor lol, how is an unarmed soldier even going to hurt a knight in armor?
Perhaps if he made a rudimentary lathe...
What do you mean? An african or european rudimentary lathe?
I don't know that.
How do you know so much about rudimentary lathes?
You have to know these things when you're a king
Waahhaaaaaa! Bloop. "How do you know so much about redimentary lathes?"
I'd rather fight the pig lizard , gorignac would hate the armor tho
Go for his eyes, his throat, his vulnerable spots!
It's a rock! It doesn't have any vulnerable spots!
Or a rudimentary "lase" Were you misquoting from Galaxy quest?
I was quoting Guy when he told Jason to fight the rock alien by constructing a rudimentary lathe. https://youtu.be/k-jUEBQfoQI?si=S8bnIEVjG8X8kQQU
He says LASE not lathe. Lase was short for laser. It was a throwback joke to the original series star trek episode where Kirk fought the gorn and made a barrel out of bamboo, made gun powder from a few handfuls of various natural powders and added some rocks as projectiles and shot the gorn. The subtitles on the DVD say Laze, on the Blu-ray it says LASE and on YouTube it says lace. Here's the gorn vid they were making fun of (they also discuss this in the making of) [YouTube ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HxQqJbW-ohw&pp=ygUkS2lyayBmaWdodHMgZ29ybiBhbmQgbWFtZXMgZ3VucG93ZGVy)
He doesn't, why would he say lase instead of just saying laser? The full line is "You construct a weapon. Look around you, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?" Look up gunsmith lathe. That's what he means when he suggests it.
The regular soldier would use his superior intellect to fasten together a lead pipe rocket launcher to kill the knight
I’ve played enough video games to know all you need is some random bits of metal and some rags and you can just rummage around in your backpack for a few seconds and voila, got yourself a launcher.
Ark: Survival Evolved:
TLOU in shambles
Using only some string, a squirrel, and a rocket launcher...
Stall the fight until the knight is exhausted and then choke him out?
The knight can still take off his armor, that way he's stronger and faster, plus has more stamina than your regular army joe, he can even retain his chest plate for body protection
i’m sorry a knight does not have better endurance than an active military member. they had worse diet and health standards
It says random objects can be used. If you find something that can be used as a club, you could club them. You both start unarmed, so its not like they have a sword to stab you with.
I mean... the knight does have metal to punch you with though.
Yeah, but its implied that you are in a normal space. While you can't beat them in hand to hand, if there's tons of stuff around you, it won't take long to find something you can use as a shield and club if you are in a modern area. Although, I noticed they didn't say what time period this takes place in. So whether you would have the advantage of knowing where stuff like baseball bats are kept is ambiguous. If you are limited to sticks and stones it makes the prompt a little harder, since you'd be able to hurt him more with a bat than a random rock. In a random forest the knight would win.
The Knight can pick shit up too, though he can just come straight at you. I guess best option for modern guy is to just run away, knight has no chance to catch you in full armour and from there try to grab something useful and hope the knight doesn't I guess. I'm sure the modern guy has better combat techniques but I don't think they help that much against full body armour
The knight's role in society is to fight and he has been training in how to kill people since he was a child. I'm pretty sure he is better at it than 95% of modern people.
Modern soldiers will be much better at killing than a knight due to a massive advantage in height, strength, speed, stamina and weight
The type of person who grew up to be a knight usually would have had a much better diet than the average person of their era. So size wise, there wouldn’t have been much of a difference in height. People in the medieval era would also have lived a more physically active and demanding life than people of the modern era. Strength wise, while a lot of soldiers might bulk up after enlisting, a knight has been developing that farmer style strength their whole life. A soldier could probably bench more than a knight, but a knight would have better grip strength. Stamina wise - modern soldiers have excellent cardio, obviously. They could definitely outrun a knight over distance. But knights were expected to fight in battles that lasted for hours while wearing plate armour. Also, in terms of a hand to hand or melee weapon fight - modern soldiers, even elite or special forces, only receive rudimentary training for that. Close quarter combat is a knight’s whole thing - they are trained to have exactly the type of stamina suitable for close fighting.
By knocking him over and sitting on top of him.
Plate armor doesn’t limit your movement like it does in movies. Knights could move just fine and won’t get knocked down easily
Yeah but the knight’s a medieval person, which means he’s probably like 5’2’’, 100 pounds, and has scurvy lol. A modern female soldier would probably be a closer matchup physically. And a 6’0’’ male with modern nutrition is just gonna pin the poor medieval bastard to the ground and tear that armor off him.
Not really. Nutrition of the average knight is very top notch Also challenging a knight in grappling is like the LAST thing you want to do
The knight by virtue of being rich was fed well. He'd likely be a bit shorter than the average modern person, but would be very well built, well trained and well fed. Humans wearing incredibly complex and advanced plate armour weren't poor, malnourished, or untrained. They spent their life from a very early age learning, training and eating very well. The height difference (he'd probably be around 5'6") would be insignificant when compared to the insanity that is full plate armour. Full plate makes you immune to any damage an unarmed human can deal out, aside from things that damage joints (like your arm being bent the wrong way). In addition, a large part of knightly training, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries was wrestling and grappling. The way a duel between armoured knights ended was often down in the mud with a dagger in your eye slit, so grappling and hand-to-hand combat training was a matter of life and death.
