Human Weapon Forums

Take Bruce Lee's advice and learn as much as you can. Don't confine yourself to one style, learn from them all.

It depends on what you want to use it for. If you want general unarmed fighting skills, you can't go wrong with Muay Thai for striking and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for grappling. Western Boxing, Wrestling, Judo and Sambo are other good choices. If you want a fun, visually appealing art, go with a form of Kung Fu (Drunken Boxing as you suggested), Capoeira, Tae Kwon Do, Karate, etc. The latter range from either useless in a real fight to semi-useful and should be studied with that in mind. If you want to study self defense in a variety of fighting situations, Krav Maga is what you should look for.

Also, you are right, yes you should learn both striking and grappling.

Don't go for an "all-inclusive" system because there isn't a system that truly captures every aspect of the fight game. Study a variety of systems that are useful in real fight situations.

One style will not beat all styles. The only thing that comes close is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. This is only applicable in pure style vs. style matches. If you need any evidence, watch UFC 1-4 and watch Royce Gracie at work. He only had BJJ and put a beating on karate, kung fu, savate, boxing and wrestling experts.

No, there are no prerequisites to learning a martial art. Just jump in there and get ready to work for years and years.

I reread your post and I feel it necessary to reiterate, Kung Fu is not good for any kind of fighting situations. This is excepting Sanda/San Shou, the Chinese military version.

I would suggest Wing Chun for all that close combat goodness. If you've seen episode 10 of HW, they have a small segment highlighting a bit of Wing Chun. The Wing Chun instructor they were with exhibited blindfolded "chi sau", or sticking hand. That kind of sparring is always fun to watch. Anyway, that litte part shows you how close you can use the techniques of that system.

I'd definately go with Sambo. I'm having trouble even putting into words how great a choice Sambo is. I've done boxing, wrestling, and brazilian jiu jitsu; what I can tell you is that I envy you for being able to take sambo; it's a nice mix of judo and wrestling. The #1 heavyweight in the world, Fedor Emelianenko, also happens to be a sambo specialist and combat sambo world champion; combat sambo is a variant people train for at many sambo places with striking involved. I'm not saying it's my favorite martial art, I'd never pick anything over jiu jitsu, but I admire it greatly and if I could train both I would. That kung fu is no good; sanda would be very great, but drunking boxing is pretty much a waste of time. Off the top of my head I can't think of any style of kung fu more useless than drunken boxing. It's about as far from sound striking technique as you can get without doing tai bo.

I train in street fighting, so like whats been said, Muay thai works great, as does Krav Maga, and Jeet Kun Do. I also know some Judo and Savate.