Lets try this again.: Good Old Fisticuffs

This trope used to be about someone who only fought with their fist, it was a sub trope of Extremity Extremist and that history is still viewable on that page. Trope Decay has turned this into, well read the page quote for it.

Instead of just fighting with you fists, its about "untrained fighters are better" or "the only training you need is lots of real fights." Which by calling it Good Old Fisticuffs implies fist fighters don't every have formal training, which is a bit insulting oh and includes many examples that don't even involve fists!

My suggestions are to either

• Cut this page
• Change it back to the way it was. People who only fist fight, even when other options are available or used against them.
• Rename the page to better reflect what it decayed into. Like Experience>Technique.

Change it back to "old fashioned fist fighting"

I'm not seeing the complaint. The article is and has always been about untutored brawlers outdoing artsy martial artists.

Yes, but now it's been expanded to include untrained fighters using methods other than brawling.

"Bareknuckle, no style fighting beats frill stuff" is what this trope was launched as and is about, the quote is perfectly appropriate and the description bears it out (though it needs a bit of a grammar check). Is the trope decay in some of the examples?

"It doesn't matter what you use for a fight as long is emphasized that the person had to crawl for the gutter to get where he is, puts weight in his/her mind and cunning, is ready to do anything to win and had seen his/her fair share of fights"

That is the offending line.

Knife fighting could be acceptable according to that line.

That section needs some TLC, if that's all that implies actual training with weapons be used then redacting it should be simple.

Well, given Extremity Extremist and Natural Weapon I'd say the trope decay is in the examples, but can you blame it? The title's misleading.

But if the decay is just in examples then I no longer want to cut or a change in the description, just a name change that better reflects experience beats training and frills.

edited 8th Jul '11 1:57:34 PM by Cider

But we already have Combat Pragmatist

This was supposed to be about the specific style of fighting that the "average American Joe" is likely to use. It usually based on boxing, with a bit of wrestling thrown in, but is much more informal and is just learned fighting on the streets and schoolyards. Bruce Willis in Live Free Or Die Hard was a perfect example of good old fisticuffs. Or Rocky in Rocky V when he retired. It's a style that when shown as winning is very flattering to the average blue collar American from the 50s.

That's why movies use it.

Lumberjack Style was another term sometimes used to refer to it (although it tended to mean "anything goes").

I propose a split.

Good Old Fisticuffs: An untrained fighter with a street brawler style using his fists (basically a bit of boxing mixed with wrestling). He probably learned fighting on the schoolyard and/or in bars.

To Be Named Later: An untrained fighter can beat fancy martial arts. Probably because he tends to be a Combat Pragmatist.

A fighter who just goes at it with their fists is Bare-Fisted Monk. The trope has always been about how clunky but proven styles will trump the more elegant ones, hence the "Good Old" part of the title.

I can't really see a recurring problem with any of the examples, maybe one or two that kind of stretches the boundaries of the trope (The one on MMA is more about how even people who train in well refined styles end up making wild strikes). I don't see anything overtly broken about it.