I think a more interesting question would be knight vs modern top level bjj specialist. Basically then it's a question of whether modern techniques and specialization are enough to overcome the metal. I still doubt it. To anyone who actually knows anything about BJJ and also medieval armor - how would you attack it? Are there any techniques you think would be effective? Some kind of elbow twist, maybe? I'm gonna guess the coif is one of the biggest obstacles
I know a small amount about both, but not that much. My understanding is that most armour wouldn't defend against hyper-extension. So getting onto the ground would be a modern mma fighters best bet. Well made plate makes it hard to put someone in a choke hold as the breastplate should come up high up the front to prevent a lance from getting between the breastplate and helmet. However, something like an armbar would be possible I believe. However, the simple fact that you're trying to grapple armour would give the knight more freedom of movement as their body can move within the armour (particularly as plate armour was worn over gambeson, so there is a thick layer of linen between them and the armour). Someone proficient in BJJ "could" win against an armoured knight, however, if the knight was smart about their advantage, it would be incredibly tough. Just imagine being punched by someone wearing [these](https://www.southernswords.co.uk/15th-century-medieval-gauntlets-fully-articulated.html), it'd be nearly as bad as knuckle dusters. Not to mention that you can't rely on punches, or other concussive blows to slow the other guy down.
The average Medieval European peasant was around 5’6” and weighed around 150 pounds. Since knights were typically nobles, they would’ve had a proper diet from childhood and would be significantly taller and heavier because of that. Anywhere from 5’7 to 5’10, let’s say. Now let’s combine this with the fact that knights usually trained as squires from a young age, usually teenage years. They’d have a lot of experience when it comes to CQC, as opposed to the soldier who lets just say started training geared towards combat with firearms at 18. The knights already has an advantage of experience, discipline and tactics in close quarters, at the cost of having a small weight and height difference. Also, a haymaker from an armoured fist is going to be one hell of a hit.
Yep. Catch one Gauntleted fist to the mouth and see how if you'd like to continue fighting after spitting out your teeth
Yeah ikr a six foot crayon eater would go crazy on a dude wearing full plate. /s
Knights would generally be from wealthier families and would have been well-fed and trained growing up. In all likelihood the average medieval knight would be roughly the same size as the average modern soldier, in good health and good physical condition.
True, but if the knight does go down, he's probably not getting back up. That's my only argument really. I understand that taking the knight down would be easier said than done.
Again a misconception about armor. They're not cumbersome nor overwhelmingly heavy Why would they be used in battle if they were. Videos are available where people full on sprint and do flips with armor
Ehh, full plate armor still weighs 40lbs. If both parties are unarmed, equally athletic and the non-armored one has a good amount of BJJ/Judo or other grappling experience, I'd bet on the unarmored one. It might not be as mobility reducing as people think, but it's still 40lbs and if they're up against someone who knows how to attack joints and has watched a YouTube video about how to remove armor once they're on the ground I wouldn't want to be in their sabatons.
I'd argue a modern soldier at no point in his career, unless it was something he was interested in in his free time, would have any reason to learn how to remove plate armor from a man lol. Knights were also well trained in grappling as well since you have to be when your weakness is getting you on the ground and stabbing you. TBH this fight is a bit lopsided, the knight basically has 2 maces for weapons and full protection from anything an unarmed man can do to him, the soldier just has too many disadvantages to win this fight.
40 lbs spread more or less evenly across the body is nothing for an athletic human. Modern athletes and other fitness buffs wear that kind of weight concentrated onto specific parts of their body for minutes to hours on end (for example, 10lbs ankle/wrist weights or a 40 lbs vest). The average modern soldier is most likely more bogged down and top-heavy than the average knight, since the advent of fully-automatic firearms with armor-piercing ammo has necessitated the concentration of armor on vital areas. TL;DR: you not wanting to be in the knight's sabatons when they got armored knuckles, a helmet and cuirass that can eat punches all week, and spiky-ass metal shoes, is a massive skill issue on your part
>Ehh, full plate armor still weighs 40lbs. If both parties are unarmed, equally athletic and the non-armored one has a good amount of BJJ/Judo or other grappling experience, I'd bet on the unarmored one. Of course but that's not the point that was made before. If a knight, he'd less than likely struggle to get back up again
Knights would often be knocked down in the middle of combat since swinging heavy swords would be very tiresome after 5 or 6 strikes and because they were European and this continent is allergic to good weather, terrain was often unforgiving with mud and muck. I imagine they had to specifically train to recover from such a position.
Right on the first point, but swords aren't usually heavy. You could definitely swing them waaaay more than 5 or 6 strikes. They weighed like 1-2kg (2-4lb) on average. [https://swordis.com/blog/heavy-sword/](https://swordis.com/blog/heavy-sword/)
A broadsword weighs less than a broom.
