The Deadliest Warrior on Spike

“Shaolin Monks will wow us with Drunken Angry Monkey and Recalcitrant Bumblebee.”

Oh nicely done, as is the rest of this. I’ll certainly have to check out the show.

I eagerly await Vampire Hooligan vs. Space Cowboy.

Like alot of people, I don’t watch much television or read newspapers. Most of my entertainment comes from the Internet. Anyway, I think the President of Iran or Castro or Blago, Ellen Degeneras(for real) are pretty good warriors. I don’t agree with any of them, I just think they’re pretty good fighters.

The show seems to have missed the mark a bit if they left out the men who originated the meal known today as mongolian beef. The greatest warrior race ever to hit the face of the world were those itty bitty, illiterate mongolians on their itty bitty, minature ponies. With no sense of military tactics and strategy, those little men spread themselves and their empire out like a raging wild fire and essentially conquered the entire known world, never suffering a loss in doing so. The lives of those nomadic midgets were the true epitome of the phrase: "I came, I saw, I conquered, making Ceasar himself look like a little boy and his over blown victories like mere child’s play in direct comparison.

Probably, the best and most feared warriors have always come from a group of men who had no ability to read or write. There is something about becoming literate that tends to make wimps and wussies out of men. It seems to take the MAN out of a man. So if one can read the above, then it would be sensible not to consider yourself to be a REAL man and to be glad that some over zealous monk managed to teach those nomads how to read and write, turning them essentially into wimps and wussies like the rest of us.

In a world of the world wide web where everyone now knows how to read and write and how to order books from Amazon, there simply are no more warriors left to be found on the face of the world – alot of computer dorks but no genuine warriors. What a trade off this thing we call progress and civilization is? We managed to turn bad ass, REAL MAN Genghis Khan into some geek internet tech, one who has about as much machismo as a 60’s era VW BUG.

We’re all just wild, wild boys.

Air Force Staff Weather Officer versus Army Bath and Laundry Specialist. Settle it once and for all.

Both of these jobs really exist. It’ll be cheap and easy.

Coach Knight would embed a folding chair in the back of the head of Leach while he’s passed out drink. It would actually come close to the IRA/Taliban conclusion.

Where’s the 2005 USC Trojans vs the 3rd reich?

What about Aquaman vs. Prince Namor, the Sub-mariner?

Splish splash, have you read the Conn Iggulden series on Genghis? Historical fiction. I dug the Caesar tetralogy, but only have the first one on G.

No, I have not. I have been attempting to unlearn how to read and write and get some of my uncivilized balls back. I’ve been smacking myself in the head with hammer in my efforts, but so far, no luck. So quit writing to me and tempting me. You ain’t helping me on this matter.

Splish splash:

I enjoyed your post, and am generally in agreement. You are forgetting Goliath’s Spring, however, where the Islamic world’s last hope, illiterate Mamluke slaves from Asia Minor, Turkestan and elsewhere, defeated the Mongol remnant of Hulagu’s army (and spelt the death knell for the remaining husk of the Crusader states).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ain_Jalut

Perhaps it is true that the Mongols never lost a battle to a literate enemy, at least… I’ve heard good things about the Iggulden series as well, but have yet to pick them up. Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon stories are a ripping yarn if you have the time (and the Dark Age Wiking inclination).

“Bored, the IRA man tries to flush out the Taliban guy with a fat weepy Catholic girl parading around with open ankle while the Taliban guy clinks whiskey glasses together to form an Irishman’s mating call.”

That cracked me up. I spent a night in Belfast on my honeymoon, and while at a local pub with a sign outside that said “no football colors allowed”, I sneaked off to the restroom to take a shit and came back to a see a drunken Irishman trying to hit on my wife, working the oh so smooth angle of psychotic fish-monger with wild accent.

Andre the Giant vs. Master Blaster.

Even more riveting would be HenryJames vs CloseToJumping but I can see how they don’t exactly fall in the warrior classification.

I just DVRd the next few episodes, which appear to be late Sunday night. I guess these clandestine battles aren’t quite ready for prime time.

Most importantly, the offseason infotainment missive here at BC is fucking thriving.

Good to know the finest Japanese swords are made in Walnut, CA.

The potentially hurtful stereotypes of other peoples and cultures here makes one think that the UN can use a guy like Scipio.

