Some tall guys can lose to short guys (Mike Tyson), but that doesn't take away the fact that height/reach is a huge advantage.
This is just obvious. It's funny that people go to extreme examples, but the exception just proves the rule: on average tall guys will beat shorter guys.
I wish they had an open weight/absolute championship at the end of the season like they did in PRIDE,
and forced the cheaters like Jones to compete with the heavies during the regular season.
This is a great post, and you are 100% correct for agreeing with me.
Contrary to what most people think, the very greatest fighters/warriors of the human species are not guys with thick torsos and huge muscles, but tall, lean, lanky guys with long limbs.
Reach is the most important thing in fighting, and that is usually determined by height because bodyparts tend to be propportional. Seldom does a 5'5 guy have arms and legs as long as 6'5 guys..
There is a reason why the human species got taller over thousands of years: because tall men killed short men in battle more often than the other way around and got to pass on their genes. This is also the reason why women show a preference for tall men and like lean muscles but not huge muscles.
Big muscles give you strength which gives you power, but it slows you down by adding weight and decreasing your cardio by increasing your Oxygen needs. Tall men with ectomorphic bodybuilds have the best of both worlds, as being tall allows them to carry more muscle than a short guy without losing speed as their longer legs allows for quicker locomotion with the same cardio as the surface of their lungs is larger.
Being tall but with a mesomorphic bodybuild gives you the reach advantage, but it does not give you a speed advantage. It is the guys who are tall and with lean torsos that have the greatest advantage. The two most dominant fighters right now, Anderson Silva and Jon Jones, are both tall, lanky with lean torsos.
I recall this fight I once saw in a mall, between a short/average height guy(around 5'8 ) who was a huge bodybuilder at around 220 lbs, and this tall, thin, lanky 6'4 guy who probably weighted only about 180 lbs. I don't remember what they fought over, but it was probably related to one of the guys' girlfriend. Anyway, the short stocky guy rushed towards the lanky guy and couldn't even get close to him. The lanky guy would jab his face from feets away and hit him in the head twice with kicks. It was not only the fact that the short, stocky guy couldn't even get close to the lanky guy, but also a matter of speed: the lanky guy runned circles around the stocky guy, and would hit him several times and the stocky guy couldn't hit him at all. He had more muscle, but it served him for nothing.
The best possible combination for a fighter is to be tall and ectomorphic. For a powerlifter, short and mesomorphic. People with a mix of both characteristics tend to average on both of them. From what I recall from high school, the boys who beat the shit out of the others were not the thick torsoed ones, but the tall boys with lean skeletal frames.
Picking fights with tall, lanky guys without weapons: bad idea, unless you are a masoquist.
SUCKMYMUSCLE