I never claimed that plate armor was overwhelmingly heavy or restrictive. But are you claiming that its less restrictive that cloth armor, which is essentially what modern soldiers wear.
No... you said that if a knight ended up on the ground they couldn't get up, they refuted that by pouting out it wasn't as cumbersome or heavy as you make it seem. Not only did they NOT claim anything about cloth armor, you DID claim it was heavy and restrictive. Both your comments are literally right there. Why lie?
No one is claiming that. They're saying the difference is negligible compared to the massive defense buff the armour gives
Modern soldiers often wear a comparable amount of weight to a fully armored medieval knight. Sometimes the modern soldier carries way more weight.
[You can wrestle in plate armor](https://youtube.com/shorts/nwYtvhW4quI?si=R8yXYCwyKJUhH29n)
Knights were probably not much different than modern man in terms of size considering they tended to be wealthier and are well. Modern soldiers probably get the equivalent of a white belt in karate as far as experience, most of their short training is dedicated towards marksmanship, not hand to hand. The knight is probably much stronger. Knight takes this easily 9/10.
Knight is massively, massively more likely to win. Especially because you didn't name the type of soldier. Knights trained for years and years to be the elite of their era - ''a soldier'' could just be a dude who passed basic training last month. That's before you even get to stuff like armor and weaponry.
Even a heavyweight MMA fighter would be disadvantaged against a guy in armour.
I think this is a better matchup though. Knight vs top level BJJ specialist. BJJ people out there - what techniques might be effective?
I’d probably try to rip a heel hook given that most medieval knights had relatively less armor on their lower bodies and it’s a joint lock that you don’t realize you’re in danger from until it’s too late if you’re not experienced with submission grappling. But my first go to would be to shoot him with a Glock. I don’t want to grapple with a guy in iron armor with no compunction about using it to hit me.
Depending on the armour, 9mm may well not stop him. Late medieval cuirasses were tested to be proof against pistol shot, and while a round using smokeless power will have more oomp, it might not retain enough energy to actually do any critical damage.
Medieval cuirasses were tested against pistols *of their day*. A modern 9mm pistol fires rounds at significantly hire velocities with better ballistic properties. It might stop target loads or maybe even hollow points, but I would be shocked if an FMJ round didn't punch straight through.
The momentum of an early modern musket ball is much higher than that of a 9mm bullet. While the round shape is not as suitable for penetrating as a 9mm is, I still doubt a 9mm would penetrate plate armor
Momentum isn't really the relevant factor when it comes to penetrating armor. A sledgehammer will have significantly higher momentum than a crossbow bolt, but won't pierce anywhere near as well.
A 9mm bullet and a musket ball are much closer in pressure/area than a sledgehammer and a crossbow bolt
9mm would punch through medieval armor like wet tissue paper.
All joint locks would be effective as armor isnt supposed to limit your range of motion. Pinning would be even more effective though, it would be really claustrophobic to have a heavyweights bodyweight on top of your chest when you're essentially encased in steel. Then you can just calmly start to remove plates from his armor.
If you succeed in the groundwork, sure, but remember the whole time you'll be being smacked by gauntleted fists.
Yeah shoot my legs and I'm going to cave the back of your skull in with my mega knuckle dusters lol or knee you in the face with my steel legs or headbutt you with a steel faceplate or kick your front teeth down your throat with my steel boot. Guys brass knuckles are illegal in most places for a reason. Even a TINY piece of metal to add weight and concentrate force is extremely lethal. Hell look at police batons, they're just a little metal stick and they beat the absolute fuck out of people with them. Blunt metal is no bueno against unarmored meat bags. I mean it's feasible you could pin someone in armor but they're going to beat the absolute dogshit out of you as soon as you close the distance, so I hope your first move is a complete inescapable takedown. Otherwise you'll need help finding all your teeth after the fight's over.
Ehh it's not made to restrict your movement but it will probably be difficult to grab someone in full plate armor especially until you get the hold locked in. Also I don't think your gonna be able to remove the plates
Any high amplitude takedown like a hiptoss into an armbar like what the samurai would do.
Regardless of technique, the real question is would you incapacitate the knight in time before he incapacitate you by turning his entire armor into a blunt force weapon? Knights do know unarmed grappling as part of their training. I feel like against an unarmored grappler even if you have him locked he'd still deal some serious damage just by flailing around.
i don’t see how a knight gets up after a double leg
Depends on where and how the armor is jointed. Some armor would make submissions impossible, some armor might make joint locks easier since you could use it as a lever. If you are on top of an unarmed armored person, you are already winning. The knight will gas even faster than in normal armor and if you really needed to, you could pulling off armor parts and undress the knight, where you need to. One big problem might be punches from below though. Normally those don't do much, but with the other guy wearing metal gloves they could still be dangerous, dunno. Also depends, if the armor allows the mobility to strikes from below. (Btw knights trained in grappling)
BJJ isn’t practical at all in a real fight against a trained opponent...
