[mightybyte]

> The present ascendency of Muay Thai and BJJ (Brazilian school of ji-jitsu) is a direct product of this sorting of martial arts effectiveness against competing disciplines. Karate and Kung-Fu's substantial drop are also related, as they are essentially unused in modern MMA.

It's important to keep in mind that many of the most effective self defense techniques are illegal in organized fighting competitions. These include eye gouging, throat strikes, biting, joint breaks, stomps, kidney shots, downward elbows, etc. IMO this seriously limits the ability of these competitions to predict how various styles will fare in real life or death self defense situations.

[jblow]

There's another factor: MMA fights are one-on-one in a controlled environment. If you get into a fight in a bar and take your opponent to the ground, his friend is going to kick you in the head and now you have a concussion. MMA fights and the styles that succeed most frequently in MMA are based around this kind of maneuver, and it works because you know you are fighting one dude and nobody else is going to bother you.

[St-Clock]

And:

1. The floor is likely slippery.

2. It's dark

3. Glass mugs/Bottles can be broken and used as a weapon

4. There are hard table corners (watch out if you fall!)

5. There are chairs in the way (or maybe they can help you if you like to wield chairs!!)

A football team once picked a fight in a bar with a kung fu school. One of the best Kung Fu student slipped on the floor and his 15 years of kung fu went out of the window very very very quickly :-)

[dragonwriter]

> It's important to keep in mind that many of the most effective self defense techniques are illegal in organized fighting competitions.

Its also important to keep in mind that, while historically most martial arts (including those in which sport competitions involving the unarmed subset have been popular) include training in weapons (in some cases ones which, while purpose built, are intentionally stand-ins for things which might commonly be used as improvised weapons), MMA competitions -- like most full force combat sport competitions, and for good reason -- completely exclude the use of weapons. Both the fact that you won't have or be improvising a weapon and the fact that you don't have to deal with your opponent having or improvising a weapon is a significant difference from conditions in many real-world fights.

And also that MMA competitions take place on a mat enclosed by a cage, an environment which does not simulate the environmental conditions of many real-world fights particularly closely.

MMA competitions are perhaps good at showing which unarmed techniques are optimum for the conditions and rules under which they are held; generalizing from them to which are most useful for real-world fights is, well, pretty much the same error as generalizing from any combat sport to the real world.

[hinkley]

Add in some sort of romance about how martial arts means you don't have to hurt someone to defend your own life.

People get very uncomfortable if you tell them that in a life and death situation where the attacker is in close and it's too late to run, that you're going straight for the windpipe or a knee. Dude is trying to kill me. I'm not fucking around. How much footage do you have to see of knife attacks before you figure out that if they can walk and breathe nothing else you do is going to dissuade them?

[JulianMorrison]

They are optimized for a situation that simply doesn't occur in the modern world: rivals duelling to the death with martial arts.

[aqme28]

> It's important to keep in mind that many of the most effective self defense techniques are illegal in organized fighting competitions

How are you determining what is "most effective"? Keep in mind that if a hypothesis can't be tested, it's pseudoscience.

[S_Daedalus]

I used to think that too, but to be honest, how many good MMA fighters leave those kind of openings?

[joesmo]

Every single one that goes to the ground, so pretty much all of them. If you want to simulate real life, going to the ground is an immediate loss as the guy's buddy will hit you over the head and kill you. So not only do MMA fighters leave openings my grandma could exploit (with a baseball bat from behind), they do so intentionally! I respect the sport, but it is certainly nothing at all like real world fighting.

[mightybyte]

I would say very often. For an example, let's look at the throat strike. Any time you could plausibly punch someone in the face, it could instead be a throat strike. It takes much less force to end a confrontation with a strike to the throat than it does to the face. This seriously changes the dynamics of the confrontation. This same reasoning also applies pretty well to eye gouges.

Now consider hits to the back of the head. If an MMA fighter exposes the back of his head to you, the quickest way to end it would be a palm strike to the base of the skull: lights out. But because that's illegal fighters will be a lot more likely to go for something like a rear naked choke, taking the fight to the ground and artificially inflating the value of grappling.

And that's just three of the many illegal moves.

[trhway]

> Any time you could plausibly punch someone in the face, it could instead be a throat strike.

not really. If you look at a good boxer during a fight, you'd not see any opening for a throat strike.

Boxing, being one of the most practically efficient techniques at the "upper floor", is perceived and frequently really is missing at the "ground floor" and this is where Muai Thai comes in - basically extending the boxing for hands with the boxing for legs, as out of the many footwork styles - taekwondo, karate, kung-fu - the Muai Thai's footwork is the most similar to the boxing ideology and style.

[S_Daedalus]

That's my impression too. Gouges and the rest can create opening, and they're an edge if you're evenly matched with someone, but in the same way that sharpshooting might. It's a skill, an interesting one, but how often does a fight with pistols come down to really precise aim, rather than hitting the head or center of mass?

I think it's similar in physical combat, although some elements like the dropped elbows and kicking a downed opponent would definitely end a match faster, you have to drop them first.

[gmarx]

Those moves were't illegal (except eye gouge I think) in the early days of UFC and I don't think they decided any fights.

Still, I agree with your point that UFC shows us the best mix of skills for that particular set of constraints, not necessarily for self defense in the outside world.

Also, in sports there is always the occasional surprise new technique that dominates for a while until others train to counter it. In the early days of MMA grappling alone could win, as long as you had a finishing move (which is why early on some of the huge greco roman wrestlers could dominate a match and still lose).

[caminante]

I don't view the unified MMA rules as demonstrative of a technique's effectiveness. The rules were crafted to preserve the longevity of fighter careers. These are trained fighters on an even playing field.

Pulling off eye gouging and throat strikes are low probability and expose a fighter. Bas Rutten has a bit on these techniques, their effectiveness, and how doing either leaves an opening.

[mightybyte]

> Pulling off eye gouging and throat strikes are low probability and expose a fighter.

A throat strike is no lower probability or more exposing than pulling off a punch to the face. It's just a couple inches away...

[caminante]

trhway's comment above is good reading.

To emphasize trhway's dose of reality, here's Bernard Hopkins explaining proper technique with the chin to avoid getting knocked out.[0] Throat punching is hard to pull off because proper defense doesn't allow for it.

[0] https://youtu.be/SHwPBTDDp00?t=3m49s