Muay Thai is the Best Martial Art for Consumers

Muay Thai, over all, is the best martial art for most martial arts consumers. I will compare it here to the gold standard of martial arts, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ.) People decide to study martial arts in order to defend themselves in situations where they do not have an advantage:

1. Being attacked by someone with a knife.
2. Being attacked by multiple people.
3. Being attacked by a bigger or stronger person.

In all of those situations, plan A should involve staying on your feet. In all of those situations you need footwork to manage distance with. While boxing seems to cover this more consistently than Muay Thai, Muay Thai training usually does cover this kind of footwork. This is especially critical when being approached with a knife. I have never seen or heard of this being covered in a BJJ class, so that if it is covered, it is rarely emphasized.

In the case of being attacked by multiple people, this is the situation where staying on your feet is most important, because staying on your feet and using footwork makes it harder for everyone to attack you. If you end up on the ground as is plan A with BJJ, it becomes much easier for multiple people to strike you at once, because footwork is then impossible.

In the case of being attacked by a larger opponent, footwork is very helpful for defense. However the two most important offensive tools against a larger opponent are leg kicks and overhand/hooks:

For getting both of those techniques covered in one style, Muay Thai is the obvious choice. If either technique is ever covered in BJJ, those techniques are massively under emphasized. And the same goes for clinch grappling technique: while on one hand Muay Thai has effective strategies for knocking out opponents in the clinch or throwing opponents to the ground from the clinch while staying on your feet, BJJ in the clinch seeks to go to the ground first and always.

But MMA is the best striking style [1], and since MMA is more or less BJJ, BJJ is thus the best striking style [2,] and anyways grappling is more important than striking [3,] and BJJ is the best grappling style [4,] and  has "combatives" and "Combat BJJ," and many BJJ blackbelts are also Judo black belts and everyone knows that Judo kata is great for teaching people how to throw to the ground while staying on your feet [5,] and in the end BJJ has the most ergonomic form of sparring where you can go almost 100% speed and contact [6,] so that therefore BJJ is the best martial art for most martial arts consumers [7,] right? Wrong:

1. We can see that broader rule sets allow for more analysis of weather techniques are effective, which is why MMA is such a valuable tool for critical analysis of techniques in the first place. (For example BJJ has a far broader rule set than wrestling. The techniques which are only found in wrestling that don't get used in BJJ can therefore be seen to be less effective: pins. In a fight, if you get on top in side control and just wait, you risk outside interference.) When this concept is applied to striking, the well known combat sport with the widest variety of technique allowed is Muay Thai. There is a lot of stand up technique from kumite point fighting by the likes of Wonderboy Thompson that is occasionally used in MMA, but which is virtually never seen in high level Muay Thai fights. What this tells is is that MMA is not as good as Muay Thai for striking technique that people need for self defense situations like weapons or multiple attackers, because it promotes stand up striking technique that almost always fails in Muay Thai.
2. In the first few UFCs BJJ people like to show as an example of why BJJ is supposedly the best martial art, the biggest size difference victory was actually a Kempo guy knocking out a 600 pound Sumo guy using an overhand right striking attack. In later UFCs, Muay Thai ended up being more important than BJJ. Grappling is only inevitable against trained grapplers. Trained grapplers usually don't roam the street looking for victims.
3. When in a self defense situation, stand up clinch and striking is much more important against multiple opponents than submission grappling on the ground. The key to victory in such self defense situations is mobility, which you lose when you hit the ground. Most people who attack others on the street are not trained grapplers anyways, unlike in an MMA fight. Pulling guard on one of two people trying to punch you in the face is the best way to get punched in the face by both people at once.
4. BJJ has holes in it comparable to Wrestling. Neither allow significant amounts of striking, and striking has been proven to a very effective part of a ground fighting strategy in MMA. While Wrestling overspecializes in pinning the opponent, BJJ also overspecializes in various low % techniques when it comes to likely success in MMA. Both BJJ and Wrestling are missing important concepts from each other's styles as well. In fact I know of only one complete grappling style, and that is MMA itself. The best style of grappling is MMA, not BJJ, and yes any MMA fan can observe that there is a world of difference between MMA and BJJ.
5. If Judo matches and randori are any indicator, Judo kata is a terrible non-sparring way to practice staying on your feet when you throw, as evidence by the fact that in Judo this rarely happens, and when it does happen it's often is such a technical, subtle way that a casual onlooker wouldn't notice the thrower actually did anything useful at all by MMA standards. Yes Judo is great for taking people down, and sorry it's terrible for staying on your feet. Likewise the lack of striking sparring associated with BJJ combatives is reminiscent of the non-existing strikes in Judo sparring, even though they have some striking in kata. It's almost like BJJ got it's striking in kata only traditions from Judo. As for Combat BJJ, that is unicorn rare stuff like Kudo or Combat Sambo, all three of which have a strong preference to going to the ground when you throw.
6. The more authentic your Muay Thai, the lighter contact your free sparring is. If boxing sparring is spastic hard, it's grappling equivalent is injury-prone wrestling. If BJJ is extremely laid back and ergonomic compared to wrestling, BJJ's striking equivalent would be Muay Thai. However I have done my share of Muay Thai and BJJ sparring, and I must say that the occasional lumps, bloody noses and black eye injuries from Muay Thai and other contact striking sports healed very quickly compared to the elbow and shoulder soft issue injuries I have gotten doing BJJ, and Muay Thai does not share BJJ's reputation for stress on the lower back.
7. Let's say we have 2 different people train for a year, one in Muay Thai one one in BJJ, and at the end of that year you have them first fight each other one on one, and then have them each alone fight the same three joggers from the local YMCA. The BJJ person will definitely lose against the three joggers, but will have a 50/50 chance of getting the Muay Thai fighter on the ground before getting stopped by strikes (BJJ is notoriously weak on all stand up and throwing techniques in the first year of training.) The person who did Muay Thai will not only have a 50% chance of stopping the BJJ fighter, he will also have about a 90% chance of taking out all 3 joggers. The average martial arts consumer is not trying to become a life-long martial artist, and therefore Muay Thai is far and above the best martial art for martial arts consumers.