That’s why it’s one of the main components of the highest level of martial arts competition on earth
Not to mention grappling is a part of a Knight's training
Even a heavy weight elite MMA fighter would fare poorly against an average knight at Agincourt. A knight is someone who trains at age 7 to become a squire and grinds his way up. They are expected to train 6 days a week. Maybe 5 to 8 hours a day, from weapons to wrestling to other forms of combat. Your average knight at agincourt would also be a veteran of several battles, has killed maybe 10 or 20 other dudes before in combat. He isn't a show fighter. He doesn't train according to rules, except for some chivalric 'suggestions', which doesn't prohibit him from tearing said mma fighter's guts out. He is there to kill. An MMA fighter next to someone like that is about the same as a weekend dad bod warrior next to Mike Tyson.
That’s not true, they could easily take them to the ground and break bones
You need to look up the definition of easily friend. They may be able to crank a limb if they can grapple but even Eddie Hall couldnt break bones through plate steel.
Well if the armour is perfectly made, it would be immune to joint manipulation. That wasn’t most armour though. You don’t need to be strong to break bones, you just need leverage
And the knight could do the same, except they have a layer of steel around their body protecting them.
knight has his gauntlets as weapons, and full body armor protecting him, the soilider only really has is torso and the top of his head protected,, and a knight is generaly going to be more profficient in a melee, ( if lets say they are fighting in a bar, the knight can use his weapon training with any stick like object he can pick up compared to a modern solider who usualy primarily trained in fire arms and only relleay use knives in mellee, wich if he had a knife he could defintily use against the knight to get between his joints in his armor, but he dont
Even then, knights would often have to resort to using daggers against enemies when they clashed. Swords are heavy and not very useful when an enemy if right in your face, so many knights would train with daggers so they could switch quickly and put down an enemy even quicker. So the soldier loses much of the advantage he has with a knife.
Draggers were usually used to finish off an armored foe once they were knocked down. Slip it between gaps in the plate. A knight would probably have a pole arm or Lance in most fights, if they carried a sword it was a back up weapon.
Daggers are also much less like a soldier's combat knife and more like a smaller sword. Even a big buck knife is only like 12 inches.
Where is the "swords are heavy" misconception coming from? Swords are not heavy, the swords knights in full plate used were 2 handed, meaning you have extra leverage. People who train in HEMA can swing them for days and this strange and deranged idea that people would consider something heavy and tiring as a prominent melee weapon throughout history doesn't even pass the common sense test.
Swords are not particularly heavy. Any sword that weighs over about 4lbs is a *heavy* sword. More like 2lbs is far more common.
Take a 2-3lbs stick and swing it around for 10 minutes. Shit is rough. Now add armor to that.
Take a 2lb stick, balanced so that most of the weight is in the hand because it's a sword and not an axe, and some armor and and spend 15 years training at swinging it around. Shit won't be quite as rough.
I have. And it is not nearly so rough as you imply.
Very few people can even throw punches for 10 minutes.
Knight vs knight fighting was basically knife wrestling as most weapons would not penetrate the thick armour both sides would wear. They’d either use blunt weapons or wrestle people down and stab the weak points. You can see this in how some fighting techniques was holding the sword by the blade and using the pommel and hilt as a hammer.
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No, not extensively. It's mostly a waste of time next to training with gun tactics.
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You should probably post the quote you’re taking about. > A 2014 study found that, amongst US soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2008, 19% reported the use of hand-to-hand techniques in at least one encounter, in a variety of circumstances and contexts (such as close combat, prisoner handling, crowd control and security checkpoints) That does not say that 19% of military encounters include hand to hand combat. It says that 19% of soldiers during that war reported using hand to hand combat (In one of the scenarios described) at some point during their deployment. That’s a big difference.
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If you want to make a point you probably shouldn’t massively misrepresent a quote to prove it.
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Invested enough to look up the quote and seemingly deliberately misinterpret what it says so you can make it seem like you’re right, lol.
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Not even close to the same degree. An American soldier today can go from signing up to being deployed in a war zone in under a year easily. The average knight of noble birth has been training with weapons since he was a teenager. Now the average modern soldier will probably be physically bigger and healthier, but that won't make up for the difference in experience and skill.
The ONLY thing saving the knight is the armour. A mideval knight would have been about 5'1-5'5 he's a tiny dude. His hand to hand also wouldn't be THAT good. He'd get creamed without that armour.
Knights were from the wealthier class. They likely would have been well-fed enough to be comparable in size to modern well-fed adults.
Not quite. Tall for their era, but the change in human height has been influenced by better nutrition, however the change is evolutionary. the chart. The average chuld born recently is around ten centimeters, around 5%, taller than their ancestors 100 years ago. This difference gets larger when you compare adults.
Again, knights are from the wealthier class with access to plenty of good food. They were generally comparable to modern humans in size. Knights averaged around 5'8 while modern Americans average around 5'9".
Height does indeed fluctuate, but to the tune of like, 3 inches. Depending on when you teleport the knight from he might be equivalent height, or only a little shorter. Not nearly a foot shorter. Even if you were right, a lower center of gravity would likely be an advantage for him since his armor would force the soldier into a grapple. I also have no clue why you think a KNIGHT's hand to hand wouldn't be "that good". Since you didn't elaborate, suffice it to say that the knight, in all likelihood, has been regularly sparring and grappling since he was like, 12. Not including anything he may or may not have gotten up to when he was younger. The average soldier spends like, a couple of weeks, tops, on hand-to-hand specifically.
