Nice thread.
It's always funny to me how quickly many people dismiss boxing as a martial art (usually on the internet). Over the years I've lost count of how many times I've read some keyboard jockey go on about how boxing is not effective compared to other martial arts because it doesn't use kicks, or elbows, or grappling, etc... They will usually then proceed to pimp some Asian martial art that's supposedly THE MOST DANGEROUS IN THE WORLD or some such nonsense. (Or lately, you see a lot of clowns talking about Krav Maga, which is little more than a bunch of
over-choreographed drills straight out of an action movie).
It's always painfully obvious that idiots like this have never even seen, much been in any type of real street fight. They get all their opinions on street fighting from the movies. The reality is that boxing is by far the most effective and versatile martial art for real-world fighting. Period. No other martial art gives you the combination of offense, defense and mobility that boxing does, and no other martial art allows a competent practitioner the ability to defeat multiple unarmed opponents the way boxing does.
Kickboxing and Muay Thai are close seconds, but boxing ultimately trumps them in my experience, because it's very rarely advantageous to take your feet off the ground during a street fight, since it's very easy to trip/slip on something and end up on the ground, which is the last place you want to be. Yeah, it's nice to have an arsenal of kicks and knees, but fast hands, good head movement and adroit footwork are much more important for walking away from a street fight.
Boxing for life.
