Realismus des Underground Fight Clubs
Meine Geschichte dreht sich um illegale Kampfclubs, in denen Gegner ernst werden und Kämpfe manchmal tödlich enden. Es gibt jedoch ein Problem: Ich möchte mehr oder weniger inklusiv und für viele Zielgruppen attraktiv machen. Es ist einfach, Charaktere unterschiedlichen Geschlechts, ethnischen, religiösen und kulturellen Hintergrunds zu schreiben.
Wie realistisch wäre es jedoch, Kämpfer zu haben, die älter als 30 Jahre sind?
In einem normalen Kampfkunstwettbewerb kann beispielsweise das 30-jährige Boxen oder Karate immer noch in der Lage sein, sich aufgrund von Vorschriften zu behaupten und mit etwas Glück sogar Vorteile aufgrund von Fähigkeiten zu erzielen. Ich glaube jedoch, dass ältere Kämpfer weniger Chancen haben, wenn sie voll im Kampf sind.
Antworten
Realistisch, vorausgesetzt, die älteren Kämpfer sind außergewöhnlich
Take professional sports, for example. Sure, while it's not a blood sport (technically), there is a normal age range for players to enter the league in and a normal amount of years for any given player of any given sport at any given position - except when it comes to really good players. These are the kind of people who start playing professional a year or two younger than usual, play for much longer than the usual player, and can retire when they're almost a decade older than anyone else on the court and still are maintaining respectable numbers. An exceptional fighter could last into his thirties, or even his forties, as long as who he was smart about facing off against.
Muhammad Ali defended (with mixed success) his title of world champion into his mid thirties, leaving boxing at 36 (not counting to attempts at a return in the years after that). Not sure how much of his decay in skill is down to age, and how much to Parkinson's.
Looking at "softer" martial arts, Anton Geesink won olympic gold in Judo at age 30 and european champion at 33. Most succesful Judoka appear to be in their late twenties.
30 is no magic number. There have been successful athletes in the world of combat sports older than that.
Entering a combat with a real (even if small) risk of dying is stupid. However, many young people think of themselves as immortal (leading to drunk driving and all other sorts of risky behavior). I'd expect them (men, mostly) to be very present in these fights, along with a bunch of older guys trying to handle their midlife crisis and a few very scary middle aged hooligans or criminals or law enforcement people who are very dangerous and not entirely sane.
P.S.: As with actual existing combat sports, a big part will be metagaming: Picking only fights you are reasonably sure you win. The saying in poker is that there's a sucker at every table and if you can't see them, get up - it's you. The experience to recognize weak fighters who completely overestimate themselves, or underestimate their opponents, is important in such a setting. A fighter doesn't need to be better than everyone, they only need to be better then the people they get into fights with.
Sounds a little ageist to me. In a street fight age doesn't matter, its who lands the knock out punch first or does the most damage in the shortest time, in competition martial artist have to fight rounds and they are limited to certain moves and have to be within the rules. Take away rules and rounds and the most savage or smartest fighter will win, taking out the advantage that youthful cardio levels have over other fighters.
I have a red belt in Shotokan Karate and Hapkido, and while my training was not full-contact, it was undertaken with the assumption that the non-contact tournaments and sparring that we engaged in was fundamentally different to real-life fighting.
That said, people are not neurologically mature until the age of around 22. In martial arts, that means that no matter how well a martial artist younger than that can execute the individual techniques, they have difficulty with improvisation: they can plan a series of actions, but when that plan ends or is interrupted, they are less able to act or react. As an adult in my 40s, I was able to defeat higher ranked juniors because of this: I could keep improvising and reacting where they could not.
Next, while older martial artists may begin to have infirmities that limit them, experience is a telling factor, and they are typically able to work around their limitations. A common martial arts trope is that of the ancient master: the wizened oldster who defeats the upstart who is in the prime of life with embarrassing ease and little effort. This trope has a sound basis in reality. As long as the oldster remains mentally and physically capable, having more experience will give them an advantage that is of more significance than a loss of raw strength as the result of age... with the result that they will shift from brute force tactics to something more subtle.
Of course, not every martial artist learns this. Some go on acting as if they are in their 20s well into their 30s and 40s... and end up with injuries that their bodies can no longer withstand. An example that my sensei gave was of a man who always blocked incoming blows squarely rather than deflecting them... and eventually broke both bones in his forearm doing so in a tournament.
So... in this fight club, I would expect there to be a predominance of younger men - those being mentally less mature and more impulsive - but there could still be a few older men, potentially up to their 60s, who may not be as physically strong, but who would more than make up for their lesser raw strength with greater experience.
TL:DR: Age and treachery trumps youth and enthusiasm.