Knockout King
Don Juan
Sorry for the delay (over a year I believe 
) but I just thought I'd go ahead and post this because a few more questions have arisin about this topic.
The first part went into a style overview, now I'm gonna go over the rest of what you need to know
:NOTE: Don't reply to this thread until you see the message "END OF THREAD":
Part 1
This is the part where you select your styles. Yes, I said styles, not style, you can't just train in one style and be a truly great martial artist. Anyway, the key here is to find the martial arts which cross train with the most compatibility. Cross training is the key to martial success and when you cross train the arts you must do so effeciently and make sure that you are filling all of the holes with one style that another leaves in your game
First, there are 3 fundamental styles that you have to know to be great
Boxing: Obvious, I won't even bother explaining this one.
Muay Thai: There's no argueing that Muay Thai is one of the most powerful and one of the most street practical martial arts out there, and when it goes to the ground Muay Thai adds a lot more to your ground n pound than any other style of striking.
Wrestling: Also should be obvious but many don't understand this. Look, fights go to the ground, period, and the better you are at wrestling, the better you can A) prevent it from going to the ground if you want to, B) take it to the ground if you want to, and C) Control the fight on the ground when it goes there.
By simply training hard in these 3 styles alone, you can become a very tough fighter and hold your own in a street fight, but many people have certain talents that they could use for additional cross training styles. For example, if you're tall and lean (not skinny), then you have the potential to throw out devastating strikes and you want to take advantage of it. If you're stout and husky then you have a lot of potential for overwhelming opponents with raw stregnth and knockout power. Etc.
Here, we'll go into the base styles that you might want to get into, to revolve the 3 basic styles around. NOTE: Any of the 3 basic styles can be very powerful base styles as well.
Fighting on your feet
All standup, punches, kicks, knees, bows, etc. K-1 is the ultimate competition for all stand up fighting, the best strikers in the world compete there. In K-1, currently, the most dominant styles are Kyokushin Karate and Muay Thai. (of course, the rules of K-1 somewhat favor the kyokushin fighter and impede the muay thai fighter, but any style that can hold it's own in competition as intense as K-1 is worthy in my book).
Western kickboxing has also seen a lot of success in K-1 and Seidokan Karate started K-1 and is still pretty successful today. San Shou is a style that you won't see much of in K-1, but if you train hard enough with it you can definitely be a match for K-1 calibur competition, as Cung Le was (check out his training videos if you're into chinese martial arts).
Chinese or Japanese Kenpo is another possible style to look into. Most of those type of schools here in america are a joke but a genuine kenpo school will teach you a lot about realistic fighting. Saviano's White Tiger Kenpo is an example, see if you can't find any instructionals from them.
Basically, any style of stand-up is compatible with the 3 basic styles and has the potential to transform you into a powerful fighter, as the more you train in the big 3, the more you will understand realistic fighting and be able to work your favorite martial art into your training. That is why I chose them as the big 3.
Grappling and Fighting on the Ground
Like I said before, fights go to the ground. If you think that with even 30 years or more of dedicated trainign you can stop any takedown with a pressure point strike or with a kick to the face, you need a serious wake up call. A takedown can, in theory, be stopped by such a move, but more often than not, if you're being taken down by a solid grappler, then grappling will have been initiated in some form or another be it going into a clinch or whatever. But it is an absolute necessity to know how to fight on the ground (I've already covered that in my first post)
Anyway, on the ground we already have wrestling taken care of, greco-roman wrestling is one of the best, if not the best style of wrestling, but what else is there?
Well, if you want to know the strongest styles of grappling, look for the competition where the world's best grapplers compete, ADCC. It's all submission fighting and it determines the best all around grapplers. In ADCC, the best grapplers historically have been Brazilian Jujitsu stylists, Japanese Submission fighters, and Greco-roman wrestlers. And if you look at MMA today, which is almost like a cross between K-1 and ADCC, 90% of the top name fighters are either bjjists or Wrestlers.
Bjj is a highly reccomended style to learn because it teaches great defense for when you're on your back and pretty good defense from getting there in the first place. Also, in a good bjj class, you'll learn a lot about defending yourself in street-wise situations. This is one thing that the general public does not know about brazilian jujitsu, that a lot of what you learn is devoted to actual street situations, not just competition. If you're going to choose a grappling style as your base, then Bjj is a damn good one.
