Most MMA fighters use a basis of Muay Thai, kick boxing and grappling. For the latter it is usually a combination of Jiu Jutsu, Judo and wrestling.
In my perspective, the most effective stand up fighters are Muay Thai fighters out of any sport fighting out there, nothing that kick boxing or anything else offers is more effective than it technique wise, not training wise, as it has a good combination of conditioning training, endurance/stamina building and sparring to gain experience.
The whole point of my replies here is that, a ring, even one with little to no rules, is a very controlled environment. You vs them in a fair one on one environment with no hidden factors to take into account.
Street fighting is rarely like that, and a random drunk man with a knife can easily kill even the most experienced MMA champions, especially with a surprise factor.
Anyone can headbutt, bite, eye poke, groin strike, what have you, and yes, being athletically trained makes you better at it than not, but all of that goes out of the window the moment someone pulls out something with a pointy end. You should assume, for your own safety, that anyone who would fight you has something to level the playing field on them, especially if you clearly have the advantage in terms of gabs to hand combat. If someone is still willing to fight you after noticing that, either they are crazy, on drugs, or they have something that gives them confidence they can deal with you.
In most cases, if it ever comes to that in a street fight, you are already lucky, because anyone with a knife would pull it out at the first opportunity to ambush you and have the first strike, if they are determined to attack.
You speak like someone who certainly never has been in serious fights, or had their life threatened, as these arguments are always the same. Reality is not so kind.
I don't disagree with this, but this is not the point you were making. Here's what you wrote:
"Regarding wrestling vs other forms of standup martial arts, I will say this much:
Pit any Muay Thai fighter with a decade of experience against any professional wrestler with a decade of experience in BJJ, Judo and Grappling, and 9/10 times at minimum the wrestler will be one sidedly destroyed without even touching the stand up fighter.
In MMA almost all the most effective takedown defenses from the Muay Thai system are banned, in general in sport fighting almost all the most effective techniques are banned, because they are very lethal and in earlier times with less rules frequently resulted in broken necks and other severe injuries.
Since these athletes are fighting for sports, not for life or death, such extreme techniques are to the detriment of athletes, therefore sports fighting is not a good measure of how well you can use it to defend yourself.
Another thing to think about is the floor.
Outside, the floor is anything between asphalt or concrete to grass. All are harder than an MMA mat that is designed to dampen blows and prevent injuries from being thrown on the ground.
There is also the cage itself, which you can lean into and can be used as part of an effective defense, or the ropes in a Muay Thai or boxing ring. Which does not translate to being pinned against a hard stone wall in an alley.
Unfortunately not much that you learn as a sports fighter translates to reality.
What does translate is the athleticism you build, the toughness and perseverance, and the skill that surpasses an untrained person so you know at least a little what you are doing rather than not, and are athletic enough to escape a bad situation, be it though overpowering someone or through running out of there."
Your opened by talking about grappling vs striking, made the claim that a striking specialist will destroy a grappling specialist in a fight (pretty clearly untrue, grapplers are universally considered a stylistically bad matchup for strikers in MMA, and there have been extremely one dimensional grapplers that have performed well in MMA, Ben Askren being the most obvious example. The same cannot be said for strikers), and justified this highly questionable statement by claiming that "the most effective takedown defense techniques from Muay Thai are banned in MMA", which is blatantly and verifiably false, and a claim you conveniently didn't address in your reply. You then "explained" why these techniques are "banned" by saying that they're "too dangerous" for MMA (classic bullshido claim), and from there segway'd into talking about how combat sports don't carry over well to street altercations, the examples you gave being your made up bullshido techniques, the ground, and the lack of a cage. Both of these points, as I addressed in my previous post are very minor, borderline irrelevant differences between combat sports and street altercations. You said nothing about weapons, nothing about surprise attacks, or multiple attackers, or anything of the sort. You're post was
very clearly intended to justify your dogmatic belief in Muay Thai being the most effective martial art, even when compared to MMA.
My comment on martial arts itself is from the perspective of what will make you the most effective stand up fighter you can be, which Muay Thai would teach you best out of all the sports. MMA can be effective, but it by itself is not a complete combat art and in your lessons you will not learn anything more useful than you would learn in Muay Thai, and your training would be spread out over many different disciplines, turning you into a jack of different trades rather than a master of one.
Having mediocre stand up knowledge and mediocre grappling knowledge is not going to help you against an experienced stand up fighter. Many ways to defend yourself against a takedown or a clinch, especially in an environment where the terrain can be used to your advantage, and without limits. Take some supplementary classes in Judo, Wrestling and Jiu Jutsu to learn how to defend against these takedowns better, together with Muay Thai and you will be fine in any physical combat scenario where no weapons are involved and you are not out numbered more than 3 to 1, you will be able to hold you own and escape.
