I am sorry this thread has drifted, Hedge wants to make this about me and him not about Animal or RBSD, hence is comments about my record. If I could condense what Animal is saying into one phrase it would probably be: Train for what you are going to do. If you sport fight train for sport, or if you are worried about the street train with the street in mind. Don't train for sport and hope it transfers over.
I am not saying - nor is Animal - that sport fighters aren't tough. I would have considered myself a sportfighter up until a couple of years ago, and I have known some amazing sport fighters that could and did transfer that to the street. I know of one kickboxing champion that knocked out an individual in a bar with a roundhouse to the head. We know those work in competion (Smith, Lidell and others have shown that) but do we really believe we shoudl be using those for Self Defense?
That you fight the way you train has been said so many times it is a cliche but that doesn't make it any less true. If you practice, high round kicks, struggling for an armbar or patiently working the guard, you will do these things in combat. These they will probably not work (although they might, I now know 3 people who have used high round kicks in a fight succesfully).
What I, Animal and most RBSD people are saying is the best way to practice Real SD is to make the scenarios as close to real as possible. We know that we can never truely replicate it but we do the best we can. We also try and make it the worst possible scenario we can think of. That means groups, weapons, firearms, enclosed spaces. I know of one instructor who does things like using googles with vaseline on one eye piece to simulate getting poked in the eye. He also sets up strobe light and loud music to simulate a bar.
I like sparring and I think it is an excellent tool. I like to use it (especially grappling) as a warm up. It is a great work out and it get you used to moving someone who doesn't want to move while he is trying to do the same thing. But it is just a single tool, not the be all and end all of combat.
Since my true interest lays in Mlitary Combatives (I am in the military) I will give you a list of what I think should be in every combatives program. Most of it will apply to civilians, especially in the states.
Gross motor skill strikes- chin jab, edge of hand, low kicks, right cross, tiger claw, etc.
Stand up grappling concepts - controlling the inside, stay low and wide, mix with strikes, takedowns
Ground grappling - postional fighting ie. gaining and maintaining dominate postion, Mount escapes, getting to your feet from the guard (top and bottom)
Chokes and neck cranks/breaks
Arresting techniques
Use of force ladder
De-escalation / conflict resolution skills
Non lethal weapons -asp baton/stick, etc
Firearms - longarm, pistol
Knife work
Defense against weapons
Weapon retention skills
Situational awareness - when to engage and when to wait for back up or retreat
Mulitiple opponent strategies
RBSD and combatives deal with that whole gamut (with the possible exception of firearms or arresting techniques depending on the school or situation) and they have to do it in a short time. Sport fighting programs deal with, up to, the first four (you could probably include arresting techniques since they are in many cases submissions). As such the techniques they use predominatly are the ones that work best in those situations. These are the one they train 90 percent of the time. Some of those techniques work great in the street some don't. the same goes for TMA as well. A reverse punch works were ever you throw it, be it the dojo, the ring or the street. A spinning reverse kick, maybe not so flexible. The trick, I believe is to find the techniques that work best in the enviroment you enviroment you plan to fight in. It is also to train against techniques that you are likely going to see. What good is defending against a juji when you will likely never see that in the street?
I personally use a lot of sport figting methods, perhaps more than many other RBSD exponenets, because I have a long sport fighting background and that is what I know best. I just try to take what will easily translate to a street enviroment. One of the knife defenses I teach, essentially starts with an armdrag. I also have long advocated that people who can do some sport fighting, to do so. It will do nothing but toughen you up. One must remember that sport fighting is rule based fighting and that many techniques that are succesful are so because the rule allow them to be.
One last thing that needs mentioning:
That's because, even if you drilled the technique until it was pat, you wouldn't have enough time for the essential live contact sparring to truly "own" the technique.
This is the reason for the reliance on gross motor skills. They have been proven to be easier to retain and use effectively. For as far back as Fairbairn or as recently as Peyton Quinn, people have been learning to use gross motor skill techniques effectively in under a week.
