6 Supposed Action Heroes You Could Probably Take In A Fight

Some fictional badasses come with a certain level of credibility. Watching a dead eyed Sylvester Stallone machine gun an entire Vietnamese village to shreds, we had no trouble believing John Rambo could rip our throats out if the situation called for it.

Other times, however, you really get the feeling that 100 percent of a character's fighting ability is due to clever editing and a script that calls for his opponents to fall down at his touch. With that in mind, here are seven supposed badasses who we're pretty sure you could take in a fight:

Strengths:

Good handyman abilities; high tolerance for menial, mind-numbing work, creative costume designer; able to take a good beating.

Weaknesses:

Fairly limited formal instruction in martial arts, little to no musculature, fighting techniques consist of "special" moves of questionable usefulness.

How You Can Beat Him:

The Karate Kid is hardly an imposing specimen, and his fighting style consists mostly of looking scared while trying to remember the four actual moves he was taught. While he gets props for being able to take a punch--repeatedly and to many different areas of his body--such a fighting style is generally not conducive to winning a fight. We like your chances.

He relies heavily on some obscure technique that seems to require his opponent to rush blindly into it. So when you see him propped up on one leg, your obvious strategy would be to go low and kick his other leg out from under him. That should be followed by a righteous stomping from the top. This should provide a better chance of success than the Cobra Kai's favored tactic of running at him chin-first with their arms behind their back.

Further research (that is, watching the second film) should teach you not to make the opponent's mistake of falling for the same trick ... 50 times in a row.

Yes, while the old block-and-punch maneuver is mighty clever, we'd suggest changing the approach once you get hit by it once, and not allow yourself to be knocked unconscious by getting smacked with the same move for five straight minutes. We learned our lesson on that back in 5th grade.

Strengths:

Well trained; access to lots of firepower; Mr. T.

Weaknesses:

Poor marksmanship; internal bickering; lack of focus; wanted by the law.

How You Can Beat Them:

At first glance it would seem that you'd have no chance at this supposed crack commando squad. However, careful analysis shows the A-Team succeeded due to the incompetence of their opponents more than their own fighting abilities.

Assuming they're even able to bring the whole A-Team to the fight (meaning they were able to break Murdoch out of whatever mental hospital he is in and try and shoot B.A. Baracus with tranquilizer darts to get him onto the plane), their chances of success are still slim. Even with their military training and access to a seemingly unending supply of ammunition, the A-Team never successfully shot anyone during their career as mercenaries.

As you can see, the team seemed completely unfamiliar with the concept of aiming their rifles, just firing randomly in the direction of their enemies. Note that when we said they never successfully shot anyone, we're not counting the hundreds of bystanders they likely gunned down with their hail of stray bullets.

Now, if the TV series is any guide, you'll be tempted to lock the team away somewhere and patiently wait for them to cobble together a tank out of old plywood and scuba tanks. Instead of doing that, try just shooting them instead.

Strengths:

Good at pebble-snatching game; trained by badass Shao-Lin monks, dual citizenship.

Weaknesses:

Prefers not to fight; has no posse to back him up; fighting style is too rigid.

How You Can Beat Him:

Kung Fu could have been an amazing show about a legendary warrior, instead the creators ditched Bruce Lee and gave the part to David Carradine, in part, because he was quiet and could dance. So instead of Kwai Chang Caine being some uber nuclear-powered kicker of asses, we get a lame flute-playing, sleepy monk who Pepe Le Pews his way across the American West.

While we have to give it up for his Shao-Lin training, (because we saw a show where they let people kick them in their junk) we are less than impressed by his passivism and lack of killer instinct. Caine looks like he would rather be off smoking some skunk weed than anything else. If he weren't so laid back he would have probably found his brother a whole lot quicker on the show instead of wandering around for years.

That video vividly demonstrates the flaw in Caine's technique, particularly his method of stopping throwing stars by allowing them to impale themselves in his bare hand. And no, the video isn't in slow motion. That's the speed Caine actually moves.

You should be fine as long as you avoid his opponent's strategy, which seems to involve trying to confuse Caine by running past him and flinging himself into a pond.