Japanese submission fighting and Sambo are also pretty damn good. You can read up on both in Part 1 of this post that I made last year. They'll add entirely new elements to your training. Other styles you may look into are Judo, Japanese Jujitsu (be extremely cautious about Japanese Jujitsu and which style you choose), and Vale Tudo (which also teaches a LOT of striking).
Aikido and Shuai Chiao are both viable, but I wouldn't reccomend making them a base style.
Nothing can take the place of having a live instructor to train with, but unless you're being trained straight from a member of the chute boxe or brazilian top team, then videos will also be very beneficial. Here are the best videos based on my personal experience and reviews from heavy practicioners of the arts that I've heard.
Muay Thai: Duke Roufus is Numero Uno here as Far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen those of Vut Kamnark, but I've heard nothing but praise about his series. Rob Kaman is a former multiple time world muay thai champion and has a pretty hardcore video series as well. I haven't seen those from Jerome Lebanner, but he's a top level K-1 fighter and I've heard some good things about his series too.
Submissions and BJJ: Mario Sperry has a series for BJJ which is commonly acknowledged as the best BJJ series in the world. Frank Shamrock has a highly praised series of Submission fighting videos you may look into. There are some other good ones but those are the 2 best.
Wrestling: Randy Couture, that's all I have to say
Other: Bas Rutten has a video called "Bas Rutten's MMA Workout" that has gotten all kinds of praise. You might also check out Rutten's Big Books of Combat and his new set "Bas Rutten's lethal street fighting techniques." Peter Aerts is a 3 time champion of K-1 and has a video series on kickboxing, but it's quality is questionable. Andy Hug is a former K-1 Champion and Kyokushin Karate legend, he has a couple of videos, but they are also somewhat questionable and it was before Hug was in his prime. Vitor Belfort has some great videos and one of them has his legendary "Vitor Blitz" and how to perform it properly.
Those are all of the worthwhile training videos that I know of, good luck!
) but I just thought I'd go ahead and post this because a few more questions have arisin about this topic.The first part went into a style overview, now I'm gonna go over the rest of what you need to know
:NOTE: Don't reply to this thread until you see the message "END OF THREAD":
Part 1
This is the part where you select your styles. Yes, I said styles, not style, you can't just train in one style and be a truly great martial artist. Anyway, the key here is to find the martial arts which cross train with the most compatibility. Cross training is the key to martial success and when you cross train the arts you must do so effeciently and make sure that you are filling all of the holes with one style that another leaves in your game
First, there are 3 fundamental styles that you have to know to be great
Boxing: Obvious, I won't even bother explaining this one.
Muay Thai: There's no argueing that Muay Thai is one of the most powerful and one of the most street practical martial arts out there, and when it goes to the ground Muay Thai adds a lot more to your ground n pound than any other style of striking.
Wrestling: Also should be obvious but many don't understand this. Look, fights go to the ground, period, and the better you are at wrestling, the better you can A) prevent it from going to the ground if you want to, B) take it to the ground if you want to, and C) Control the fight on the ground when it goes there.
By simply training hard in these 3 styles alone, you can become a very tough fighter and hold your own in a street fight, but many people have certain talents that they could use for additional cross training styles. For example, if you're tall and lean (not skinny), then you have the potential to throw out devastating strikes and you want to take advantage of it. If you're stout and husky then you have a lot of potential for overwhelming opponents with raw stregnth and knockout power. Etc.
Here, we'll go into the base styles that you might want to get into, to revolve the 3 basic styles around. NOTE: Any of the 3 basic styles can be very powerful base styles as well.
Fighting on your feet
All standup, punches, kicks, knees, bows, etc. K-1 is the ultimate competition for all stand up fighting, the best strikers in the world compete there. In K-1, currently, the most dominant styles are Kyokushin Karate and Muay Thai. (of course, the rules of K-1 somewhat favor the kyokushin fighter and impede the muay thai fighter, but any style that can hold it's own in competition as intense as K-1 is worthy in my book).
