My 10 year old son goes to a mixed martial arts school. He was recently awarded his yellow belt and just prior to that, won his first tournament (kickboxing) against kids who had a lot more experience than him. We were shocked and proud and he just loves going to class.
He is learning grappling and really likes it, he's fast and has good instincts. At his last class, during a grappling session, he ended up being paired with a student that was much older, much taller, and much heavier than he was. She also had a couple of belt levels on him. The class was small and he didn't have any other partner options so the instructor had to go with it. The other student was at least 4 years older than him, a foot taller and probably had 60 pounds on him. It wasn't quite Keith Hackney Vs. Emmanuel Yarbrough, but the size difference was massive.
Unsurprisingly, she manhandled him! He tried for a single, he tried for a double, and she just basically shrugged him off, picked him up, shoved and squashed him around like it was nothing. He could move around her pretty well, but once she got ahold of him, that was it. Even when the instructor gave him the opportunity of a dominant position, he had no hope, she just pushed/pulled him off. He had a great time trying to figure out that puzzle, but thankfully the instructor switched up the students quickly.
As info, I have little knowledge of MMA beside being a sometimes fan of the UFC. I know there are weight classes in MMA for a reason, but my sons training session got me thinking about size and skill. It struck me that it would be a real bad day for someone with skill to have to deal with an unskilled person that had 80 or even 100 pounds on them. An even worse day if that person had some rudimentary MMA knowledge..... and an almost impossible day if that person was skilled.
Am I wrong in my above line of thinking? At some point does size help to make up for skill? Also, how do you guys recommend one deal with the unfriendly giants among us?