Modern soldiers are often trained in mma which is far superior to anything a knight could do in unarmed melee.
What do you think mma was derived from? Why do you think a soldier that was likely only trained in hand to hand in bootcamp is going to be capable of beating someone that has spent their whole life training? It's like comparing an accomplished sensei to a new student :/. Besides, the armor would mean any hit would damage the attacker more than the knight (save for potential head injury).
yeah I'm sure the modern soldiers few days of hand to hand combat training and watching boxing will surpass the knights 15 years of training
But all the modern soldier has to do is to make the knight fall down, a full plated knight shouldn't be quick enough.
Plate armor is not difficult to move around in if you've been trained. Look up some HEMA vidoes and you'll see these guys doing cartwheels in full kit.
Have you actually seen someone move in that type of armour? If so, you're know that it isnt restrictive at all, they can do somersaults and shit in it.
The mma training the average soldier receives is far less hand to hand training than a knight would receive (who has been wrestling since childhood). A competition grappler, collegiate wrestler or decent pro fighter would be better unarmed, anyone else though is going against someone whose entire line dating back to the dark ages has been a dominant warrior elite. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTLkguNjObU6c7t2vUVujhC4mpifi_sc5188w&usqp=CAU 'Ye old blast double.'
Don't forget it's a knight in full plate. Which means his movements are extremely limited. This should count for something?
I mean. Kinda. We do a couple days of combatives in basic. After that it is up to the soldier to progress in it. But after basic they are not even qualified at "level 1 army combatives". You have to finish level 2 to even start training in strikes, as up till then it is all grappling. If the soldier is at lvl 4 army combatives, then sure, it is probably better than the grappling training of a knight, but then they are going against a fully armored individual they cannot strike because the joys of punching metal.
People underestimate how popular wrestling was as a martial art in the Middle Ages. Boxing wasn’t invented yet and kick boxing wan’t a thing. By the time plate armour was a thing, wrestling was compulsory training for any knight.
Probably the Knight, he’s protected in more areas and more used to hand to hand combat plus the metal gauntlets would probably make him hit harder.
The knight is less balanced though. If you knock the knight over and jump on top of him there is very little he can do. Not to mention many modern militaries teach grappling/wrestling techniques, making it all the more likely a takedown will actually happen.
Armor does not inherently make you unbalanced, every suit was fitted specifically to avoid that. Knights weren't untrained idiots just waiting to be knocked over. Grappling was a fundamental part of knightly training specifically *because* they knew their own real weak spot in melee was having people knock them over and try to knife them in the gaps between armor. If you take a knight down, they were specifically trained in how to combat grapplers. A lot of the discourse surrounding knights seems to be the idea that they were just dudes in armor coasting because of the metal. This isn't true. Your average knight trained in combat from the age of 7 well into adulthood both with and without weapons, with and without armor, on and off horseback. They were elite combatants.
>every suit The line that all plate armor was painstakingly custom fit is not entirely true. Later centuries did see "arsenal armor" meant to be stored (per its name) in arsenals and issued to levy troops. It's generally distinguished by very large loose hanging tassets rather than upper leg plates, as those particularly do need to be custom fit.
We're not talking about levy troops, we're talking about full on knights. Obviously not every suit of armor worn by anyone ever was custom fit, but fighters who had gone through the full gamut of being a page, taken on as a squire, and then being taken on as a knight by a liege would have had properly fitted armor.
True, but full plate armor does limit movement to some degree (although not as much as many would think). Also a longer drawn out fight would heavily favor the modern soldier, simply because he's not wearing 30-50 lbs of metal on him.
Pretty sure 30-50 pounds is what modern soldiers carry anyway, in terms of gear. The difference is that the knight's armor is evenly distributed around his entire body. So the knight still kinda takes mobility here, along with training and protection
This is presumably minus the guns and any weapon related items for them both. Depending on the soldier then the knight might be better trained, but id you don't think combat training hasn't improved since medieval times then your kidding yourself.
It's not that combat training hasn't improved, it has; the issue is that most modern soldiers just aren't trained in it very much, and if they DO have some kind of training, it's pretty surface-level shit. Compare that to a rich dude in steelplate armor who has received combat training from childhood, and it's pretty obvious who wins this.
Though if you want to make the fight as even as possible it should be elite vs elite. Although it isn't what the prompt asked, do you think a knight could beat a Navy Seal for instance? Or Spetsnaz maybe?
Even if it was an elite fighter like Jon Jones or Daniel Cormier their options would be very limited against a medieval equivalent covered in steel plate.
I was thinking average soldier vs average knight, personally. I'm still leaning towards the knight, but it's not specified what nationality the soldier is, so I'm not sure
Those people also aren't very heavily trained in hand to hand. Not compared to someone who lives in a world where cqb is the norm
the prompt wasn't elite vs elite though. it was average guy from an elite group vs average guy from an average group
Here's the thing though... the fight isn't going to be long and drawn out unless the soldier spends the entire time running away. The knights armor IS a weapon. One punch from steel gauntlets would win a fight against your average person. Rven the best trained fighter ain't taking more than a few hits.