Pretty solid show. I’d like to see SAS v. French Foreign Legionnaire. Or Legionnaire vs. random Algerian. Whatever, I’m flexible.

To say that the Mongols had little or no sense of strategy and tactics is ridiculous. Wherever did you read that?

The missed some of the biggest badasses of history. Just off the top of my head:

Mongols
Roman Legionnaires
Ottoman Janissaries
Macedonians
Mamluks
Swiss Pikemen
Huns

Didn’t Apache’s have carbines? And which type of gladiator did they line him up against? Heavily armored (murmillo/secutor) or a fairy net guy (retiarus), because it makes a difference.

I’m going to have to check this show out.

The greatest warrior race ever to hit the face of the world were those itty bitty, illiterate mongolians on their itty bitty, minature ponies. With no sense of military tactics and strategy

Wha … ? Even the Mongols’ hunting traditions were built around practicing for war, they had a recursive system of unit organization, they promoted officers (almost) strictly according to merit and gave them wide latitude to lead, they protected their command and control network (unlike western armies of the time), deployed spies in Europe a decade before their invasion of Poland, and used religious conversion to trick and divide their enemies.

If not for a timely succession crisis, they would have rolled over western Europe like a Ford Excursion over a Radio Flyer. As for the Mameluks, their victories were anything but assured.

I want the French vs the Italians. Who’d surrender first?

Franchione v. Little Debbie

Spider, thanks for that article – interesting detail on the Mameluk armies… I definitely buy his thesis on the logistical difficulties the Mongol armies faced West of Mesopotamia.

I think 98% of historians would agree with you that Ogodei’s death saved Western Europe a very nasty ravage. Still, I wonder… the Polish and Russian cities of the 13th century were not as heavily fortified as those in the HRE and France, and it could be that the Mongol siege train wouldn’t have been up to the task of permanently conquering the centers of power. I am surprised we haven’t seen any alternate histories of this…

That said, it is doubtful the ponderous European armies of that period would have won any major battle, and at the least the countryside would have been razed as happened to poor Poland.

As an aside, how tragic is the history of Poland over the last 800 years? Razed and enslaved by Mongol, Teutonic Knight, Russian, Prussian, Austrian, Nazi, Soviet… the Vistula river has seen many sad stories.

Finally, I want to raise my core complaint with the History Channel show: it measures “warriors”, not soldiers, and that is an important difference. The average Celt or German warrior was considerably bigger than his Roman soldier counterpart, and almost certainly would win most single combats. This is an irrelevant point, however – beecause the Romans fought in disciplined formation, working as a team (see Patton’s famous speech), they could triumph over many times their number of superior “warriors”. As you say, the Mongols employed similar military disclipline, with similar results.

Speaking as a good Irish-American, the IRA would totally kick the Taliban’s ass. People who are eager to die because some idiot tells them it’s what God wants are no match for people who are the greatest drinkers, poets, singers, and fistfighters to ever walk the planet.

Hook ’em.

Ojnab Bob:

Actually, the fight in Poland included armies from western Europe. They lost, but the Mongol’s victory was very costly.

As for fortifications, Liegnitz was in 1241 and Ain Jalut was 1258. Western European fortifications were still in a mixed stage of stone and timber palisade at this point, often painting the wood so that you couldn’t tell it from stone. The Mongols, furthermore, stole siege engine technology as they went along, so it’s not like they couldn’t show up with a trebuchet.

The problem with this show is that it’s putting assassins up against single-combat warriors up against formation fighters. It’s good silly fun.

I’d rather see a Birmingham United hoodlum full of lager against an interglacial-period Neanderthal hopped up on fly agaric.

That sounds like a good matchup, Spider! I propose some other interesting matchups, like an outside linebacker against a basketball power forward.

By the Mongolian invasion, Western European fortification practices actually were pretty well developed, at least in spots. Look at Krak Des Chevaliers in Syria – a magnificent castle, and one completed by the mid-13th century.

Liegnitz only included a smattering of German knights and miners in the Western army; as you say, the Mongols paid for it. I think I am in the minority when I say that a surprising replay of the German victory at Lechfeld could have been in the offing if the Mongols had pushed farther west… sort of like ’95 Nebraska surprising ’95 Florida with the punishing ground game. Get the Mongols into the right terrain with a river at their back, and German heavy infantry/cavalry could have laid ’em an Osborne-like whooping.

