After studying JkD for a while i thought that was the ultimate way to bring an average guy to a competent street fighter level quickly. Learning a base of MT, American kickboxing, western boxing, a couple throws, some ground finishes. In 6 months of that i've seen your average guy become a good counter punching, perrying, dancing fighter. But looking back i realize that i already had a solid structure when i started. I find now that structure is lacking in the early stages of JKD. If i wanted to rush past other fighters with under 2 yrs of training it was very easy to bring them off their feet. They didnt have good body structure.

I think especially for the street application, body structure is essential. Being able to whether the storm of blows for the first 30 seconds is really important, and JKD tries to address that, and does with striking and blocking. Shuai chiao has a very different approach. What if you dont spend time on striking in your first 6 months, but spend all your time on taking a striking situation and turnng it into a shuai chiao situation?

Check out the Rhino strategy on this page
https://www.facebook.com/CombatShuaiChiao

That is a beginner level drill. If a guy worked on protecting his head like this, and worked on trips and off balancing for 6 mo's as a part of practice, and sparred using this strategy, i think he would have a stronger base and feel comfortable about closing range when it suited him and ending the striking game, than compared to training in striking for 6 months. There is more to address, of course, than striking. But having a strong structure can help prevent things from going to the ground so easily.

My problem with training MMA as a street answer is in the little moments you don't think about. You learn how to find places to take a moments rest. You dont think about it in practice, but you are learning comfort zones that aren't there in a street situation. You learn body placement on the ground that doesn't take into account throat grabbing, eye gouging, ball grabbing, head butting, knife hand control. The more fluid you become at mma or western wrestling, the less you are aware of how much your leaving these targets open. The first purple belt i tapped, which was my second class of bjj was with a "rapist choke", haha. I was in his guard and grabbed him by his trachea. He was really ****ed. And he didnt tap easily. I had to use my kung fu grip. I had no idea that was illegal. Honest. I thought it was martial, not sport.
After rolling for a couple years and then scrapping with some army guys who were going No Rules rolling, i realized i was leaving a ton of targets open that i had completely forgotten about. in my experience MMA will yield a competent fighter quickly in a fair fight, but there are a ton of holes in MMA as it relates to the street. But you will never find that out by sparring in an MMA room. You will only reinforce your opinions of your self. MMA is no more immune to that problem than bagua. I have only encountered a small handfull of MMA guys who had the body structure of a shuai chiao guy, and they are currently competing in the UFC, and some of the other pro leagues. Any average MMA guy that i have gone with had very unimpressive body structure comparatively, unless he was a college wrestler previously.