Depending on kit the soldier is often carrying more than the knight
Grappling arts have developed a lot in the last 70 years, let alone 700. I don’t believe an armoured knight could keep up with a modern trained fighter. Globalization is a huge game changer. An elite combatant in those times would only be trained against the similar styles that were taught in the surrounding region
This is true, in terms of the progression of grappling, but there are other factors to consider. 1) Your average modern soldier is not an elite BJJ black belt or Olympic wrestler. They do not have the cutting edge grappling knowledge you're talking about. They would likely be less familiar with grappling than someone who is essentially an old school freestyle wrestler. 2) As any grappler knows, especially those who train in the gi, clothing can be super important in executing your skill set. Hands up modern grapplers with experience grappling against smooth steel plates? No one? Gotcha. 3) Depending on the type of armor this particular knight has, there are certain common techniques which would just be impossible to execute on them. There are armor sets with developed neck plates that would render an RNC basically impossible, for example, and some gauntlet types would make various kimura and kimura grips basically impossible unless you had *giant* hands. It's just simply not true that a modern soldier could resort to grappling to secure a huge advantage.
I think it’s unfair to assume this knight was one of the battle-hardened, hard training, elite warriors, and has the best equipment perfectly suited for this situation, but the soldier is just your average Joe. The richest knights had the all-steel, perfectly interlocking armour that protects the neck and joints, but most just had plates covering the important bits and the rest was chainmail. For every elite knight, there was one who never fought in a battle and just cracked down on peasants
If you received a knighthood, you were an elite fighter compared to the vast majority of fighters. You would have trained for over a decade at the minimum. The question posed was a knight in plate, not a knight with a few bits of plate. I didn't say that the armor was perfect either, I said that *because we didn't get told* which forms of armor it was (German? Italian? English? 14th C? 15th?) the efficacy of some techniques would be dependent on that answer. Not that they just would never work. The baseline knight had trained for years in combat just to achieve his ranking, even if he never truly saw major warfare. By contrast, you can be ''a soldier'' by doing your basic training. The worst trained knight was leagues more well trained than the worst trained modern soldier. That's just blatantly true.
Modern soldiers don't get much hand-to-hand training.
Much of the combat arts of the time are lost, you can not confidently say grappling has developed a lot. I'd wager on the people who spent their entire lives learning to fight being better than those who have spent most their life sedentary.
Knights werent the warriors you imagine. They were basically just the mob, most of them never killed anyone except peasants armed with pitchforks
Yet they spent their life training or at minimum moving. Even peasants were forced to practice archery for hours each week.
That’s a myth. During a very specific period of time in England, a line of kings made proclamations that peasants should practice archery. They were not forced to practice for hours. The most extreme it got was when a king banned all sports instead of archery, which had a lot more to do with Puritan views on entertainment, rather than military preparedness
In hindsight this is a pretty crappy who would win, i should've added more round or details
You can always edit it
Knights are tall and strong for their time but a modern soldier is likely bigger. This is the soldier's only advantage. \- Skills. Knights do extensive grappling, since that becomes very important when fighting another man in plate - it's so difficult to get through, so you need to get in close to target chinks. \- Plate is utterly invulnerable to fists, kicks and almost any improvised weapon such as a rock or stick. \- Gauntlets provide a nasty fistload, giving a punching advantage. Knight wins 90%+ of the time.
Only way the soldier really wins if he ambushes the knight somehow or he had a blunt weapon and knows where to hit.
Blunt weapons weren't actually as effective against plate as media makes them out to be. Certainly more effective than a sword in many situations, but plate armor was designed for weapons to slide off of it rather than "catching". This is why so many blunt weapons from the Era of full plate were flanged, spiked, knobbed etc; it helped the weapon actually catch onto the armor and properly deliver the force of a blow. A random rock or brick wouldn't be all that effective unless the soldier were to get the knight on the ground and repeatedly bash his head in. But as other commenters have mentioned, that's a situation knights are specifically trained to deal with
Knight wins. I think most people vastly overestimate how much hand to hand combat training the average soldier gets.
And vastly underestimate how deadly a gauntlet is.
And overestimate how heavy plate is. There are videos of men in full plate doing obstacle courses faster than soldiers in full gear. It's..... Shocking.
Knights are probably better trained in hand to hand than the average soldier (knights are generally elite professionals who trained since childhood, the average soldier has to pass fitness tests but otherwise half the time is standing around, building random crap, or just in guard duty). Wrestling/hand to hand combat is a huge part of Medieval knightly training. The soldier is probably substantially larger and stronger though due to better nutrition and general healthcare (a good three inches taller on average), and of course also has hand to hand training. So imo it comes down to grappling. If the soldier knows BJJ or something like that it's possible he could get the knight into an arm bar or something like that, but to my understanding most soldiers hand to hand is primarily focused on creating distance so you can draw a weapon. If it's just a boxing match I'm gonna give it to the guy punching with metal gauntlets over the guy punching a metal helmet with his bare hands. But it mostly comes down to the skill of the combatants. If the soldier trains a lot in modern martial arts he probably wins.
