[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.