oh boy, personaly I think this whole thread was contrived to cause further flogging of a dead horse that i thought was buried a long time ago, hence my initial response, but seeing as how the pointless can of worms is being kicked around properly, I may as well chime in.
What JK is talking about is not 'MMA is all you need for SD', what he is talking about is real world techniques that can be trained in a real world fashion, and can be applied in a cage or in a car park. Anyone like to argue that being able to control stand up, clinch and ground is in no way necessary or integral to staying in one piece if attacked?
An art, or range of arts that make one comfortable in any range, or at least not leave you clueless in any range, is essential.
Outside of the physical nuts and bolts of a confrontation lie all the 'SD specific' skills- these are not gouging, and throat chops and eye popping, these are learning to read body language, understanding the triggers for de-escalation, being able to spot potential trouble and avoid it. That sort of stuff. Frankly there are plenty of behavioural psycholgists and anthropologists who could tell you more about this stuff than your average SD instructor. There are a hell of a lot of guys out there who have read a Geoff Thompson book and think they are teaching from authority with no personal experience whatsoever. Like any TMA, RSBD is only as good as the instructor.
Back to the nuts and bolts. Now, if you are cuaght by suprise by an unprovoked attack- a suckerpunch or similar, then your first most vital instinctive response should be to guard effectively and sustain minimal further damage. Boxing will teach you that (not to mention how to take a punch). OK, you have covered up and the guy is on you like smell on a fart. Now, this is a punch up, in a bar- its not Bruce Lee vs Chuck Norris in a colliseum. Do you really want to kill this guy? are you going to seriously try and take out his windpipe, blind him for life, or break his kneck? Or do you think that knocking him sparko might be a more sensible plan legally, moraly and realisticaly?
oh, ok, all bets are off and you want to kill him. Fair enough. how are you going to get into range, control him, and set him up for the deadly kill? How about a few punches?, clinch maybe?, I know, how about a sweep to the ground. Sounds like you need your 'cage skillz' after all.
If you really want to kill someone in a bar, then bottle them in the face then stamp on their head- its Brit-fu and requires no training whatsoever. If you want to keep yourself in one piece when attacked, then forget the pointy finger of doom and the kirk-karate chop, cover up and then smack em hard in the face, or tie them up and wait for the bouncers to eject you both, then run away.
The multiple attacker situation is becoming more common, but, certainly in Britain, one on one drunken violence is as much a part of our weekend culture as it ever was, the only other person that seems universaly present is the screeching girlfriend
In my time, the best doorstaff I ever worked with came from Judo and boxing backgrounds. Their training didnt have to be 'reality based' because they integrated their skillsets in the reality they lived.
Give me a choice between teh dedly throwt strike and a left hook, and i will use the left hook on two grounds of thought- 1. I know that my left hook will work, and 2. If you throw the throat strike wrong, you are fu*ked, but then, if you throw it right, you have killed the guy, and your still fu*ked.