All jokes about the man’s weight and overall ineptitude aside… he’s 6′4″ and heavily built and he’s been a martial artist for decades. To any actual martial artist, trained in his craft and younger, fitter than him, Seagal does not stand a chance. Obviously. But when it comes to your average, garden-variety man worldwide? Seagal will be taller, heavier, stronger and better equipped than this average man. And he’d likely snap his neck.
Yes, he’s become the butt of many jokes for his behavior and for his insistence he could “beat anyone” — spoiler alert: he couldn’t, never could, never will. A Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali in their prime would have eaten him alive. Raw. Within seconds. He’d be on the floor in the blink of an eye, begging for mercy if his vocal cords still functioned.
He’s also a man who, aside from his bravado and his over-the-top persona, moved to Japan at twenty, mastered the language and managed to open his own dojo, which was rather impressive at the time given his age. He does have genuine skills, not in acting, admittedly, and not in terms of charisma or social intelligence, but he’s accomplished in his own way and even the fact that he HAS a movie career in the first place is impressive. I mean, the man very clearly cannot act. At all.
All that aside, he’s still a large and physically strong man. Just because he’s become fat, old and slow, and his hair is fake and he dyes his beard and he looks silly, does not mean he’s suddenly a tiny little sensitive flower. And just because he’s arrogant and thinks too highly of himself, doesn’t mean he suddenly lost the ability to fight. It doesn’t suddenly stop his hands from being huge, and his muscle memory from existing and his experience from having happened. It does not erase the very real skills he possesses. Nor did he shrink, or lose his long arms, his reach. He’s still an old silverback able to do real damage if provoked.
Is he world-class, as a martial artist? I doubt it. Certainly at this point, he’s a far-cry from world-class. But he’s a pretty big dude and the whole notion that he’s entirely useless is kind of laughable coming from folks on the internet, most of whom have never done even one tenth of the things this man has done. Gene Lebell choked him out and humiliated him. Jean-Claude Vandamme made him run away like a scared little boy. All fine and dandy, and it makes Seagal look awful.
But make no mistake and challenge the man to a fight, because in nine out of ten encounters, he’ll rip your head off even as the aging braggard hasbeen he is. Laugh about this man all you want but you would not want to find yourself on his bad side in a bar brawl even obese and at 68.
Picture Source Wikipedia
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