This made me chuckle We don't have to wear them at our club. The baggy pants that is. Thankfully they do insist on pants, but just a standard karate gi.
What's the most important MA skills that you will need to protect yourself? It doesn't matter what MA system that you may train, you will need: 1. Against a striker - To protect your head from being punched. 2. Against a grappler - To control your opponent's shoulders (or arms) so his hands won't be able to reach to your waist or leg/legs. A good MA system should be able to help you in these 2 areas and also give you a safe "testing" environment. Many MA systems just don't emphasized enough in these 2 areas which make it not combat realistic. Sometime we like to discuss why a certain MA style doesn't emphasize such training.
That assumes that the level of fitness and skill outweighs the aggression, fitness, and experience in actual fights that many of the crayon munching marines have. For most martial artists, that doesn't even come close. For even a lot of people with good resistant training their experience is not tailored toward actual self defence in the real world, and still wouldn't have good odds. I've met many skilled fighters who would be wiped across the floor by nearly all of the infantry marines I've met, never mind the ones who actually cared about training outside their MOS.
Actually I've gotta say, most of the lads I used to box with who went off and joined, came back much tougher to spar with, because having as much or more skill as before alongside a 'You'll drop before me and that's it' attitude does bring a tougher opponent. Can't talk about fighting a squaddie in the streets, as I'm not one for scrapping.
There's an equation you can apply to any martial art to work out its "mock potential"... "What the people that do it claim they can do (C)" minus "what they can actually do (A)" = Mock Potential (MP) C - A = MP The lower the MP the better because it means your art can deliver what it says it can deliver. Claims match actual performance. Boxers generally claim very little but can motor. Low MP. The further from "0" you get means your art is full of hyperbole but delivers very little. Claim does not match performance. Aikidoka generally claim a lot about their skills but in hard sparring fall apart. High MP.