Is MMA the Best Martial Art for Street Fighting?
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MMA is not just the fastest-rising sport in the world. It is perhaps, the most versatile fighting style, that is often seen as the best one when it comes to any type of fighting. Whether it’s a fight on the feet, in the clinch, or on the ground, MMA covers all the elements. This opens up a good question: Is MMA Good for Street Fighting?
Yes, MMA might be the best fighting style for street fighting. Even though it has some cons, it is the only art that will teach you how to mix various techniques to fight in all elements. Once in the street fight, you will know how to do damage and beat the attacker in any type of fighting scenario.
But, there is a lot more to MMA and street fighting. Keep reading this article to find out many other reasons why MMA is good for street fighting.
The concept of MMA is close to ideal for street fighting
MMA is the only fighting style that covers most elements of fighting. This is because the concept of the art is on mixing various striking and grappling techniques together into one style of fighting. By doing so, it prepares you to fight in:
- Standup
- Clinch
- On the ground
But how fighters can achieve this? Well, MMA fighters must be versatile in many martial arts to cover all three elements. In most cases, each fighter excels in one fighting style like wrestling or Muay Thai which is their “MMA base.” The key to MMA training is to add more techniques from other arts on top of your base to become all-rounded. Here are the four main arts in which every fighter has to be good, or at least have basic skills:
- Muay Thai (standup, clinch)
- Boxing (standup)
- Wrestling (clinch, grappling)
- BJJ (ground fighting)
As we can see, MMA teaches you how to wrestle, strike or apply chokes or joint locks on the ground. This is why its concept is close to ideal for chaotic street fighting that is often all over the place, just as fights inside the cage. Not many martial art out there is more versatile than MMA and that’s what matters when it comes to self-defense.
MMA includes a strong competition
MMA is a very popular sport mainly known for its biggest promotion called the UFC. In some way, we can say that it puts more emphasis on competition than on self-defense. But how does this makes MMA great for street fighting then, you may ask?
First of all, strong competition is what allows every martial art to evolve and become better. It allows it to evolve through time as coaches and fighters will always find new ways to win fights or to improve the techniques they are using. And to prepare for matches, they need to spar a lot, but more about that later.
You see, most fighting styles that are bad for street fighting do not include any type of competition. If you want to learn self-defense, then the lack of competition should be the first alarm that you are in the wrong gym. Have you ever wondered why?
One of the main reasons is that these fighting styles teach techniques that don’t work in real life at all. They all look great in a gym against a person who doesn’t put on any resistance. But these techniques are useless in a fight with a person who really wants to hurt you.
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MMA is different as it will teach you only the best techniques that you can apply in real life as well. You won’t spend any second learning things you can’t apply in street fighting.
Training includes a lot of sparring
MMA puts a lot of emphasis on sparring which is very good when it comes to street fighting or self-defense. Sparring with the partner who is there to hurt you is the only way you can prepare for real life scenarios. And by this, we mean both mentally and physically.
Sparring is the only way you can get an insight into how it feels like to be in a real fight. Even though you know the partner won’t kill you or hurt you, it still plays with your senses and emotions. It will give you that same rush of adrenalin and fear like street fighting. But over time, you will learn how to control these emotions and keep your mind calm in the heat of the moment.
Once in a street fight, your mind wouldn’t even think about what it should do. It will recognize the patterns from sparring and you will throw strikes or grapple without even thinking about it. This is because your mind already knows what to do. Hard sparring is really one of those things that separate good martial arts from bad ones.
Also, MMA training is very intense as you have to train in multiple arts during a single week. One day, you will learn ground fighting by sparring in the BJJ class, while the other day you will put on gloves for a session in boxing. Then once a week, you will combine grappling and striking in an MMA sparring session.
This way of training makes every person feel confident and calm in a street fight.
Why MMA is bad for street fighting?
Even though MMA is close to ideal when it comes to street fighting, it still isn’t ideal. In fact, it has a couple of cons within the structure of training, notably when it comes to dirty moves. Here are the drawbacks of MMA you should be aware of.
As said earlier, MMA is a very popular sport that doesn’t put much emphasis on self-defense. Yes, it is versatile enough to prepare you for any type of fighting, but it lacks a couple of important self-defense elements. For instance, MMA won’t teach you how to use dirty tactics like groin strikes or eye-gouging.
Training is there to prepare you to fight under the rules where dirty tactics are not allowed. When these dirty strikes land in a match, the referee is there to protect you by stopping the fight. They will give you time to recover and continue fighting when you are ready. But there are no rules or referees on the streets to keep you safe.
Due to the nature of the sport, dirty moves like eye pokes and groin strikes can land by accident. MMA fighters do not spend time training these strikes or how to defend against them. But even with the lack of dirty tactics, MMA is better for self-defense than most other arts.
Is MMA the best martial art for street fighting?
Many people see MMA as the best martial art for street fighting as it is very versatile and prepares you for all types of fighting scenarios. But still, this really depends on what type of fight we are talking about.
You see, MMA trains you how to fight standing, in the clinch, or on the ground. You learn how to use kicks and punches to do damage from distance, or elbows and knees in the clinch. The other option is to level change for a takedown and advance to the ground where you can use BJJ submissions.
But it won’t prepare you to fight against a person who has a weapon like a knife or a firearm. You would look and feel the same as an average person when facing an attacker who has a weapon in their hand. And, it won’t prepare you how to use or defend against dirty tactics like biting and eye-gouging. Some other martial arts are much better in this aspect like Karate.
Still, we would always choose MMA training over any other martial art when it comes to street fighting. If you want to learn more about the other martial arts that are good for street fighting, be sure to check our article below:
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