Some martial artists are. I’ve been in a handful of real fights, some where I was on the unfriendly end of a weapon. The martial art I first trained in dealt explicitly with real-world stuff. We did nothing that was sport-oriented, everything was meant for practical application, much of it was based on dislocations, breaking bones, and potentially deadly target areas. It was mostly grappling and throws mixed with strikes. Evasion, escape, and ways avoiding a fight before it started were also important principles. That shaped how I looked at fighting and other martial arts schools later.
One of my criticisms of mixed martial arts matches is that the rules they impose—which are there for good reason, the safety of the participants—favor the kind of fighting that eventually dominated. People often bring UFC or other events in as litmus tests of what works. It works in an arena with rules, two fighters, and a ref. It’s not real life.
You damn sure don’t want to be rolling around on the ground with a guy in most situations. In bars, you’re giving his buddies free shots at your head and kidneys. In the street in most cities, you’re getting up close and personal with whatever nasty possibly disease-ridden debris is there in the gutter. Broken glass, bits of metal, and close encounters with concrete curbs can seriously cramp your style even if you happen to “win” such a fight. In any fights with more than one opponent you NEVER want it to go to the ground. If you go down, you’re probably going to the hospital. If you’re really lucky, you won’t have any permanent injuries.
There have been a couple of threads about martial arts recently, asking whether training matters at all. No one would propose a situation like, “Who would win a one-on-one game: an NBA player or Joe Average who plays pickup b-ball at the Y?” but that’s essentially what people are asking in these threads. Of course training makes a difference. There’s no magic to it. People with training generally are better at doing something than people without that training. Some martial arts have a better area of focus or a better repertoire of skills, in my opinion, but pretty much any martial arts training beats knowing nothing about how to fight.
The only danger in training is gaining unfounded confidence. You’re not a badass because you’ve taken a year of karate. Any teacher who creates an atmosphere that is conducive to such thinking is both immoral and an idiot of the highest order. After a year, you’re like an undergrad at university; you should be starting to realize the boundaries of your own ignorance. A good teacher would let you know where you’re still weak and make sure you understand the limitations of your training versus the outside world, while still maintaining a reasonable level of confidence. Unfortunately, I’ve not seen many good teachers out there, so the immoral idiots are sometimes in the majority.