Interesting discussion. The Mongols were the most dominant empire in the history of our violent species. That they achieved such military success as a pack of wandering nomads battling stable, agrarian, specialized societies makes it all the more impressive.

The outside linebacker kills the power forward, using his higher level of aggression to overcome his opponent’s superior reach.

As far as sport matchups, I’d also pay to see women’s tennis vs. men’s figure skating, or LPGA vs. men’s soccer. Too close to call, but the battles would be legendary.

Real Army (West Point) vs Fake Army (you know who)

Good correction/discussion on the Mongols above. I thought they were the most obvious omission from the show. They were the most tactically and militarily sophisticated people on the planet in their day. And in many respects more “enlightened” than several of the empires they opposed.
 
I think they were omitted from the show primarily because a horse-archer evading another warrior and filling him with arrows probably doesn’t make for very good television.

Perhaps the Mongols were omitted because their deadliness came from being expert horse archers. Perhaps a horse would be an unfair advantage.

Doperbo:
 
They did kind of a Gladiator cross section. And they used pre-carbine Apaches. It was probably their worst re-enactment.
 
kevwun:
 
Good list, there.
 
As someone pointed out above, because the show emphasizes individual warriors rather than how they functioned as a unit, several of the most powerful warrior-cultures are devalued. A Swiss Pikeman in one-on-one combat is pretty weak, but put him in a group and he gets formidable quickly. Same for the Macedonians with their sarissas.
 
Another obvious group that is missing is Aztec. But since many of their weapons were designed for capture and subduing an opponent, they would haven’t fared very well; not to mention a lack of steel-age technology.
 
Other omissions that leap to mind would be 13th century English bowmen and Byzantine Cataphracts.

Steve:
 
The Knight is mounted on the next episode so I dunno.

Sexy.

“Perhaps a horse would be an unfair advantage.”

*

True, but as you alluded to, the Mongols pretty much stayed at a distance as horse archers, where as the Knight still had to be in close.

I’d have the Mongol taking on Numidian cavalry, or maybe an Egyptian Chariot.

Uh…did the ninja flip off of the 1-foot tall log? That didn’t seem like a sound tactical move to me.

Scipio, that’s also true of the Spartans but they made it on the show thanks to 2 hours of slow motion shots and oiled up six packs.

This thread is fascinating.

I can’t believe the Comanche hasn’t been mentioned.

What about Publius Scipio vs Hannibal in man to man combat? I’m leaning toward Hannibal based solely on bench press.

kevwun:
 
Agreed. The Spartans were best as a unit in phalanx warfare, though they were pretty formidable individually as well. I remember reading that their daily drill was sort of like football practice – they spent half their day in unit drills, half in individual drills.
 
Doperbo:
 
They’re only going to pick one variety of American Plains Indian.

Oh Snap. Did I just get mistaken for Chooky?

It is so on. Where are my shurikens.

Damn autopopulate software.

It’s an easy mistake. One of you heals the sick, the other wears sick heels.

Doperbo, you asked about the type of gladiator they used. They mixed and matched weapons and armor from the various types. They used the Secutores helmet and the Retiarri net. They also had a half moon blade that was worn over the hand like a pirate hook. They referred to it as a scissores, but it doesn’t match the descriptions I’ve found online which say that it was a two bladed sword in the shape of scissors minus the hinge.

On a second look, it was probably a Murmillo helmet instead.

I’m a Nine West man. 11 1/2.

I think they were omitted from the show primarily because a horse-archer evading another warrior and filling him with arrows probably doesn’t make for very good television.

… unless the warrior in question is Michael Bennett.

or Michael Flatley
 

Unusually inspired, even for you. Funniest photochop I seen in awhile. You’ve been sitting on it, haven’t you?

Hutus vs. Khmer Rouge
Dachau guard vs. VC Mauist
Scarran vs. Riddick
Mothra vs. Godzilla oh, wait…

Clearly this crowd loves its mythical simulations of violence and each has his favorite.

Your Punjabi swordswoman would NEVVVERRR have a chance against my Night Ranger Special Forces Black Ops Invisible Agent of Pain! I’m insulted you’d even think the battle would even last for more than three seconds.

Best line from bitter ninja kid:

I was pretty disappointed but if a ninja saw a spartan in real life he’d just run away, come back and kill him in his sleep.

Nice, the Dwight Schrute approach.

