Our ideas of what SD is are obviously different. It is common knowledge that NMM takes over in the fight/flight/hypervigilance phase of an altercation. As to your notion that an MMA competitor can turn on and off their adherence to rules in that state, it just doesn't happen. I have seen it time and time again, in real time.
In addition, how would an MMA competitor deal with guns, knives, blunt force weapons, multiple attackers, and so on. MMA gyms training competitors don't train these things. These are the self defense situations that are most common. I remember the Krav Maga guy on the Human Weapon shaking his head at Jason Chambers after a drill and saying "you can fight in the cage, but you don't know sh#t about self defense" and so it is with nearly all MMA competitors I have seen/been involved with.
Another member did a great job of explaining this in a thread a while back..I'll have to see if I can find it.
Thats why I asked. All rules limit something in favor for something else. All rules put something at and advantage over something else.
Again, can you post the rules? The foules etc?
Oh well as you know it all, pointless my saying anything isn't it. Who the hell is Jason Chambers anyway?
All the MMA fighters I know come from a TMA background, a lot of them are military, a couple police officers, a good many of them are doormen and some are travellers. None are professional fighters although they fight pro rules, none train full time MMA, I assume you are talking about the fulltime UFC fighters, I'm not. The money isn't here to allow anyone to be a full time fighter. The couple we have got, Bisping and Hardy (both from a TMA background), train and work in the States not here. Hence it's easy enough for fighters here to switch from MMA to no rules, when they need to and they often do. Many gyms here which teach MMA also train TMA and self defence, even Wolfslair does, it's what pays the bills.
A good many of us train with the British Combat Association and with people like Geoff Thompson, Iain Abernethy and Karl Tanswell. Karl is a well known MMA coach of pro fighters as well as being well known for his self defence teaching, his STAB courses and seminars are probably among the best in the world. MMA and TMA isn't very far apart here so we can do both MMA and self defence work as well as traditional martial arts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KAT5-OIxvA&feature=related
You are generalising from what you have seen and know nothing of what I have seen so you are drawing the wrong conclusions altogether.
In our club we teach MMA, TSD and a lot of self defence work, different classes but the same students attend them, this is the norm over here. MMA is the game we play to amuse ourselves to see if we can take the hit, think on our feet (or back) and generally enjoy what we do hopefuly winning fights on the way, self defence is what we do for real ( my instructor trains with Geoff Thompson among others and is well into SD) switching between the two is easy enough.
I'm guessing the Shamrocks of this world probably don't train self defence, they have a job to do as MMA fighters so perhaps it's true in their case that they can't 'do' self defence though I wouldn't want to bet my life on it but fighters I know here can and do.