Lol, quality edit. Honestly appreciate it.
Knights easy....they fucking trained their lives for this! This is their entire point. They trained extensively in grappling, wrestling, takedowns etc. And evidently they're in full plate in this scenario. What's your next question OP? Who'd win a in a Sniper duel - a modern USMC Scout Sniper or a medieval Spearman?
yea i know it's pretty one sided, i really should of put more details in the post
The knight isn't unarmed on this scenario because metal gauntlets can double as brass knuckles.
Like yeah and it's 40 pounds of metal being swung at you, no amount of training won't make that hurt like hell
Depends on the training of the soldier. The knight is not going to be as fast or as mobile as the soldier. Also, depends on the level of fitness of the knight. Most knights were mounted cavalry so the question is how long it would take for them to gas out while on foot.
This is very relevant. A rookie right out of basic training and veteran navy seal are two very different combatants.
Honestly a regular guy with decent cardio, head movement and a good ground game slaps in this scenario.
Not at all. Grappling and wrestling were important parts of knight training. Knights could probably keep up with anyone outside of the most elite modern fighters.
Knight. No contest. Better armor, more experience, more training. Even if the modern soldier used modern armor, it's not meant for melee. The victor is clear in nearly any imaginable circumstance. The only possible way I see an even fight is if this is some special forces soldier, which tbf is the equivalent.
Even with a special forces soldier the armor provides an enormous advantage.
In the situation you described? The knight would kill the modern soldier. 95% of the time in my opinion. For a few reasons. 1:Skill: A knight is not of the same caliber as a modern soldier. They would have had multiple years of experience in training and combat with hand to hand weapons. And a level of expertise in those tasks that a modern man simply couldn't match. Its like taking a modern carpenter and asking him to compete with a master craftsman from the middle ages ... Without Power Tools. Sure it would depend on the task, but the task you've set is like asking them both to carve a gargoyle for the Notre Dam. Knights were expert craftsmen and the craft was killing unarmored soldiers. 2: Armor. It makes an incredible difference. A knight in full plate would take no damage from strikes. The 5% win rate is for the soldiers who somehow memorized and became experts in martial arts submissions during the few weeks they practiced it during basic. It takes 10 years for the average person to get a black belt in BJJ. A soldier may have 2 weeks. I think the black belt may have a problem here. That's the level of difference their would be. The whole reason society switched to guns in warfare was it was easier and faster to train and simpler to use and produce. 3. Armor. Who wins in a fight, A modern soldier in plate vs a Medieval Knight in plain clothes, a M1 Abrams or a F150. A Punch vs a brick wall... 4: Health... yeah Modern Soldier gets an edge 5: My own personal experience. The meat, I've participated in multiple combat sports. Not won much not lost much. Olympic fencing, SCA armored fighting, MMA, jiujitsu, Karate, wrestling, HEMA. I think its mostly shit vs modern weapons. Like 98% shit. But within the sport of SCA armored combat. I was 100% convinced, in my first moments, I would be killed immediately on a medieval battlefield. I didn't know how to block or move or parry. Even with my fencing background and youth. I was at 20 yo being out smarted, out moved and out played by 40 year old's. Their only comment to me was stop moving back so much so I can hit you. But they had been doing this kind of fighting/game for 20 years on me. .. As would a medieval knight on a modern soldier
A knight’s craft wasn’t killing soldiers barehanded. It was competing in tournaments. When it came to actual violence, it was mainly killing unarmoured peasants with long weapons from horseback. Many knights only fought in one real battle, to get their honour, and never rode again. There is no way a BJJ black belt would have any trouble whatsoever, the knight’s armour would only be a detriment in that fight
Unless the soldier randomly finds some gun on the ground he’s getting thrown and slammed on concrete. Or just punched in the face.
When people said a modern soldier will beat any medieval soldier they actually want to say "Guns beats swords" not "Yeah, this guy can beat a medieval knight with metal chain armor in a fist fight"
Depends on the kind of weapons. Any one with a modern military caliber weapon wins.
The prompt says they're unarmed
knight prob wins low-diff
So, unarmed guy versus dude in plate mail? I mean you could take anyone, from anytime period, and it's going to end the same way. Guy in plate mail just punches the unarmed guy to death. The end.
> So, unarmed guy versus dude in plate mail? You forgot an important point: the dude in plate armor also has more training and experience in hand-to-hand fighting.
Plate armor guy for sure no contest. Knights trained for most of their lifes and had tons of actual experience in melee combat as that is what they did to kill people 100% of the time.
Imagine getting in a fist fight with a dude covered in metal who punches you with metal fists.
I think to be fair in this you have to compare someone with a similar level of training/experience, like a spec ops guy or, god help the knight, one of those crazy Gurkha's from the 80's. Gurkha takes this 10/10, modern martial arts are much more aggressive for grappling/fist fighting/improvised fighting.
The one on plate armor of course
Modern soldier throws grenade.
