My money is on conditioning.
Hm I have a really hrd time with questions like “whats more importan than…”. On one hand skill can allow you to end a fight quickly. Most real fights don’t last very long due to cops or everyday citizens who break it up. At the ame time in the even t you’re fighting one of those rare long battles conditioning could save your life. But does high conditioning matter when you have low skill? And Vice BVersa. I think they’re both equally important, maybe skill has a slight edge.
Personally I see conditioning as a skill, but i see where you’re coming from.
hard to seperate the two. I lean towards conditioning, just because it will allow you to take a lot damage, but then again, witout the skill to put a guy away, conditioning may just mean you take a longer beating.
“You guys have obviously never done any real fighting if you are mocking spitting”
Spinning Backfist
You always need both. I cant choose one…
But if you choose conditioning remember there are weapons on real fights too. Conditioning wont save you from a knife to your throat, for example.
You brake my elbow i put your face in s.hit! HA HA HA, how about that, HA HA!
Here’s how i see it…
Lets think of these attributes(which they are) like video game attributes…
We’ll just use these two, if you have
Skill-0%
Conditioning-100% (of how much genetics will allow)
You’ll be conditioned to the max your genetics will allow without the help of drugs(for healths sake)…your body will last what will seem like forever, you will be extremly difficult to harm, and you will naturally be able to move quicker because of your shape(i know people like this, but they still dont have the technique)…and you will be stronger, so your hits will still hurt hard…and the average person knows some fighting techniques, and the more you are conditioned, the more confident, so you would be a confident fighter…able to cause harm…
and if your…
Skill-100% (as your brain and muscle coordination will allow)
Conditioning-0%
If you have 100% skill, your body will be able to move naturally faster than usual because your muscles would had practice the movements in order to gain 100% skill…and if you have skill, u must have knowledge on how to hit people, and where, therefore causing the most amount of pain possible, with miminum force…also able to harm greatly
So you see, Conditioning and Skill are both Xtremly important, and equally important, The better you excel in the two, the better you will be…
Xcept, me personally, i think Skill has a slight edge…because it has another Xtremly important aspect…which is knowledge, and knowledge is power…which i think is bonus power as opposed to someone who does not have knowledge…the mental aspect of fighting gives an EXTRA edge besides the rest, so i beleive it has a slight edge of importance…
Sorry if this doesn’t make sense, i dont knwo if i explained it right, but i hope u understand they are both Xtremly important almost equally
“True victory is giving all of yourself without regret”-Ryu
“Your best move is the move you regret not doing”-Fei Long
“Are you prepared to fight today? Someone else is as we speak”-Apprentice
Neither. It’s heart.
K. Mark Hoover
well obviously its conditioning, but what you deem as conditioning is different to what i see as conditioning.
This is because THC is not an alkaloid. It does not contain a nitrogen atom, therefore it is a terpenophenolic compound
however on another note heart is more important , yi dan er li san gogn fu 
This is because THC is not an alkaloid. It does not contain a nitrogen atom, therefore it is a terpenophenolic compound
This is a good question.
Here we go!
Conditioning won´t help you when you receive blows to your vital/vulnerable areas,it´s game over.
You don´t have to have lots of power to damage opponent´s vital areas so I would say that the skill is million times more important.
Of all the answers so far, I think I like Budokan’s the best; but I only mostly agree with him.
In order to get in proper condition, it takes an incredible amount of heart. It takes day in and day out challenging of your body, over time, to get in peak shape. That takes a great deal of mental toughness.
However, I can have all the heart in the world, but if the body won’t go it won’t go. Plus, being fatigued, in the words of Vince Lombardi, makes cowards of us all… and that might be the truest saying ever uttered.
Skill, on the other hand, can be developed over time, with relatively little impact to your body. You can be highly skilled, but if you’ve never pushed your body beyond, say, a two minute round of sparring or a couple of two minute rounds, then it seems possible to me that you haven’t developed that mental toughness aspect.
Every person has a rudimentary knowledge of fighting. It may not be pretty; it may not be skilled, but all of us can try to evade a kick or block a punch or tackle our opponent. In a fight, I believe the more conditioned person has a better chance of controlling and surviving the adrenaline dump simply because their body is used to the stress. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a person who is in bad shape only be able to last 45 seconds to a minute and a half because they gas out. In a fight, that can get you killed. So can lack of skill… but becoming slower and slower and more winded is FAR more dangerous, to my mind, than a lack of skill.
I know adrenaline MIGHT keep them moving, but adrenaline can drain you too, depending on how your body responds to it.
I know this is all a big what if… it’s purely hypothetical, but I think discussions like this are useful for exploring what we do and why we do it. I certainly don’t mean it out of malice or wanting to **** folks off.
Wongsifu, what do you mean by conditioning?
