[Excerpted from Boxing for MMA]

All right, since I am making a case for a mix being superior to single disciplines, why the obsessive focus on boxing, a punching game to be your go-to in striking? Logically and pragmatically shouldn't we look for Muay Thai or kick-boxing as the inclusion of knees and kicks would seem to provide more mix than boxing?

Sure, an argument can easily and perhaps not un-wisely made to go that route.

But allow me to plead my idiosyncratic case.

First-I am making a case not for pure boxing but what we call Boxing +, that is the standard boxing arsenal plus elbows, hammer-fists, and a few other unorthodox blows. This gets us a bit closer to the mix.

Second-Boxing is an "easier" (easy being relative) skill-set to learn and master than complete integration of kicking and good boxing. We are striving to make you as formidable a striker as we can manage in the quickest time possible. Hence, our Boxing + stream-line.

Third-The Boxing + approach is also faster in the actual speed sense of the word. Firing punches requires less set-up from the body than kicking and thusly we can fire single shots and rapid-fire combinations more quickly. Think punches in bunches, the more shots fired increases the chances of damage. Saving up for big shots (the big punch or the big kick) might be too much of all your eggs in one basket thinking.

Fourth-Boxing + is more mobile and mobility often leads to a stronger offensive and defensive game. Kicks must be set from the feet and hips and more footwork adjustments must be accounted for to make this a primary aspect of your game. Kicking footwork sets up kicking and little else. Boxing + footwork can set up your striking game and your takedown game. Let alone the fact, that no matter how speedy your kicks are, the mere act of throwing a kick makes you a one-legged fighter.

Fifth-As we mentioned above, the Boxing + stance and footwork allows you to transition seamlessly between striking and takedowns, it also allows you the ability to transition from striking to takedown defense easily. This ease of shifting between boxing and grappling may be just the reason why we see so many elite wrestlers who merely overlay a boxing game onto their superior grappling skills.

Sixth-The hands are where the KOs are. In a prior book The Essentials we surveyed 640 elite level fights to quantify just what exactly did and did not work and overwhelmingly strikes via the hands whether on the feet or on the ground won top honors by a long shot. If you want the statistical breakdown that informs this fact have a look at that book. If you want to take my word for it, striking via the hands out-performs kicking, knees, elbows, and submissions. No, I'm not saying that we need none of these other facets, of course not. I'm stating the empirical fact that throwing the hands wins lots and lots of fights, so let's make sure we are as good with this skill as we can be.

Seventh-UFC 168 Chris Weidman vs. Anderson Silva 2, need I say more? This was the leg-kick-gone-wrong injury heard round the world. Yes, such injuries are a rarity, but as more and more athletes are adopting a destruction mode of checking the leg kick as opposed to simply block-checking this is definitely food for thought. (And yes, we will be educating just such destructive leg checks in this manual-we won't kick but we do want to be prepared for the kick.)

BTW-It's just not Silva's injury that should inform our bias for the hands, Jose Maria's right knee in his bout with John Lineker is another lesson in the possible perils of leg kicking.

To be fair, boxers have broken their hands in fights, but more often than not the fighter is able to finish despite such injuries whereas some of the more devastating leg injuries just simply can't be pushed through.

And to be fair yet again, we do have the most unusual and one-of-a-kind self-induced injury via boxing, the shoulder dislocation of Chan Sung Jung "The Korean Zombie" vs. Jose Aldo featherweight championship bout in UFC 163.

Yes, statistically the self-injury via strikes (boxing or kicking) is low, but I predict that we will see more and more fighters adopt Weidman's hard to ignore use of modified destructive checking to provide a disincentive for kicking.