Nayto wrote:Nico's post is exactly why I added experience. There is a simple epistemological principle which says, "You can't know what you don't know you don't know." The thing about experience is that it largely comes down to how many full contact fights you've had. I've fought strong opponents, weak opponents, received knockouts, delivered a knockout and fought multiple opponents (2 - 3) at bars. Drilling technique on a mat is great, but actually applying what you have learned or getting beaten to hell adds a whole new dimension.
In those situations strength makes a massive difference. The funny thing about strength is that people who haven't trained strength don't understand what it does to you. Unless you are very heavy and or have too much fat, strength has no downside. There are no cons to strength; it's pure pros.
Muscle also creates armour around your body which means you can take way more punishment. Just try to build lean muscle with myofribril hypertrophy as opposed to bulk/water muscle with sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Although sometimes you need to bulk and then "fill" it with lean muscle. Whole other topic though, but the point is that weight and muscle do not necessarily mean strength.
Unless one is going to argue that strength is somehow detrimental to one's fighting ability, there is nothing to lose anyway. It can only benefit and coupled with leading a healthy, food law abiding lifestyle, it will only serve to make one feel good and be spiritually healthy as well.
1- I am not talking theory or simply about drilling, I have competed, and competition involves the other person going all the way to win, it's not just a friendly session of sparring on the mat with friends for the sake of improving skills and learning, it is all the way.
2- Strength is great, but if you take time away from technique and technical training to focus on strength, you're going to miss out. I know some guys who only train on the mats twice a week because they spend two or three days per week in the gym lifting weights, and they get tossed around and submitted by smaller guys who are training technique on the mats 6-12 times per week.
3- Bar fighting doesn't count for much. I would expect a boxer/kick-boxer with 2-3 years of training to hold his own in a bar fight, I would expect a BJJ blue belt or above to dominate in a bar fight, a person who wrestled in high school and college [8+ years of wrestling experience] to hold his own in a bar fight. A person with years of training in either boxing, wrestling, or BJJ, against some bulky/beefy drunk in a bar, it is like taking candy from a baby, at least it should be. The real measure is competition, either within the combat art, or in MMA.
Talk to Bocksar, he shares my view, he has done extensive boxing and minimal [but some] grappling.
I have done considerably more grappling than he has, but no boxing. We both believe that BJJ is the best one on one self defense system, and that grappling beats boxing. But, with that in mind, a boxer/wrestler is a very deadly combo and can often hold his own against a grappler or win against a grappler, but somebody who is simply a straight up stand-up boxer, with no take-down defense, no ground game, no foundation in wrestling, will almost always lose to a grappler.
Look at the first 5 UFC fights, they took champion boxers, who only knew boxing, and put them up against champion grapplers who only knew grappling, and with very few exceptions, all of the boxers lost and all of the grapplers won.
Gerard Gordeau, Dutch kick-boxer, he beat other boxers in the UFC, but he lost both of his matches against grapplers, even though he eye-gouged one [he was heel hooked]. He was unable to stop either grappler from taking the fight to the ground and submitting him.
A boxer without a take-down defense, against a competent grappler, is facing probably a 95% chance of being taken down and submitted on the ground. Now if you take that same boxer and he has 4-5 years of experience in wrestling, he can stuff take-down attempts, he can keep the fight standing, and he can do a lot better.
Most boxers do not get into clinches, while clinches are very common in MMA or street fights. In boxing if you clinch with your opponent the ref separates the two of you, but that won't happen in MMA or a street fight, there's no ref to separate people when they clinch. Boxers, unless they are Muay Thai, don't train to clinch fight.
Bocksar and I both agree, that the foundation for a self-defense system should be BJJ, perhaps combined with freestyle wrestling or Greco-Roman wrestling, followed by [pick one] traditional boxing, kick-boxing, or Muay Thai.
The old martial arts, Karate, Kung Fu, Taekwondo, most of those have been thoroughly discredited by MMA and various BJJ/grapplers challenges over the years. In Taekwondo there are perhaps two or three kicks that you might take away from the art that are potentially useful and could possibly be incorporated into a self-defense system, but for the most part the art is dependent on kicks and if somebody is closer than three feet, most TKD kicks are not going to work.
You cannot roundhouse somebody who is clinched with you, but if a few TKD kicks can still be nasty, if you can land them, you might break a rib on the other guy, but most of those kicks are so high that you could wind up off-balance and flat on your back as they come down on top of you or shoot in for a take-down after you miss your kick. TKD is one of those things where if you go for a head kick on a moving/advancing opponent you might have a 2% chance of landing it and knocking the other guy clean out, but if you miss or if you just daze him or cause him pain [without incapacitating him] he is going to take you down in the aftermath of the failed kick.
Renzo Gracie weighing in at 180 lbs, 5'11 tall vs the boxing champion James Warring who weighed in at 218 pounds and is 6'3 tall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXY5Srb5B6URenzo Gracie won by submission.
Warring's professional boxing record is fairly impressive, 18 wins and 4 losses.