Shinwa, of course you need both, and they certainly shouldn’t be seperate, and I too, have difficulty with “what’s more important.” Neither is more important, but if you had to choose one… if it were either or, what do you consider would be your choice?
Castlevania-define vital areas. Every martial artist I’ve ever met defines them differently 
Between the 2…
..its obvious that its skill.
If a sword is as sharp as a razor and can never be broken its useless with out sthe skill to use it. Yang cheng-fu used to use the sick end of a duster to defeat his top students who used real swords. Skill is necessary in a fight I suppose not conditioning.
Repulsive;
It’s not so obvious that it’s skill. Many people were more technically skilled as boxers than Rocky Marciano, but the guy’s work ethic was phenomenal, and he beat them. The fact that he punched like a freight train didn’t hurt But still, from a “boxing,” perspective, he was more of a swarmer and brawler, rather than, say, sugar ray robinson, who could BOX.
you see in a sense its weird to say skill or conditioning because in kung fu your skill may be your conditioning, for example , take marciano as you put it , he wasnt skillful but he could hit like a mule and was conditioned , whereas people who were more skilled in boxing than him still lost because they lacked conditioning.
However in kung fu we would just say his skill is that of delivering hard blows at the right time.
its like we would say that a muay thai fighter has good conditioning of the shins, or we would say he is skilled (jueji or kung ) at hard shin attacks.
so skill in a way is inseperable from conditioning , unless you just mean conditioning as in running and cardio in which case , i believe that conditioning isnt as important as skill because a skillfull fighter would knock you out before 3 rounds are up-…,
i see it better to say is it more important to be strong or fast, have good hands or good legs , have good cardio or knock out power.
This is because THC is not an alkaloid. It does not contain a nitrogen atom, therefore it is a terpenophenolic compound
“However in kung fu we would just say his skill is that of delivering hard blows at the right time”
excelleny point, wongsifu!
“You guys have obviously never done any real fighting if you are mocking spitting”
Spinning Backfist
Wongsifu,
I certainly see your point, but I am not sure I agree with it. I think Marciano was a poor example. A boxing match is not a fight, and to say his opponents lost because of conditioning isn’t exactly right… some of his opponents lost because he battered their forearms so badly they could not hold their arms up anymore and got KO’ed. Not really a conditioning failure, and certainly not something you would see in a fight.
When I say conditioning, I am not referring to just one system of the body, I’m referring to them all.
Take a good, not great college linebacker at a good, not great, Division II school. This guy has some size, strength and speed… good physical tools, and is used to handling the adrenaline surge that comes with stressful situations.
So now he’s up against a theoretical human who is around the same weight, nothing really resembling a paunch, and pretty skilled due to years of accumulated training, but who’s conditioning is, perhaps, barely average. He can make it through a couple of 3 minute rounds of friendly, all-out, sparring (ie, you’re not trying to KILL each other, but you are pushing yourself), with a minute or so rest between, a couple or three times a week; but when he’s done it tires him out enough that a good night’s sleep is needed.
I’m not calling the win here, but I think our linebacker has the potential give our Martial Artist some serious opposition.
If we want to take it to extremes, we could discuss somebody like Juoko Ahola (2 time world’s strongest man) and similar sized, not too pudgy, extremely skilled human with a level of body system conditioning similar to the one I described above.
I think Juoko could scare somebody a bit there too.
If you practice karate, conditioning. If you practice Aikido, skill.
Jujutsu, Ninpo, Chugoku Kenpo
merryp you know what you are saying makes total snse , its actually what most chinese modern wushu guys claim as their advantage.
They are rigourously trained their stamina is phenomenal their flexibility is trememndous and their speed is blinding, but they lack real power.
however they are good in the ring because they have all the prerequisites needed apart from the actual power , this is as i see it what gives the advantage to a san shou player over a kickboxer the fact that in china modern wushu dancing and forms go hand in hand many times with san shou. I look at my teacher and if he didnt do th ewushu he wouldnt have that edge.
This is because THC is not an alkaloid. It does not contain a nitrogen atom, therefore it is a terpenophenolic compound
You won’t reach the conditioning level necessary or the skill level if you don’t have the heart to slug it out and train every day, over and over and over.
Conditioning and skill stem from the heart of the MA, unless he’s a prodigy. And even then he will still have to have the wherewithal to learn and train in the techniques inherent in his skill.
Heart comes first; everything else follows, IMO.
K. Mark Hoover
yeah budokan we agree with you youve said that 2 tiems already 
now time to move on to the next part of the question but what do you think is more important skill or conditioning. (notice i dont say heart in that sentence)
just kidding with you
This is because THC is not an alkaloid. It does not contain a nitrogen atom, therefore it is a terpenophenolic compound
Budokan makes a good point, excellent thread
“You guys have obviously never done any real fighting if you are mocking spitting”
Spinning Backfist