Western kickboxing has also seen a lot of success in K-1 and Seidokan Karate started K-1 and is still pretty successful today. San Shou is a style that you won't see much of in K-1, but if you train hard enough with it you can definitely be a match for K-1 calibur competition, as Cung Le was (check out his training videos if you're into chinese martial arts).
Chinese or Japanese Kenpo is another possible style to look into. Most of those type of schools here in america are a joke but a genuine kenpo school will teach you a lot about realistic fighting. Saviano's White Tiger Kenpo is an example, see if you can't find any instructionals from them.
Basically, any style of stand-up is compatible with the 3 basic styles and has the potential to transform you into a powerful fighter, as the more you train in the big 3, the more you will understand realistic fighting and be able to work your favorite martial art into your training. That is why I chose them as the big 3.
Grappling and Fighting on the Ground
Like I said before, fights go to the ground. If you think that with even 30 years or more of dedicated trainign you can stop any takedown with a pressure point strike or with a kick to the face, you need a serious wake up call. A takedown can, in theory, be stopped by such a move, but more often than not, if you're being taken down by a solid grappler, then grappling will have been initiated in some form or another be it going into a clinch or whatever. But it is an absolute necessity to know how to fight on the ground (I've already covered that in my first post)
Anyway, on the ground we already have wrestling taken care of, greco-roman wrestling is one of the best, if not the best style of wrestling, but what else is there?
Well, if you want to know the strongest styles of grappling, look for the competition where the world's best grapplers compete, ADCC. It's all submission fighting and it determines the best all around grapplers. In ADCC, the best grapplers historically have been Brazilian Jujitsu stylists, Japanese Submission fighters, and Greco-roman wrestlers. And if you look at MMA today, which is almost like a cross between K-1 and ADCC, 90% of the top name fighters are either bjjists or Wrestlers.
Bjj is a highly reccomended style to learn because it teaches great defense for when you're on your back and pretty good defense from getting there in the first place. Also, in a good bjj class, you'll learn a lot about defending yourself in street-wise situations. This is one thing that the general public does not know about brazilian jujitsu, that a lot of what you learn is devoted to actual street situations, not just competition. If you're going to choose a grappling style as your base, then Bjj is a damn good one.
Japanese submission fighting and Sambo are also pretty damn good. You can read up on both in Part 1 of this post that I made last year. They'll add entirely new elements to your training. Other styles you may look into are Judo, Japanese Jujitsu (be extremely cautious about Japanese Jujitsu and which style you choose), and Vale Tudo (which also teaches a LOT of striking).
Aikido and Shuai Chiao are both viable, but I wouldn't reccomend making them a base style.
Nothing can take the place of having a live instructor to train with, but unless you're being trained straight from a member of the chute boxe or brazilian top team, then videos will also be very beneficial. Here are the best videos based on my personal experience and reviews from heavy practicioners of the arts that I've heard.
Muay Thai: Duke Roufus is Numero Uno here as Far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen those of Vut Kamnark, but I've heard nothing but praise about his series. Rob Kaman is a former multiple time world muay thai champion and has a pretty hardcore video series as well. I haven't seen those from Jerome Lebanner, but he's a top level K-1 fighter and I've heard some good things about his series too.
Submissions and BJJ: Mario Sperry has a series for BJJ which is commonly acknowledged as the best BJJ series in the world. Frank Shamrock has a highly praised series of Submission fighting videos you may look into. There are some other good ones but those are the 2 best.
Wrestling: Randy Couture, that's all I have to say
Other: Bas Rutten has a video called "Bas Rutten's MMA Workout" that has gotten all kinds of praise. You might also check out Rutten's Big Books of Combat and his new set "Bas Rutten's lethal street fighting techniques." Peter Aerts is a 3 time champion of K-1 and has a video series on kickboxing, but it's quality is questionable. Andy Hug is a former K-1 Champion and Kyokushin Karate legend, he has a couple of videos, but they are also somewhat questionable and it was before Hug was in his prime. Vitor Belfort has some great videos and one of them has his legendary "Vitor Blitz" and how to perform it properly.
Those are all of the worthwhile training videos that I know of, good luck!