Anything besides that, you are at the mercy of your opponents either way, or you had better be armed with something that levels the field, a bigger knife than your opponents, or a gun if this is legal, or simply avoid getting into dangerous fights in the first place by being aware of your surroundings and avoiding dangerous places or dangerous times to be out and staying out of trouble with people.
MMA is literally the definition of a complete combat art, and Muay Thai, along with Boxing, Kickboxing, Wrestling, Judo, BJJ and basically every other martial art are the definition of
incomplete martial arts. Quite frankly I'm honestly bewildered what you could possibly mean by "complete" in order to say that a striking only art is "complete" while a well established and pressure tested blend of striking and grappling arts is "incomplete". If you think stand-up is the most important thing for self-defense (debatable but that's another topic),
you can prioritize stand-up in your MMA training. The MMA striking lessons you learn will absolutely, indisputably be more useful than Muay Thai, not because of any techniques above and beyond what Muay Thai has to offer, but because
half of the shit in Muay Thai doesn't apply to MMA. This goes for every other incomplete martial art as well (standalone grappling arts included), these arts are built around highly restrictive rulesets that ignore literally half of what fighting is, and as a result much of the "most effective" techniques from these arts (which is what you will be learning), is inapplicable once these incredibly restrictive rulesets are lifted. You reveal your complete lack of grappling knowledge when you say "take a few supplementary grappling classes to defend takedowns and you'll be good". No, actually, you won't. The classic back leg heavy, feet close together Muay Thai stance is literally invalidated by basic grappling, which is why you will literally never see this stance in high level MMA. Defending takedowns requires you to shift your weight quite far in front of you very rapidly, and often immediately after throwing a strike or performing some other kind of commital action (as this is when most takedowns will be shot), which requires a much wider stance, and requires your weight to rest relatively evenly between your legs, if not being front leg heavy. Take all the supplemental classes you want, a guy with a couple years MMA training will take you down 100 times out of 100 if you use that stance, it might as well be a flashing neon sign that says "choke me the fuck out please
". If you decide to train Muay Thai for a while, and later want your training to be applicable outside of a Muay Thai ruleset, have fun re-learning every single kick and punch you throw, along with your footwork, head movement and everything else from a completely different stance. Even things Muay Thai is known for, like it's clinchwork, is massively flawed in an MMA ruleset, because there is no reward for wrestling someone to the ground in Muay Thai. Muay Thai does have sweeps, because sweeps hurt and will cause some minor tissue damage and doesn't require a lot of energy, but if you burn a bunch of energy getting your opponent to the ground in Muay Thai you will look like a retard when the ref stands your opponent up immediately afterward (if you even could wrestle them to ground seeing as Muay Thai typically uses boxing gloves). In MMA however, if I'm a competent grappler, and you're Mr. Muay Thai, and I clinch with you and wrestle you to the ground, the fight is now over.
Sophistry aside, I completely understand that real life violence is quite different from cagefighting, but this is even more true for arts like Muay Thai. Sure, you can potentially use terrain to stop a takedown. Who do you think is going to be better at doing that? The guy who trains grappling in a minimal rules fighting environment, or the guy who spends most of his time training a striking only art and occasionally trains grappling in a grappling only setting (I.E. with the literal opposite stance as compared to Muay Thai), with no understanding of how striking and grappling links together, and no practice defending takedowns in a sparring match? Sure, weapons are very dangerous, regardless of how trained you are, and if you're really interested in weapon stuff there's (real) self-defense courses that cover things like that. Spoiler alert, the way to deal with weapons (other than running away) is to control the weapon, i.e. grappling. Who do you think is going to be better at that? The guy who trains grappling in a minimal rules fighting environment, or the guy who spends most of his time training a striking only art and occasionally trains grappling in a grappling only setting (I.E. with the literal opposite stance as compared to Muay Thai), with no understanding of how striking and grappling links together, and no practice defending or throwing takedowns in a sparring match?
Anyway, you get the point. I understand that MMA fights are a subsection of fighting, and being good in a cage doesn't mean you are some super-soldier that can fight off any attacker(s). That being said, Muay Thai is a
much, much smaller subsection of fighting, and training mostly Muay Thai will leave you significantly less prepared for hand to hand combat, or hand to weapon combat, than MMA will. The choice is between
THE ONLY complete hand to hand combat system, Mixed Martial Arts, which will give you the best and most translatable hand-to-hand combat base possible, or an art that teaches you half of hand-to-hand combat while completely ignoring the other half and leaving you with massive, blatantly exploitable holes and bad habits that will get you obliterated by a halfway competent MMA amateur.
![Voice of Enki [TG]](/data/avatars/m/0/84.jpg?1705131368){kind=avatar}
⚔Thank you! For sharing this.. this is like a combination" of All thre, Boxing, Karate, and Kung fu.![The Alchemist7 [TG]](/data/avatars/m/1/1057.jpg?1704756197){kind=avatar}
