While I do not practice boxing, it is as good as any other fighting art under the right condition. Most boxers will learn to take a punch unlike some arts. They also know how to throw a great punch unlike others. It has some of the best footwork, under the right trainer.

Many claim that "most fights end on the ground." but ALL fights start on the feet and many end on the ground alone after a punch.

I have learned Kicks and throws from my art which is an Okinawan Karate (recognized and trained there). I have been hit by many and will say that without question, the hardest hit I have taken was a professional boxer from Nicaragua who barely weighed 150 lbs. I' don't know what would happen in a fight but I would not want to test more than what I saw.

Well your opinion is off someone who is not trained in boxing. Not trying to offend you or anything. But I think that boxing is superior in a lot of ways that many arts are not. Now I'm not saying that a good grappler or a good kickboxer couldn't defeat a good boxer. They could and probably would but boxing gives you a very good foundation. The footwork, head movement, punching defense and the sheer amount of sparing matches a boxer does makes him a better fighter.

I used to do boxing for many years before I moved on to MMA. When I did boxing I excelled at bobing and weaving, slipping away from punches. We used to play a game in my MMA gym. You would get 10 punches to try and punch me. Any way you like. 1 punch at a time or 10 in quick succession. If you miss you buy me a beer. None of the regular MMA guys could do that. It's things like this that the untrained eye doesn't see at first. You can become a decent boxer in a year or two. But to become good, not to mention great, is something else. There is more to it then punching. So don't underestimate boxing. Not the best art or most well rounded art out there by any means but it will give you a good foundation.

>If someone wanted to learn how to defend themselves and/or fight well, why would they choose to learn boxing over almost anything else?

They would not. Boxing is a sport and all sports have rules and restrictions. Defending yourself on the street means facing against someone who will use anything and everything to hurt or kill you. There is no referee, rounds, a ring and no one is wearing gloves.

> What are its advantages? I do understand that boxing requires much stamina, technique,and good footwork...but wouldn't learning grapples,kicks,and a plethora of other styles of moves STILL be way more practical/efficient for ones development as a fighter in general?

Boxing due to the limitations of what boxers are restricted to, trains the person with very good footwork in terms of moving in and out of range. It also trains you to judge the range better than other arts. However, in a self-defense situation, you cannot count on always having the room to move and boxers are not trained to defend themselves against any other attacks than punches above the belt. There is no defense training against low kicks or close range striking such as elbow strikes. There is no training against a takedown by a grappler.

Learning more than boxing is better than learning ONLY boxing. However, boxing (actual boxing skills, not simply "punching") is a great and arguably the best foundation. When most people attack, they do it with their hands. The ability to defend against hand strikes and counterattack intelligently, plus the experience of hard sparring against punches, gives a boxer an edge over the overwhelming majority of folks out there.

In your imaginary scenario (boxer vs. kickboxer), what you're talking about isn't self-defense, it's a challenge match. There's a difference. In self-defense, a good boxer is much better than a good low kicker because the space available in self-defense is very small, and since it's much easier to lose your balance, having both feet on the ground is a better idea. In a challenge match, in a ring for example, the odds are with a kickboxer over a pure boxer, but this is because the range is increased, and kicks can land before punches. Most fights I've seen have kicked off when guys have gotten in each others' faces, which is way too close for a good low kick to be thrown.

Back in the early 20th Century, before the Asian martial arts became prevalent in the West, boxing (along with wrestling) was considered a way for a man to learn how to defend himself. Again, most humans, when they want to hurt each other, will do it with their fists, so learning how to fight intelligently with the fists is the foundational skill of self-defense. Even Geoff Thompson, bouncer who had a black belt in Shotokan before he started working the doors, and has studied several martial arts since, emphasizes boxing first, because of the range of most conflicts and the utility of punches. So I'm hardly alone in this assessment.

Good points:

Boxing will teach to hit, to find proper distance and timing, to avoid blows, to take a punch and not fall apart.

A lot of martial artists who have only done forms or sparring don't really understand how to hit someone.

Bad points:

It's a sport. There are rules. You fight in a ring with proper footgear and boxing gloves. There is no defense against grappling. No weapon component, either in defense or offense.

So if you are engaging in "playground fights" boxing may serve you well. If you are grabbed from behind in a dark alley by a couple of thugs.... Well, not so much.

Boxing was long felt to be the "manly art of self-defense", a gentleman's way of solving disputes without the dangers of actual duelling. Participants generally agreed on rules of a sort and "dirty fighting" was looked down on.

However, such naive traditions have been lost and if you want to learn to defend yourself you would be better served by a dedicated system.

Sparring, conditioning, and few offensive technique. Boxing is known for their great training. Hell, the protective and other training equipments that most other style uses are from boxing. They have great sparring training and are really dedicated to conditioning creating just more powerful athletic people in general. And as the saying goes, ‘fear the man that practiced one technique a thousand times than a man that practiced a thousand technique once’. Also the limited offensive technique means that they can concentrate on other things like distance, defense, and combinations more than other style can. The real weakness in boxing I think is that it only trains with its own style in mind, but when boxing trains for fighting against(mainly in the area of defense) other styles I think it’ll do just as well as other striking arts.

For your time in western country's on average boxing jacket/normal wrestling and mauy Thai/full contact kickboxing will give you the most bang for your buck. Finding anything else that includes a full self defence arsenal and mindset can be a hard task. I've been hit with a heavy blunt object more than once hard I'm not mike Tyson and I didn't go down.

No, boxing won't be useful. Far quicker to just get hold of a trusty brick or bat. I mean mike Tyson was a great boxer but if you smash his head from behind with a brick I don't think his boxing capability become relevant at all. He'll simply fall to the ground like anyone else. So yeah get a brick or bat.

Hope this helps.