Poll A genuine question I want answered.

[Vagabond Elf]

That is pure myth...and a dangerous one to cling to, especially, for example, in time of war, old sport.

Find me a reasonably reliable example of a close-combat fight during wartime between two opponents who were equally well trained, rested, motivated, healed, and equipped, but of significant difference in height and reach.

Every single detail and decision made in a war is an effort to ensure that all is not equal once the fight starts.

Some things matter more in a sword fight than height and reach, yes. Which is why I started that sentence with "ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL." That phrase is important, and you don't get to discard it. If the ONLY difference between combatant A and combatant B is that A has a two-inch reach advantage, that reach advantage will be deterministic.

Such match ups are, of course, extremely rare, even in a sporting contest where the situation is arranged to be as equal as possible. Almost all the time, one person will be more skilled or more motivated, and that tends to make the difference unless the size disparity is extreme.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Find me a reasonably reliable example of a close-combat fight during wartime between two opponents who were equally well trained, rested, motivated, healed, and equipped, but of significant difference in height and reach.

Every single detail and decision made in a war is an effort to ensure that all is not equal once the fight starts.

Some things matter more in a sword fight than height and reach, yes. Which is why I started that sentence with "ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL." That phrase is important, and you don't get to discard it. If the ONLY difference between combatant A and combatant B is that A has a two-inch reach advantage, that reach advantage will be deterministic.

Such match ups are, of course, extremely rare, even in a sporting contest where the situation is arranged to be as equal as possible. Almost all the time, one person will be more skilled or more motivated, and that tends to make the difference unless the size disparity is extreme.

We could add in even more matching criteria. What would remain would be things like speed, agility, leverage, etc. Smaller women can take down larger men, at times. Size advantage is not always the determining factor.

 

[Captain Kush]

Kirk would tell you both to Get A Life

Speaking as someone who's trained in Ringen (medieval German unarmed techniques), Langeschwert (medieval German two-handed sword techniques) and Highlands Broadsword (18th Century, one-handed sword, no off-hand weapon) - there's more overlap than you think. The key elements are an intuitive understanding of distance and timing, and training for that in one particular situation is still training for that. "Never give a sword to a man who can't dance," as the saying goes. (The internet attributes this to Confucius, though I'd always thought it was Voltaire.)

On the other hand, Sulu's sword skills are generally shown to be Olymic epee or rapier, and those sports tightly constrain what you're allowed to do, to a degree that it can actually hamper you in a no-rules fight.

On the griping hand, both Kirk and Sulu are honourable men who believe in the ideals of Star Fleet, so the actual answer is "neither," because both men have the skills to avoid accidentally killing an opponent and both men would stop fighting when their opponent was disabled. The entire point of Trek being that we can find solutions without violence, etc, etc.

As to who would disable their opponent? I honestly think both men are equally skilled; neither engages in close-combat as a routine task, but also neither is incompetent. They're also of similar height and build, and yes that matters - all else being equal, a good big man will beat a good small man every time. We have more examples of Kirk than Sulu, but very few examples of Kirk vs Sulu. And I don't think we can use the Mirror Universe examples, since that's clearly a situation where being better at hand-to-hand directly contributes to being promoted.

So who would win? It would depend on external factors: who was more rested that day? Who was less distracted? Did they both start fighting at the same time, or did one get a couple initial blows in before the other realised there was a fight at hand? Is one in easy-to-move-in casual wear when the other is in encumbering formal wear? And so on. Set all those factors to equal, and it's a coin flip.

A well written reply! My one arguement is that in this hypothetical scenario, their moralities are completely removed because of course they wouldn't kill eachother canonically lol.