Thing that sucks is that my bjj gym hardly if ever has us start standing. We do drill take owns aoemtimes though.
Also as a smaller guy (about 170) i tend to practice being in bottom and pulling guard more. Is pulling guard realistic in a real fight or will you get your face pounded in?
Sounds like i need to practice more my top game and take downs
This is a major problem with the way bjj is taught these days. It's very sport oriented now and most gym owners don't generally like doing too much standing work because of limited mat space and injury. A lot of gyms don't really have the quality of mats that you find at judo places. My local judo clubs mats are twice a thick and the floor sprung just right. You can be thrown hard and it doesn't hurt. My BJJ club is a single thickness mat and it hurts too much for my liking, as a guy in his mid 40s.
I've had a reasonable number of altercations over the years. All of them have been before I started BJJ but I did have judo. I can tell you it's been very useful. I can't claim to have used BJJ but I think I can extrapolate from the grappling I did use. You need to think about the sorts of fights you're likely to get into. BJJ is good for some, not for others. If you want to be able to handle all situations you'll need to do more than one art or MMA.
Fights I had have included:
Road rage - one on one: A guy overtook me so close his wing mirror hit my elbow as I was cycling. I shook a fist, he stopped, reversed and got out to fight me. Trip, pin a couple of punches and he's given up. Shook hands, he drove off. BJJ is perfect for this situation. Pride intact, no serious damage done.
School-age fight with a dude 3 years older who'd left school and was in the army - one on one: Again grappling was ideal. He was shocked that his size, strength and age didn't count for much. Lots of threats, pushes and posturing. People generally let you bang. No marks or blood to explain.
London pub fight courtesy of a gang who targeted my group for some reason. Surprise attack, broke my nose with headbutts. My friend broke a chair over him. All out war ensued. Mostly standing clinching stuff that probably stopped my getting a real pasting. I got away unharmed. Others were not so lucky. Not sure what I learned from that other than being more aware would have been good.
Surprise sucker punch from behind: I woke up on the floor. No martial art was any use here.
Fight between two groups in a restaurant: Used my judo but really wasn't such a great idea rolling around on the floor. I also got a chunk bitten out of my side. My mate who boxes handled his end much better with a single punch knockdown - no torn clothes and looked dignified about it!
Big group fight of students vs local gang - a free-for-all, punches, headbutts etc. I stayed standing and fucked off when I go the chance. Definitely would not want to use BJJ here. This was really mostly about drunken aggression and thinking on your feet.
So from my experience BJJ is good for one to one fights and any fight where you get taken down yourself and need to turn it around. Even against a half decent puncher, you should win. It's not always so good in more crowded scenarios and potentially very poor for multiple attackers, be that on your own or in a group vs group fight. BJJ is perfect for when YOU get taken down as reversals and attakcs from the bottom are its USP. I would say some basic judo is generally a more useful grappling style for the street as you spend a lot of time practicing getting the other guy down whilst you stay up which is crucial to some group situations. However judo is usually very sporty with zero thought given to street application so you need to augment the practice a bit.
It's worth noting that in the real world, where not every "self defence" situation is a serious life or death mugging or whatever like you see in defence videos. Most of it is lower level stuff where you want to carry on with your night afterwards and so there is a lot to be said for not going all in with rolling about on the ground getting dirty but rather a trip, lay them down gently, knee on belly, a little chat and it's hand shakes all-around and off to the next bar.
Striking is the go-to fighting style in most people's mind for good reason. Most people have just as bad striking as they do grappling so a trained fighter can dominate. You stay standing which is much safer in a group situation, you don't get all dirty and torn up which is nice on a night out and people will let you bang without white-knighting the other dude because you're about to put him out. The big problem with striking, in my opinion, is the potential for moral and legal problems. I knocked out a guy in a club - a real beauty of punch that had him off his feet and out before he hit the ground. I thought I'd killed him, which of course I could have done. And the cuts and bruises to his face and your knuckles are prima facia evidence against you. I'd think twice about hitting someone like that again. Killing someone over nothing would be very hard to live with.
If you do BJJ with fights in mind then you must learn take downs and do some punch-aware practice. Personally I prefer trips over singles and doubles, and not just because my knees don't like them. With the wrestling stuff you tend to go down with them. With trips and simple throws you have the choice and in many real-world altercations, just getting them down is enough, no need to get all torn up. I agree with other posters that a standing arm drag is a great move. You're taking their punching hand out (90% the time anyway) and get a dominant position without going to the ground.
Overall, if you're doing this with the above in mind then just do MMA. You don't need 90% of BJJ's subs, sub defence, guards, sweeps etc for real fights because your opponent won't know any of it. With MMA they focus on a small subset of practical grappling with an emphasis on standing back up. You also learn clinching, basic trips and take-downs and striking. it's hard to better all that. If you don't want to do MMA then augment your BJJ with some boxing/MT. If you won't strike then make sure you're doing some standup in your BJJ or take some judo alongside it.
Or do what I've done and mature a bit, drink a bit less and realise that 95% of fights are avoidable and so training for them is probably a waste of time.