Interesting that the Russian’s don’t make the cut as among the greatest warriors. If it wasn’t for the miserable weather they have over there, God’s knows how many times their country would have been run over by invaders.

Surprising, cause when you meet the modern Russian of today….well, they happen to scare little ’ole me. They all seem to be big, buff guys with gruff ’tudes, ones who seem as if they would tear your living head off your shoulders if you happened to cross them or, even, just accidentally spit in the wrong direction.

Maybe being Russian means that you get really pissed if someone spits the wrong way or etc., but invade their country and the average Russian doesn’t really give a shit and just goes home and gets drunk. Maybe it’s cause they already know, from past experience, that the invaders will freeze to death anyway? Why go to the trouble and all the work of killing someone, when you know they are all going to freeze to death anyway? Yea, maybe that’s it? Philosophically speaking, then one could say that really cold weather is the greatest and the baddest ass warrior ever seen on the planet. I’m sure Napoleon’s men would have no disagreement with this assessment.

Long as you don’t hit any of that prime Irish wivestock in the background, Scip.

I’m not buying into any tv show that doesn’t feature John Wayne against Quanah Parker. Everybody else is just a girly man.

Margaret Thatcher would beat Benazir Bhutto to a bloody pulp.

Rosie O’Donnel vs Catherine the Great, both mounted.

The show is obviously sexist. How could they have left out the ancient Amazon queens – you know, the ones who kicked Hercules in the junk.

Given the Spike’s demographic base (young, hungry, desperate, sexually deprived adolescent men), I am surprised the producers of this comedy of errors also made this most bone headed of errors. Imagine how much the ratings would spike (as well as the pants of countless adolescent, young, pea-shooters) if they creatively reenacted an Amazon queen, updated with a modernized set of jugs, trying to valiantly fend off a frontal attack from a hoplite spearman. Or how about a secret ninja intrusion from the rear. Yup, they really missed an opportunity here.

Just watched Apache vs Gladiator and have a whole new respect for the american indian warrior. The show left out the Gladiator’s greatest weapon – Disease.

The Apache scared the shit out of me though. Snake Blocker is a bad motherfo.

Crip vs. Battlebot

Strip Mall Black Belt vs. Hick on Meth

Small Town Sherriff vs. Gold’s Gym Roid Head

How about Dusty Dvoracek with a baseball bat against Justin Chaisson with a screwdriver?

How about Justin Chaisson with a screwdriver in the library?

i would like to see the police vs gangsters good fight but might cause a uprising

Borg v. Dominion

who would win a Spartan or a Viking ?

who would win spartan or viking

“Strip Mall Black Belt vs. Hick on Meth”

That’s funny shit

Whoever wrote this is an idiot. Tommy O’Shaugnessy from the Shankill Road? What are you an idiot, the Shankill Road is the most loyalist road in all of Belfast. You obviously know nothing about northern Ireland you stupid kid.

Sean says it all, you know fuck all about the Irish troubles and what the IRA could do, and what was done to us, so shut the fuck up, of course the show is stupid.

Are you a North American?
An IRA volunteer is highly unlikely to come from the ‘Shankill’ area of Balfast., it being a loyalist stronghold, try the Falls rd and the republican estates of west Belfst.

oh, i like japan girls,they arehot.
i like your think

the greatest warriors of the earth in any combat : Nairs of north malabar.

The most ancient and powerful of all warriors in any art is a Nair from the house called as TAJ MAHAL. or “Taji” in north Malabar town of Cannanore (kannur).

why?
The only reason for their existence is REVENGE. One warrior is enough for the whole earth. Their wars are fought in all areas in existence, they come across lifetimes to seek and complete revenge. If the world has many problems , see if some one pissed off such a warrior and pray hard that he is kind.
Their preparation for war is constant , and they need a reason that is good enough, every one on earth praying when the greatest warrior of them all wakes up. This house is where KARNA the greatest warrior on earth was born.

Russians make the finest warriors in all of Europe. you forgot who defeated the Nazis , 27 million lives were lost. Hence do not talk through your hat. You have ever heard of a man called MARSHALL ZHUKOV ? he used 30% of all the ammunition used in the entire war and destroyed the German army that invaded. Do you know how demoralised the GERMAN ARMY was after that, they never recovered.
Ever seen a pic of the COSSACK? he is a Giant among warriors do you know what is an ATMAN? your comments are silly.