Fighting with you hands low is not something that only comes from defending the takedown. Fighters have used a low guard in striking sports in many many years. Where there are no takedowns at all. Its just one of many styles of keeping your hands while fighting. You will see fighters with low guard in boxing and kickboxing also.
There is nothing wrong with using a low guard fighting stance against another striker. But there are some things that need to be there, in order to make it work:
- If you are gonna fight with your hands down, you need head movement to be able to slip the strikes.
- having a good chin is not more important than any other styles (a good chin is always important). But you need to be comfortable enough about being hit, that you can train realistic in the gym, where you get hit. This will help you to understand the art of rolling with punches.
- But most importantly. And this is what many mma fighters with a low guard dont have: if you find yourself in a situation where the other guy are able to hit you with shots, and your low guard defense in not working,
you need to be good at other variations of defense in order to block or avoids being hit at will.
For MMA, Anderson Silva is the perfect example to use here. He will fight with a low guard often. But he will make it work because he also got alot of other ways to block a strike. And he is just as good with the head movement as he is with other blocking styles as "crazy monkey" types, or karate like arm blocking.
I saw JDS getting hit over and over again, and not being well training in how to block from a high guard. That cost him the fight IMO..