For the average martial arts consumer what martial art is the best for:

• Fighting multiple opponents? Muay Thai.
• Fighting an armed opponent? Muay Thai.
• Fighting a larger opponent? Muay Thai.
• Being easy to learn? Muay Thai.
• Being fast to learn? Muay Thai.
• Being the most efficient for producing results for how much TIME you put into it? Muay Thai.
• Being the most efficient for producing results for how much MONEY you put into it? Muay Thai.
• Being the most efficient for producing results for how much injury you endure? Muay Thai.
• Fighting at longer kicking range? Muay Thai.
• Fighting at clinch range when strikes are likely to happen? Muay Thai.
• Staying on your feet when you throw someone? Muay Thai.
• Learning how to punch someone in the face when they are trying to kick you in the leg? Muay Thai.
• Learning how to kick someone in the leg when they are trying to punch you in the face? Muay Thai.
• Learning evasive footwork so you can escape? Muay Thai.
• Females holding their own when attacked in a parking lot? Muay Thai.
• Safety? Muay Thai.
• Fun? Muay Thai.
• Ergonomics? Muay Thai.
• Getting in touch with your primal self? Muay Thai.
• Using as a base from which to learn other martial arts? Muay Thai.
• Having as a first martial art to learn basic martial arts principles and simple techniques? Muay Thai.
• Tradition and honor? Muay Thai.
• Understanding Traditional Martial Arts Techniques? Muay Thai.
• Cross training in to make sure you have your basics covered? Muay Thai.
• Learn deadly street fighting techniques? Muay Thai.
• Learn what how to really use those moves you learned in your Tai Chi class? Muay Thai.
• Building strength and flexibility for longevity? Muay Thai.
• Getting in shape? Muay Thai.
• Understanding eastern philosophy? Muay Thai.
• Getting in touch with how your ancestors probably defended themselves? Muay Thai.
• Doing traditional rituals? Muay Thai.
• Getting away from ranks and focusing more on pure skill development? Muay Thai.
• Getting away from strange uniforms you wouldn't want to be seen wearing in public? Muay Thai.
• Avoiding LARPing in Martial Arts? Muay Thai.
• Avoiding organizational/hierarchical tendencies towards cult-like behavior? Muay Thai.
• Being as close to MMA as possible to have exposure to developing techniques and strategies not found in Muay Thai? Muay Thai.
• Being compatible with TMA so that you can develop techniques not allowed in Muay Thai? Muay Thai.
• Learning magical-looking self defense powers like Aikido people train to do? Muay Thai.

It doesn't have to be this way. Almost any Traditional Martial Art can (and in some place in the world has) adopted Muay Thai's general focus on remaining standing on their feet while trying to put the opponent on the ground and get in more strikes than the opponent, all practiced through generous helpings of free sparring. My least favorite martial art is Olympic Karate because of Kumite Point Fighting, but even those nerds can shine like when they they have the same best practices as Muay Thai: