Chris Parker
Grandmaster
To get into any kind of detail regarding these systems, you'd need someone who's trained both extensively... that said, there's some things to be covered in regard to these "systems" that I'll cover at the end.
What makes you think that, firstly, you're in any position to make a new style, that a new style will genuinely have anything to offer, or that you can create a new style off of something you know pretty much nothing about, and therefore can't possibly know how valid it would be for any aim you think you have?
If your aim is to incorporate these systems into a new system (again, how can you know if that's even a practical reality if you haven't even started training in it yet?), then you'll need to spend years training in it to get to anything where you'd have any insight of value to assess the situation for your desire... the idea of "I only had my phone" is, bluntly, meaningless here.
If your aim is to incorporate from them, you need to train them, not "research" them (oh, and this is nothing like research, you realise...). So the only real question is are they locally and practically available to you for you to study... if not, then this is all nothing but fantasy and delusion.
The only reason to do a comparison is if they're both viable options to you... and if your aim is to mine them for something you clearly have a fantasy of, then this entire line of questioning is just showing glaring issues in your understanding of the entire situation.
I'll be blunt here. You are what many of us would consider a beginner. You also are quite lost in fantasy regarding, well, everything. You want to be a self defence instructor, but don't know what that entails. You want to look at the "best variations", and make your own "devastating version" of them? Do you really think that everyone who trains in the techniques of their arts aren't wanting them to be done as powerfully as possible, with the least expenditure of effort? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
I'll put it this way... "self defence" is not a collection of techniques... nor is it focused on "devastating techniques" with "maximum damage". Self defence, as a subject, is based in an understanding of social and asocial violence, habitual acts of violence, cultural understanding of what might be encountered, predator behaviour, legal realities, psychological facets (of both aggressor and victim), and so on. It requires developing skills in awareness, gross-motor reactions, minimal numbers of techniques that have high return/low risk components, and more. In fact, it could be stated that if a self defence situation has escalated to being physical, then there have already been at least four of five failures of opportunity. What it is absolutely not about is about "winning", "beating" someone, or anything of the kind.
In addition to this, simply taking a bit from this, and a bit from that is, simply, a bad idea that is fraught with problems. For any system to be effective, it needs to have consistency... looking at multiple variations, separate from their context and reasoning, means you simply won't understand what works and why... so you can only, by definition, import incorrect and incomplete versions that you haven't understood in the first place. There is nothing realistic or practical in your ideas at all.
Now, none of this is to say that your desire to be a self defence teacher is unrealistic... but the first step is going to have to be learning what that is... then, seeing if there's something that matches it for you to do. You are so woefully undereducated that you don't know what is needed, let alone how you would go about creating something new that is actually valid in any way. The idea that you can do that, without knowing anything about it, is purely ego.
Yeah... do you have access to such persons? If not, how would you go about getting them? And what makes you think that any of those groups are even close to what you would need to look at self defence as an aim? Self defence and fighting are really, really not the same thing at all.
Yeah, you might want to watch the attitude there... bear in mind, we've seen this kind of fantasy before, and we know how it goes. You don't know what you're doing, or how you'd do it, and, for whatever reason, think you have some kind of value to offer in the field. That said, just to answer your question, for what it's worth, let's look at the two systems you've asked about.
Keysi, and Defence Labs, realistically, are just two versions of the same thing. Defence Labs was developed by Andy Norman, one of the two founders of Keysi, after a falling out. He has made many statements saying that they are quite different, but... well... nah. Keysi itself claims to have been based in an exploration of street fighting experience from Spain... however, it's primary purpose was to be sold for Hollywood movies, most famously being the foundation of the fight choreography in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy with Christian Bale. As a result, the focus is more on the "look", aiming to be distinctive, rather than having any genuine practical reasoning. If you're looking at movie choreography-designed arts for the foundation of a self defence system? Well... yeah... you're actually a fair bit further off than is implied earlier...
But all joking aside though, what I meant to say was taking the best aspects from BOTH fighting styles and incorporating them into my arsenal.
