The nature of grappling techniques is such that it is easy to really develop those skills because they are easier to use in the training hall. In the training, you get to really use those grappling techniques, and you can pull back the intensity so that nobody gets injured in the process, while still using the techniques with a lot of realism. That is a definite advantage when it comes to training. So a grappler has a better chance at developing a real comfort level and subsequently a real confidence in his techniques.
In a striking method, you cannot do that. You cannot dial back the intensity and still make the techniques work. If you hit someone for real, you injure him and maybe he even goes to the hospital. You run out of training partners very quickly if that's how you go about training. So if you dial it back, then the strikes are not effective and your partners needs to "acknowledge" them and pretend like they were effective, whether or not they would have been had they been real. This is a real disadvantage in training. You never get to really try it out on a live person and it can lead to questions or doubts about the ability to use them effectively. It resides to some degree in the realm of theory, and you need to be able to bridge that gap into reality when the fit hits the shan. That is a disadvantage in training, because you cannot practice doing it with absolute realism. But nevertheless, the potential is there and obviously there are ways to help bridge that gap, like hitting heavy bags, working on the dummy, etc., but it's still an approximation.
So when we see a matchup between a "grappler" and a "striker", when it's a competition type match the grappler has an automatic advantage: he can use his techniques for real, while a striker, in that context of a match cannot, and has some reluctance to even try. He ends up using less decisive strikes, because the goal of the match is not life-or-death. In the end, everyone wants to go home in more or less one piece. But given the nature of grappling techniques, the grappler doesn't have that same limitation. As I said earlier, the grappler can actually use his techniques, they are still effective, even if he dials it back so that there is no true injury, just push to the point of submission. It's much more difficult to dial back a strike "to the point of submission". So when the grappler drives in for the engagement, the striker sort of freezes up, doesn't use his strikes the way they were meant to be used, and ends up trying to grapple with the grappler. He gets taken down and tied up in a way that it becomes impossible to use his techniques effectively, and it's too late.
