Martial Arts - in Street Fight Situations

Now don't get me wrong, Martial Arts are fantastic. I personally am trained with a number of other various styles of Martial Arts of different cultures.  However often times we tend to see the one-sided patriotism and egos coming from practitioners believing their styles is stronger or better than others. Of course this is not the fault of the practitioners because it comes down to the history/origin of where the Martial Arts came from and for what purpose during that time. So early practitioners are trained through a specific teaching methods for their specific purposes. Some examples below...

Capoeira - developed to disguised as a dance and designed for the purpose to fight off Portuguese to liberate them-self from slavery
Muay Thai - developed to fight in wars and later become a ceremonial sports for money/fame/glory
Aikido - originated from the killing arts of Japanese Swordsmanship later developed into a non-aggressive art of peace philosophically for self defense.
Wushu - originated with many forms of kung-fu and due to schools rivalry back in history the teaching doctrines revolves around which martial arts school can get the most students by being the Best.

Shows that all Martial Arts styles are trained with various doctrines and philosophy in mind.

Aikido Founder, Morihei Ueshiba

So the question is how they fare in a Street Fight situation? It all depends on the instructors & their teaching methods. Many of the more contemporary schools teaches some self-defense techniques however its only a small portion of their curriculum until they are back to teaching horse-stance/ hitting lifeless targets.

In my opinion what Martial Arts Instructors failed to protect their students from danger is the fact that they maybe teaching some great techniques for self-defense, but they did not teach the importance & understanding the directness of the techniques to get the job done and (god forbid) the importance of running away for their LIFE. Too often people encountered in the situations where they have to THINK back what techniques to use.

Street Fights is not about Karate punches, Animal Wushu forms, or Tae Kwan Do flying kicks. Street Fights is all about pushing, hair pulling, gouging, biting, stabbing and smashing.

Self defense is not a step by step procedures of turning, twisting grabbing then punching, Self Defense is the idea of Self-Respect and instinctively project the intentions by moving without thinking and run for your life

Although different in conception but both share the most important idea.

THE CONCEPT OF SURVIVAL!