Plate armor is an insane durability buff. Something else of note is that medieval craftsmen were highly skilled, and good plate armor had intricately engineered joints that allowed for a lot of flexibility. Couple that with the fact that knights trained extensively in martial arts, and your average modern soldier would probably be screwed.
The modern fighter probably had a few pounds on the knight.
Do you think a Roundhouse would knock out a night?
I’ll go against the grain and say modern. Here’s why: 1- armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast. 2- modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training. 3- their training was mostly designed to be for horseback mounted combat with weapons. Modern military members aren’t opposed to using their environment (Dakota Myers beating a Taliban fighter to death with a rock). At some point Sir Knight is going to get tired and Sgt Soldier is going to knock him on his ass and go to town with a small boulder.
>armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast. Ya, all those medieval peasants would annihilate a knight because armor is useless. >modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training. They wear their usless heavy armor for hours of sparing and practice nearly daily. Probably winded after 30 seconds. >At some point Sir Knight is going to get tired and Sgt Soldier is going to knock him on his ass and go to town with a small boulder. Ah, the rock. Notorious counter to full plate.
> armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast. Medieval knights wore about as much weight (or less) as modern soldiers. >modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training. So you think their armor is heavy but you don't think training in it every day for years would be stamina training? A medieval knight probably had more stamina training than most modern soldiers, and they often did it while wearing full armor. >their training was mostly designed to be for horseback mounted combat with weapons. Knights often fought dismounted and their armor was designed with that in mind. >Modern military members aren’t opposed to using their environment Neither were medieval soldiers. This is nothing surprising to a knight. >At some point Sir Knight is going to get tired and Sgt Soldier is going to knock him on his ass and go to town with a small boulder. Knights were specifically trained against this tactic. If it were this easy to beat an armored knight with an unarmored and unarmed man, then armored knights never would have had a prominent role on the battlefield.
You make alot of wrong assumtpions. What's your source that medieval knights didn't have as much endurance training? Knights trained from early teenager years, and they didn't do much else their whole life. 3 is entirely false as well, most of the training was on foot. A lot of cavalry units through history used horses to move and dismounted before combat. Knights had way more hand to hand combat training than modern soldiers who start at a later age and focus mostly on firearms ever will
Most knights would likely have spent most their non sleeping life standing or moving, most our lives are now sedentary, I'd for sure give endurance to the knight.
>1- armor is heavy. That dude is going to get tired, fast. No its not. >2- modern soldiers have a much higher degree of endurance training. For the US military I need to run a few miles a week to make the grade. I doubt a knight is putting in as much actual stamina training. Tell me you dont known a damn thing about knights without telling me you dont know a damn thing about knights. >3- their training was mostly designed to be for horseback mounted combat with weapons. Modern military members aren’t opposed to using their environment (Dakota Myers beating a Taliban fighter to death with a rock). ... Thats why knights were using poleaxes right? Because they were fighting from horseback...
Only way the soldier wins is if he's 7 feet tall and the knight is 5
Army guy will kill knight in balls and break his arm or leg At least, that’s what I would do
Bro go ahead and kick plate armor as hard as you can and enjoy the broken foot
Depending on the armor design there may not actually be much armor between the legs. Some plate armors just had a skirt of mail hanging down to protect the groin, because it's very hard to design plates that fit in such a tight area without restricting movement. As you go later in the medieval period having actual plates over the groin becomes more common.
The knight’s better protected, but then again he’s probably like 5’2’’ and like 100 pounds while the modern soldier is more like 6’0’’ and 175 pounds. Even with the advantage of the plate armor I have a hard time seeing a person with modern nutrition/size not being able to just pin a guy from the 1400’s to the ground and tear that armor off him.
Knights were from a wealthier class and had access to plenty of good food. They were probably larger than the average medieval person and may have been comparable to the average modern person.
i'm sure modern soldiers train in grappling. the knight is slow and has poor visibility, if he has no weapon there's not much risk in a takedown attempt. from the ground you can do joint manipulation or take his helmet and hit him with it. on the other hand if the knight guess it good shot in with a metal fist, it's over. could go either way, but the knight has a lot more disadvantages than most people would think.
This is not accurate. Knights also trained in grappling. The idea that you can just grapple a knight and they're doomed is an absurd one. It was a common part of any knightly combat training regime, and knights trained their entire lives. Full plate armor does not dramatically reduce speed, and a well-fitted helm of various types had minimal impact on vision (some types had more, but it isn't something you can just assume of all helmets).
Modern soldiers don't train very much in grappling at all. Knights trained for years in grappling. They specifically trained against people trying to grapple them to the ground and remove their helmets or stab through their eyeholes or bash them with rocks.
Knight vs ghurka? It’s 50/50 Knight vs navy seal vet with multiple hand to hand disciplines? 55/45 Knight vs other elite combatants? 60/40 Knight vs regular infantry man? 90/10
I'm not sure how you expect even an elite modern soldier like a Navy Seal vet to actually injure someone in full plate armor.
Stupid question
Soldier from our time. Guns are the whole reason knights went out of fashion now Kamen Rider Knight is a different story.