Best Martial Art For A Street Situation.

I disagree.

Boxing and Muay Thai, while great, both have a rules and a referee. Neither art prepares you for the type of aggressor you may face, the pre-fight interview and methods of de-escalation.

Self defence is a separate subject to be taught away from regular martial arts classes, or at least treated as a separate syllabus within the schools that do teach it.

Sparring can help, but it's generally accepted that sparring isn't necessary when it comes to learning self defence.

 

I would argue it's better to spend 75% learning how to de-escalate the fight and 25% training in reality based scenarios.

The problem with fighting is it is a case of who is the best?

Let's say that an aggressor approaches me and it looks like a fight is going to happen. As soon as I engage him it becomes a case of "who is the best fighter"?
Now as he's the thug and the street fighter it's probably going to be him, so straight away we can see that this may not be the most preferred option.

Simply by saying, "I'm sorry. my fault I didn't see you there", may be enough to avoid confrontation, even if you've done nothing wrong.

It sounds simple but if it isn't trained under pressure then it won't work in a real situation.

You need to understand when to yield (verbally), when to enter with a pre-emptive strike, how to empathise with an aggressor and so on.

Fighting arts don't teach these skills.

 

Your attitude will see you in more fights than me, so who is using effective self defence?

If you believe you're a "wuss" for apologising when it's not your fault, then you better be able to fight.
Not only that you better have a good handle of the law.

Bluff only works if you are confident in your abilities and if you've practiced it.

It's harder than you may think to take on the role of the aggressor. I've seen in in my own self defence lessons and in the reality based self defence lessons I've taken.

Too many people have the attitude that they'll "go up a couple of gears" if the situation calls for it. the truth however is that if you haven't trained through those gears they'll not be there when you need them.

To quote JWT and Archilocus, "we do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training".

That training includes the ability do de=escalate the situation and well as deal with it physically should we need to do so.

Fighting is not effective self defence.

 

Bear in mind that if you bluff aggressively and things still kick off, if you need witnesses afterwards to defend yourself against assault charges, they will have heard you getting aggressive and (presumably) threatening the other guy. It won't matter that he started it if you deliberately escalated the situation rather than taking the opportunity to walk away. If he claims pre-emptive self defence because of your own comments, you could end up being the one in legal trouble because your pride didn't let you act in a way that would stop the fight altogether.

Knowing about the pre-fight and the aftermath is just as important as the physical skill if you're learning self defence.

 

Depends what you mean by sparring

Mitch